{"id":54,"date":"2016-03-17T16:36:31","date_gmt":"2016-03-17T16:36:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/?p=54"},"modified":"2022-01-18T11:30:31","modified_gmt":"2022-01-18T16:30:31","slug":"march-madness-or-march-mathness-to-pick-the-winning-bracket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/2016\/03\/17\/march-madness-or-march-mathness-to-pick-the-winning-bracket\/","title":{"rendered":"March Madness or March Mathness to pick the winning bracket"},"content":{"rendered":"

By now you’ve completed\u00a0your NCAA March Madness brackets. Did you know the odds of picking the perfect bracket are 1-in-9.2 quintillion<\/a>?\u00a0Yes, quintillion,<\/em> which means 18 zeros after the value.\u00a0On Monday, Forbes<\/a>\u00a0profiled three ways to pick a winning bracket. Two of the three ways outlined\u00a0in the article use MATLAB.<\/p>\n

#1) SmartBracket<\/strong><\/h2>\n

SmartBracket<\/a>, by Supported Intelligence<\/a>, doesn\u2019t target a perfect bracket. Instead, it aims to beat the others entered in your pool. And who doesn\u2019t want to win their pool?<\/p>\n

\u201cSmartBracket takes team popularity and team strength data as an input and uses the computing power of MATLAB and the Rapid Recursive Toolbox to evaluate all 9.2 quintillion NCAA Men\u2019s Division I Basketball Tournament bracket possibilities in less than a second. Then, it determines and provides the bracket that will give the user best statistical odds to win his or her NCAA Tournament pool.\u201d
\nNeal Anderson,\u00a0Lead Developer at Supported Intelligence, SmartBracket\u2019s parent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

SmartBracket is powered by the Rapid Recursive Toolbox<\/a> for MATLAB, which is part of MathWorks\u2019 Connections Program<\/a>. Supported Intelligence utilizes MATLAB Compiler<\/a> to make SmartBracket available on the web.<\/p>\n

#2) March Mathness<\/strong><\/h2>\n

March Mathness wasn\u2019t designed to help you win in your pool, but rather to find the perfect bracket, that 1-in-9.2 quintillion unicorn. The tool, created by math professor Dr. Tim Chartier at Davidson College<\/a>, teaches math and shows how modeling decisions shape bracket selections.<\/p>\n

Based on an accumulation of 14 years of college basketball data such as recent performance and winning streaks as an input, Chartier\u2019s model enables users to adjust input factors based upon their opinions and expectations to create their own bracket selections.<\/p>\n

The March Mathness tool is available here<\/a>. To see how MATLAB and March Madness are combined in the classroom, check out this presentation on Sports Ranking with MATLAB.<\/a><\/p>\n

#3) Pick your teams by the color of their uniform<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Ok, this doesn\u2019t sound like the most scientific method, but according to the Forbe\u2019s article:<\/p>\n

“Since 1939 blue has been the dominant team color of schools who have gone to the Final Four (44%), the Final Two (55%) and won the championship (55%).<\/a>“<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It beats a coin toss.\u00a0 But 5 of the 8 number\u00a01 and number\u00a02 seeds have blue uniforms.\u00a0 So I think I\u2019ll use math. While Warren Buffet and Quicken Loans haven\u2019t repeated their Billion Dollar Challenge since 2014, you still want to have the best bracket in your pool.\u00a0 Bragging rights are on the line!<\/p>\n

Let us know if you used math, or MATLAB, to pick your brackets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By now you’ve completed\u00a0your NCAA March Madness brackets. Did you know the odds of picking the perfect bracket are 1-in-9.2 quintillion?\u00a0Yes, quintillion, which means 18 zeros after the… read more >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3334,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions\/3334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}