I originally made this plot for the 2012 Stat Geek Idol contest run by Team Rankings, and they are still cool. The original article describing them can be found here. Below I’ve updated the plots for games through March 19th. (For games that haven’t been played yet this year, I’ve assumed the higher seed wins for the sake of the plot.)
Cheers.
Cheers.
In 2010 CBS signed a deal with the NCAA for the rights to broadcast the NCAA tournament for 14 seasons from 2011-2024. According to the NCAA, the deal is worth 10.8 BILLION dollars.
Let’s do some fun quick math, shall we:
There are 347 NCAA division 1 NCAA basketball teams and they each offer 13 scholarships. That’s a total of 4,511 spots. If you paid every single one of these players $50,000 per year, that would cost about 225 million dollars ($225,550,000). Let’s assume salaries go up 3 percent a year for inflations, which would mean that in 2024 you are paying players around $73K per year. The grand total over 14 years for this plan would cost about 3.8 BILLION dollars ($3,853,820,415). That’s a ton of money. BUT it’s dwarfed by how much money this deal is worth. If you took this money out of this deal to pay the players, you’d still have almost $7 BILLION left over ($6,946,179,585). And keep in mind, this is just for the tournament. That’s 67 games over three weeks in march. There is more money than this for regular season TV contracts not to mention the money schools make for selling tickets and merchandise. Merchandise, some of which, has players’ names on it!!!! The school can make money off of a player’s name, but the player can’t! (Well the player can, he just then can’t play in the NCAA). Think about that. Screw you NCAA. Screw you.
The NCAA is a cartel that makes billions of dollars off of the back of labor that has absolutely no representation. I don’t know why as a society we put up with this. In literally every other area of life, if you are good enough at something to get paid for it, someone can pay you for it. The exception is sports. Why do we value amateurism in sports? I have no idea. But I’ll continue to call out the hypocrisy of the NCAA until they pay the players who actually make this stuff worth watching. Coaches get to negotiate a salary and can come and go as they please. Hell, some coaches get huge contract buy out to NOT COACH. But players have basically no rights. So until the NCAA changes it’s ways, I hope they get sued from every direction until they have no choice but to pay the players.
Cheers.
After 48 games we are in 97th place in this year’s March Machine Learning Madness. I’m going to guess that we finish in 45th. 
Cheers.
In 82nd after 32 games. In 101st after 40 games. Not a great day for us. Need something big tomorrow to get within striking distance. I’m guessing we will finish in the top 50, but it looks like our lucky run of three top 4 finishes in a row is pretty much over.
Here are our predicted probabilities for Sunday’s games (with ridiculous precision):
Cheers.
@statsbylopez and I finished the first day of March Machine Learning Madness in 140th. After 32 games we are currently in 82nd.
Here are our predicted probabilities for today’s games (with ridiculous precision):
Cheers.
Here is my bracket based entirely on my rankings using betting market data:
Nothing too interesting here. I’ve got all of the higher seeds winning all the games except for two first round upsets. I like Oklahoma State over Michigan and Rhode Island over Creighton.
SouthI’ve got three first round upsets in this bracket, the 9, 10 and 11 seeds. That’s Seton Hall over Arkansas in one of the worst games of the first round, Kansas State over Cincinnati (if Wake Forest had beaten Kansas State I would have picked Wake Forest here; I really don’t like Cincinnati), and Wichita State over Dayton. Wichita State being a 10 seed is the most head scratching seeding of the tournament in my mind. They probably won’t be favored over Kentucky in the second round, but I’d guess that Kentucky won’t be favored by much more than 3 or 4 (Contrast that with North Carolina who would be favored over Seton Hall by about 12 or 13 points).
I’ve also got UCLA getting to the Elite 8 in this region over Kentucky, with North Carolina coming out of this bracket.
WestThis is the most boring region in my bracket. Straight chalk the whole way with only Florida State with a small upset over Arizona. The Northwestern-Vanderbilt game features teams that have a combined 26 losses on the season with FIFTEEN of those belonging to Vanderbilt.
EastAnother pretty boring region. I’ve got no upsets in the first round here and the only small upset I have is Virginia over Florida to make it to the Sweet Sixteen. I’ve got Villanova coming out of this region triumphing over Duke.
I have Villanova over Gonzaga by 1 point to make it back to the finals and I have North Carolina, also getting back to the finals, over Kansas by 3.5 points.
I think North Carolina gets back to the championship game, but this year they pull it off.
