Normally I do a long post on operations research and predicting the NCAA tournament. I did so in 2009, 2008, 2007 and even in 2006 (when I think I made blog entries with an IBM selectric typewriter). This year, I will cede the ground to Laura McLay of Punk Rock Operations Research, who has a very nice series of OR related entries on the NCAA tournament (like this post and the ones just previous to it). I’d rather read her work than write my own posts.
That said, perhaps just a comment or two on Joel Sokol (and his team)’s LRMC picks, as covered in the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Joel’s ranking (LRMC stands for Logistic Regression Markov Chain) can be used to predict winners. They have a page for their tournament picks. Some notable predictions:
1) Their final 4 consists of 3 number 1’s (Kansas, Syracuse, and Duke) and one number 2 (West Virginia). The remaining number 1 is Kentucky, ranked only number 9 overall by LRMC.
2) Kansas beating Duke is the predicted final game.
3) 7th seeded BYU is ranked 4th overall, so makes the Elite Eight until knocked off by Syracuse (3).
4) 12th seeded Utah State is predicted to beat 5th seeded Texas A&M and 4th seeded Purdue.
5) 13th seeded Murray State over 4th seeded Vanderbilt is the biggest predicted first round upset.
Let’s see how things turn out.
It looks like LRMC corrected picked both the ODU and Murray State upsets. That is impressive! We’ll have to see what happens with the Utah State game.