March 17, 2015

Bracketology 101 from the UW's resident bracketologist.

5 points of advice from Laura McLay, associate professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Excerpt:
2. Instead of records, use sophisticated ranking tools. The seeding committee uses some of these ranking tools to select the seeds, so the seeds themselves reflect strength of schedule and implicitly rank teams. But some ranking methods are better than others. I like the LRMC (Logistic Regression/Markov Chain) method from some of my colleagues at Georgia Tech. The RPI (Rating Percentage Index) is a really bad ranking method.
Okay. Whatever that means! I can barely tolerate basketball, the indoor game with unusually large people — men in silky skorts — in a cramped, squeaky place. But: Wisconsin! So I looked at the NYT interactive tool, and I made it so Wisconsin plays Michigan State in final game. I used some sophisticated ranking tools to make that happen.

37 comments:

David said...

"Root, root, root for the home team . . . ."

Nothing wrong with that.

David said...

But, Michigan State?

rhhardin said...

I learned, in various varsity sports activities throughout school, not to give a shit.

It's easy to be a gentleman then.

I called opponents' hits in fencing.

Meade said...

They're not so large as much as they are long.

Laslo Spatula said...

"...in a cramped, squeaky place."

Althouse is trying to coax me into an anal sex joke.

I'm not falling for it.


Also: I find women's basketball ungainly.


I am Laslo.

Laslo Spatula said...

"They're not so large as much as they are long."

Now Meade is trying to coax me into a penis joke.

I see your plan.

I am Laslo.

Meade said...

If your pick -- UW over MSU -- comes true, I'll lose my pool. But I'll be a happy pool loser.

Meade said...

So... GO BADGERS!!!

chickelit said...

All in the hippie pool!

Laslo Spatula said...

So Scarlett Johannson and I are sitting naked in bed -- we do that alot -- filling out the college brackets, when she says:

"I'm picking my winners by how pretty their team colors are. Does that make me a silly girl?"

I said: "I bet that has as good a chance as any."

"Oh, Laslo, you always make me feel good about myself."

"You have a lot to feel good about."

She smiled in that coquettish way she has, and then I filled HER 'bracket'.

Little moments.


I am Laslo.

Curious George said...

I don't do the brackets for the same reason I don't play fantasy football or do square pools...I simply want to enjoy the game.

Some of the most entertaining games in the tourney are the upsets...and having the underdog as the loser in your brackets makes it hard to cheer them on.

CWJ said...

"(Logistic Regression/Markov Chain)"

This brings back memories of grad school, most of them good.

Fair is fair. Many of the legal terms that people use on this blog leave me thinking whatever that means.

madAsHell said...

I want to see Obama's bracket, and then I'll know which teams to avoid.

Laslo Spatula said...

Logistic Regression/Markov Chain: I saw them open for The Jesus and Mary Chain. Back in the day.

rehajm said...

I used to study over the brackets for hours but I stopped several years ago and spend 5-10 minutes using the Poologic Calculator which uses versions of LRMC. If you play in a pool that rewards bonus points for upsets you end up selecting many crazy upsets, but it seems to work out in the end. I've won handily and somehow always manage to go deep into the tourney. Like guaranteeing a B+/A- without studying...

Laslo Spatula said...

So when Scarlett Johannson and I are sitting naked in bed -- we do that alot -- I can't help but keep looking at her breasts. Breasts breasts breasts: sitting up, laying on her back, laying on her side: each moment they are different and the same.

I should probably take photographs.


I am Laslo.

Laslo Spatula said...

"each moment they are different and the same."

This also applies to Scarlett's luscious ass.

Again: photographs.


I am Laslo.

BarrySanders20 said...

Academics taking the fun out of March Madness. A pity.

They focus on picking the perfect bracket. That would be a very lucky feat, but it's not what most people are expecting when they compete brackets. They are competing against other error-prone humans, none of whom will have picked a perfect bracket. You are looking to beat the competition, not meet some standard of perfection. For example, if you pick a one seed to lose the third game, and they actually lose the second game, you are still way ahead of the game relative to your competition because many others will have taken that one seed much further than you. Does this mean you made a bad pick? Only if your standard is perfection.

