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How to blog yourself to Oscar Pool triumph

Tuesday, February 20, 2007 | 02:36 PM ET

It’s nice to win your office Oscar pool, isn’t it? All workplaces need a little more resentment and smugness. If you insist on playing, though, we’ve found a few blogs that offer an inside advantage.

My favourite is “The Carpetbagger” by the New York Times’s David Carr, who’s still giddy over predicting last year’s Crash upset. This year, he’s flummoxed by Best Picture (though maybe leaning toward Babel – and aren’t we all?) and proclaims that he’s going to wine and dine every insider in L.A. to get the scoop. He’s just crazy-dedicated enough to do it. Check here.

I’m loving the no-clear-winner exasperation in the blogosphere this year, because I suck at these predictions and it makes me feel less lonely to know the true Oscar freaks are also pulling their hair out:

“The race is drawing to a close, and I'm getting VERY uncertain about my picks in top categories. It used to be that just Best Picture was up in the air, but now it seems like many of the top races are looking iffy. Best Picture is a three-way race between The Departed, Babel and Little Miss Sunshine -- I think The Departed will be the consensus choice, but people seem to think that Babel is surging for some reason…” Read the rest of this breathless confusion here.

And the Oscar Goes To has a comprehensive sidebar of predictions and the super-newsy Oscarwatch blog is equally undecided (though rooting for The Departed). They link to a smart Beware! posting about overestimating the weight of the SAG Awards, and other pre-season Nostradamuses.

But if you’re looking for a scientific formula for winning the pool, try this. Two academics at the University of Oregon have applied something called “discrete choice models” to the Oscars. So much time on our hands…

by Katrina Onstad

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