Linsanity

Said a point guard who went un-recruited
By coaches who found him ill-suited:
"It's hard to surprise
Those skeptical guys
Like my really great Garden debut did."

By now, people all around the world have heard the amazing, come-from-nowhere story of the New York Knicks' Jeremy Lin; the Taiwanese-American pride of Palo Alto California, where he led the town's high school team to a state basketball championship. Considered too small for the big-time colleges, Lin ended up at Harvard, where he set Ivy League records. Passed up in the NBA draft, Lin sat on the bench for the Houston Rockets and the Golden State Warriors before being cut. Once on the Knicks, Lin got his chance when two of the teams regulars couldn't play; the rest is NBA record-setting history. This still-unfolding story has many meanings, one of which is that, in sports as well as investments, we overestimate our ability to predict winners based on simple formulas and models.