Pessimism is a Winning Proposition

I won a 50/50 draw at the office this week! We had a guy running the New York marathon to fund raise for a charity in Africa. He organized a bunch of fundraising activities, such as mini putt, paper airplane competitions, and pizza days, and this draw was one of these activities. The objective was to guess his time, each guess was $1 with the winner getting half and the charity getting the other half.

Apparently he runs marathons frequently and he planned on doing a 4 hours 15 minutes. Me, being the pessimistic type, figured he would get a cramp or something. So I guessed 4 hours, 42 minutes, and 36 seconds. I was actually 26 seconds too optimistic, with our man running it in 4 hours, 43 minutes, 2 seconds.

Hooray for the powers of pessimism!

(ok, the prize wasn't all that it was cracked up to be - only $19 - but I generally don't win anything, so this is a huge deal for me.)