Help Us Predict the USF-Cal Game

***SURVEY CLOSED*** - I'm working on the results and will post them shortly.

Check out this little experiment. I want to see if the wisdom of crowds can accurately predict sports scores as well as experts. Note: you don't have to be a basketball fan to help. The USF-Cal basketball game is coming up this Wednesday 14 March, and people are adding their own predictions. Before the game I'll close the survey, say the average, and then analyze the effect of the respondents' backgrounds. E.g., were fans of these specific teams vs general basketball fans more or less accurate? How about people who said they were serious fans vs not fans?

5-question Surveymonkey here, or just get there via the pop-up - and please forward. Thanks, this should be interesting.

Chia Experiment

Southwest Indians are supposed to have eaten chia seeds on long runs when they started to get tired, and in Born to Run Christopher McDougall discusses the chia smoothies used by the Tarahumara of Chihuahua for the same reason. Yes, chia, the seeds for the stuff that grows on chia pets.

It pays to be skeptical of these claims (and the great blog Science of Running can help you with that). People always want a magic fix for things like this, and unfortunately most of it is nonsense being peddled by a profit motive - though there's nothing wrong with profit, unless you're B.S.-ing people about your product. And I wanted to try it out, so I decided to do a small and admittedly poorly-controlled study: I carried chia seeds with me, and started eating them an hour into my run. I did this five times, in flat to slightly-hilly runs, at temperatures ranging from 55 to 65 F. I could feel no difference in fatigue versus previous runs under the same conditions, and my times on the same routes were the same.

If you want more, then read this paper in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, which reported that chia seeds showed no statistical advantage over any other form of carb loading.