I’ll be posting some more brackets later tonight if I have time.
Cheers.
If I chose the NCAA Tournament, here is what the field would look like:
(*automatic qualifier)
Actual Tournament Qualifiers
1 seeds: North Carolina, Villanova*, Gonzaga*, Duke*
2 seeds:Kansas, UCLA, Kentucky*, Louisville
3 seeds: Virginia, West Virginia, Oregon, Florida St.
4 seeds: Baylor, Wisconsin, Arizona*, Purdue
5 seeds: Florida, Wichita St.*, Notre Dame, Butler
6 seeds: Miami (FL), St. Mary’s (CA), Oklahoma St., Dayton
7 seeds: Michigan*, Iowa St., VCU, Rhode Island*
8 seeds: Clemson, Kansas St., SMU*, South Carolina
9 seeds: Wake Forest, Texas Tech, Creighton, Syracuse
10 seeds: Cincinnati, Utah, Marquette, New Mexico St.*
11 seeds: Maryland, Minnesota, USC,California/Seton Hall
12 seeds:UNC Wilmington*,TCU/Michigan St, MTSU*, Nevada*
13 seeds: Bucknell*, Princeton*, Vermont*, ETSU*
14 seeds: Winthrop*, UC Davis*, Iona*, Kent St.*
15 seeds: N Kentucky*, Troy*, NC Central*, North Dakota*
16 seeds: Texas Southern*, Jacksonville St.*, South Dakota St.*/Florida Gulf Coast*, Mount St. Mary’s*/New Orleans*
Well the brackets are out and I just finished filling my first one out. Tomorrow and Tuesday I’ll work on my models for March Machine Learning Mania 2017.
Here are some of my initial thoughts:
More to come tomorrow.
Cheers.
How does Matt Ryan sleep at night?
As in the moments following the 2016 US election, win probabilities took center stage in public discourse after New England’s comeback victory in the Super Bowl over Atlanta.
Unfortunately, not everyone was enamored.
While it’s tempting to deride conclusions like Pete’s, it’s also too easy of a way out. And, to be honest, I share a small piece of his frustration, because there’s a lingering secret behind win probability models:
Essentially, they’re all wrong.
But win probabilities models can still be useful.
To examine more deeply, I’ll compare 6 independently created win probability models using projections from Super Bowl 51. Lessons learned can help us better understand how these models operate. Additionally, I’ll provide one example of how to check a win probability model’s accuracy, and share some guidelines for how we should better disseminate win probability information.
So, what…
View original post 1,992 more words
Conference Champ (Actual or predicted) – BOLD
1 seeds: N. Carolina (ACC), Gonzaga (WCC), Villanova (Big East), Kansas (Big 12)
2 seeds: Kentucky (SEC), Duke, West Virginia, UCLA (Pac-12)
3 seeds: Louisville, Virginia, Oregon, Florida St.
4 seeds: Wisconsin (Big Ten), Baylor, Florida, Arizona
5 seeds: Purdue, Wichita St. (MVC), Butler, Notre Dame
6 seeds: Dayton (Atlantic 10), Oklahoma St., St. Mary’s (CA), Miami (FL)
7 seed: Iowa St., VCU, Michigan, SMU (AAC),
8 seeds: Rhode Island, Kansas St., S. Carolina, Clemson
9 seeds: Cincinnati, Texas Tech, Creighton, Marquette
10 seeds: Syracuse, Utah, California, Maryland, Wake Forest
11 seeds: Minnesota, TCU, Xavier, USC, UNC Wilmington (CAA), Michigan St
12 seeds: Seton Hall, MTSU (C-USA), Nevada (MWC), UC Irvine (Big West)
13 seeds: CSU Bakersfield (WAC), Bucknell (Patriot), Vermont (America East), Akron (Mid-America)
14 seeds: Princeton (Ivy), ETSU (Southern), Iona (MAAC), Winthrop (Big South)
15 seeds: Mount St. Mary’s (Northeast) , Texas Southern (SWAC), North Dakota (Big Sky), FGCU (Atlantic Sun)
16 seeds: NC Central (MEAC), N. Kentucky (Horizon), New Orleans (Southland), South Dakota State (Summit), UT Arlington (Sun Belt), Jacksonville St. (OVC)
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Last Four in: Seton Hall, USC, Xavier, TCU
First four out: Northwestern, Indiana, St. Bonaventure, Virginia Tech
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