There’s been plenty of confusion surrounding the decisions that the NCAA Tournament selection committee made for this year’s bracket. Accusations of underseeding and overseeding abound. But do the numbers bear it all out? In this video, Neil Paine and Reuben Fischer-Baum dig deep into FiveThirtyEight’s March Madness predictions to uncover the most head-scratching seedings, including […]
A 13-year-old in Illinois. A 47-year-old English woman. A 70-year-old Vegas oddsmaker. At first blush, there isn’t much linking them. But last year, all three were among the most successful March Madness prognosticators. That’s where the similarities end. With methods ranging from gut instinct to computational learning theory, these three characters demonstrate just how wide […]
A 13-year-old in Illinois. A 47-year-old English woman. A 70-year-old Vegas oddsmaker. At first blush, there isn’t much linking them. But last year, all three were among the most successful March Madness prognosticators. That’s where the similarities end. With methods ranging from gut instinct to computational learning theory, these three characters demonstrate just how wide […]
A year ago, it seemed like the NCAA Tournament’s era of parity was under attack. Kentucky had just wrapped up an undefeated regular season and was looking so powerful that the FiveThirtyEight model assigned the Wildcats a 41 percent probability of winning the tourney before it even began. (By comparison, most pre-tournament favorites of recent […]
A year ago, it seemed like the NCAA Tournament’s era of parity was under attack. Kentucky had just wrapped up an undefeated regular season and was looking so powerful that the FiveThirtyEight model assigned the Wildcats a 41 percent probability of winning the tourney before it even began. (By comparison, most pre-tournament favorites of recent […]
