Journal marclar's Journal: March Madness without the madness
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March Madness without the madness
April 8, 2008
After watching the Kansas Jayhawks push the game into overtime and then fight to win the men's NCAA basketball national championship last night, I scratched my head and wondered who would have picked Kansas to be the national champion at the beginning of the tournament. LRMC, that's who. LRMC (logistic regression/Markov chain) is a computer model for predicting the outcome of the NCAA tournament games that was developed by three engineering professors at Georgia Tech. Not only did LRMC correctly predict all four teams in this year's Final Four as well as the eventual winner of the tournament, over the past nine years it correctly identified 30 of the 36 Final Four teams, which was significantly more accurate than the AP poll of sportswriters and the ESPN/USA Today poll of coaches (23 correct predictions), the Ratings Percentage Index (21 correct picks), and even other computer models.
How does LRMC do it? The system is designed to use only basic scoreboard data, including which teams played, which team had home court advantage, and the margin of victory. It also uses the quality of each team's results and the strength of each team's schedule to rank teams. Using this system, LRMC also correctly identified several over-rated and under-rated teams as potential upsets.
LRMC is a great tool to use for picking brackets, but for me, the fun in the tournament isn't so much in being right with all my picks, but in the actual tournament play. One such example was in last night's title game, where I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat when Chalmers shot that clutch three-pointer with 2.1 seconds left on the clock to push the game into OT, which might prove to be one of the biggest shots in NCAA history. Although LRMC was correct in picking Kansas as the winner, it can't predict the drama and excitement of the tournament, without which it wouldn't quite be March Madness.
March Madness without the madness
April 8, 2008
After watching the Kansas Jayhawks push the game into overtime and then fight to win the men's NCAA basketball national championship last night, I scratched my head and wondered who would have picked Kansas to be the national champion at the beginning of the tournament. LRMC, that's who. LRMC (logistic regression/Markov chain) is a computer model for predicting the outcome of the NCAA tournament games that was developed by three engineering professors at Georgia Tech. Not only did LRMC correctly predict all four teams in this year's Final Four as well as the eventual winner of the tournament, over the past nine years it correctly identified 30 of the 36 Final Four teams, which was significantly more accurate than the AP poll of sportswriters and the ESPN/USA Today poll of coaches (23 correct predictions), the Ratings Percentage Index (21 correct picks), and even other computer models.
How does LRMC do it? The system is designed to use only basic scoreboard data, including which teams played, which team had home court advantage, and the margin of victory. It also uses the quality of each team's results and the strength of each team's schedule to rank teams. Using this system, LRMC also correctly identified several over-rated and under-rated teams as potential upsets.
LRMC is a great tool to use for picking brackets, but for me, the fun in the tournament isn't so much in being right with all my picks, but in the actual tournament play. One such example was in last night's title game, where I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat when Chalmers shot that clutch three-pointer with 2.1 seconds left on the clock to push the game into OT, which might prove to be one of the biggest shots in NCAA history. Although LRMC was correct in picking Kansas as the winner, it can't predict the drama and excitement of the tournament, without which it wouldn't quite be March Madness.
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March Madness without the madness
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