Also, picks are not completely random. You can advance the 1-4 seeds through the first games with pretty high confidence, and move two or three one seeds through to the final four. Your odds of perfection are still astronomical, but its not 1 in 9.2 billion.

Freeman Hunt said...

in a cramped, squeaky place

This. All those squeaks.

garage mahal said...

The time of year when Republicans don their Badger wear proudly.....of the university and city they would like to see destroyed. On Wisconsin!

BarrySanders20 said...

I wonder what Lazlo's 64 item bracket would look like. Breasts and ass would have to be in the final four.

garage mahal said...

Does anyone know when Marquette plays?

traditionalguy said...

Laslo will not know the score since he will be busy judging the Cheerleader's talents instead of watching seven foot tall men dance a ballet with a ball.

traditionalguy said...

I bet the front running Gov.rides his Harley to the tournament and sits in the cheap seats with common men.

Curious George said...

"garage mahal said...
Does anyone know when Marquette plays?"

Doee anyone remember the score of the Big 10 football championship game?

Ann Althouse said...

"The time of year when Republicans don their Badger wear proudly.....of the university and city they would like to see destroyed. On Wisconsin!"

Oh, you know damned well the lefties would abolish college sports if they could.

Meade said...

Garage's bitter brain has settled into a cramped, squeaky place.

rhhardin said...

Derbyshire cites the new university president's promise to create an academic program that the football team can be proud of.

Jake said...

"Also, picks are not completely random. You can advance the 1-4 seeds through the first games with pretty high confidence, and move two or three one seeds through to the final four. Your odds of perfection are still astronomical, but its not 1 in 9.2 billion."

You're right, however, in the wrong way. The odds are much much worse than 1 in 9.2 billion to pick a perfect bracket. More like 1 in 9.2 quintillion.

garage mahal said...

Oh, you know damned well the lefties would abolish college sports if they could.

Lefties have had well over 100 years to eliminate sports at the UW. Have they tried?

Rocketeer said...

I made it so Wisconsin plays Michigan State in final game

You misspelled "Kentucky," at least once and maybe twice.

MountainMan said...

I am an Industrial Engineering graduate of Georgia Tech (BIE, 1973, MSIE, 1974). Last year we had Dr. Joel Sokol, a professor who runs the analytics program there, come to speak to our alumni group here in TN on the development of the LRMC model. It is really pretty impressive. He showed data going back 10 years or so at how it had accurately predicted the final 4 something like 8 or 9 of the 10 years. He uses grad students to help update the model each season, gathering up data on all games played, just the teams, final score, and where the game was played, I think. While conventional wisdom has always been that winning on the road is a significant predictor of success he showed that success on your home court was actually more important. You can go to the web page for the LRMC model and see the current rankings here:
http://lrmc.isye.gatech.edu

MadisonMan said...

Does anyone know when Marquette plays?

That's just mean. But I'll answer:

Sometime in March 2018?

President-Mom-Jeans said...

For someone who barely graduated high school and did not even make it to a 4th tier community clown college, Bitchtits sure fancies himself an expert on higher education.

Interesting.

David said...

Garage, check" Merle Curti, History of University of Wisconsin" and read the chapter on athletics for the attempt by the faculty to abolish football at UW. They almost pulled it off.


Kirk Parker said...

Althouse,

" the indoor game with unusually large people ... in a cramped, squeaky place."

Brownian motion is my favorite analogy here.

Drago said...

garage: "Lefties have had well over 100 years to eliminate sports at the UW. Have they tried?"

Lefties have been fabulously successful at shuttering hundreds of mens university sports programs over more than 30 years via Title IX proportionality requirements.

But hey, why worry about that?

Much better to pretend it never happened.

Of course, the lefties don't spend any time saying crazy things like more women are beaten up by men on Super Bowl Sunday or anything.

On Wisconsin!....unless some dude is going to "badger-beat" his girl friend.

Let's all hope not.