The 2023 Academy Awards broadcast is Mar. 12, and if an Upper Dublin, Montgomery County, native stays true to his formulas, he’ll have every office Oscar pool beaten. Alicia Vitarelli focused in on him for 6ABC.

Ben Zauzmer designed a method to predict the big winners, calling his book on the topic Oscarmetrics: The Math Behind The Biggest Night in Hollywood.

“I’ve always been an Oscars fan and I’d always been a math guy,” Zauzmer said. He watches all the movies, but notes that it’s all about the numbers.

The Montco resident started his Oscarmetrics study at Harvard University, beginning with his freshman year to use his math skills to predict the Oscar winners.

In the past 10 years, the movies he chooses pan out as Oscar winners. Feeling don’t come into play, it’s all about the math.

“Whichever nominee the model identifies as having the highest percentage chance to win, won 77 percent of the time,” he said.

He did especially well in 2021.

“Personally, my favorite is Promising Young Woman, which I think is was a spectacular movie and social commentary,” Zauzmer said of that year’s race. “It’s looking more and more likely that the front runner is Nomadland. Daniel Kaluuya has won absolutely everything for Judas and the Black Messiah, so he is the strong front runner for Best Supporting Actor” (which he won).

His 2021 prediction for Best Picture was Nomadland, which he also got correct.

Currently, Zauzmer is the Director of Baseball Analytics for the New York Mets, putting his math skills to use there.

Read more about the 93rd Academy Awards and Ben Zauzmer’s predictions of that year’s Oscar winners at 6ABC.

Editor’s Note: This MONTCO Today post ran originally on Apr. 27, 2021; it has been updated for accuracy.

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