Sportscaster-John Hussey
The first weekend of the NCAA tournament was as surprising as ever, with Florida Gulf Coast’s sweet 16 appearance topping the list. FGCU put the largest dent into my bracket knocking out Georgetown, which eliminated a team from the finals for me, essentially ending what chance I had at a good score. Even though the game was a big upset, it wasn’t “entirely” a shock. Going into the tourney, I knew that FGCU had a win over Miami on their resume and Georgetown’s Princeton offense makes them susceptible to low scoring games, which makes them vulnerable. There is a ...
John Hussey and Vickie Kearn both work at Princeton University Press. John is the assistant sales director and national accounts manager and Vickie is the mathematics editor. We thought it would be fun to see how they filled out their March Madness brackets. The conversation that follows took place on March 20 at our PUP offices. To get things started, we asked a single question: How did you fill out your bracket?
Vickie: You may have figured out I am the math geek. After getting my math degree at the University of Richmond, I taught math for 8 years and then ...
In 2008, Davidson College seniors, Colin Stephenson and Neil Goodson, used math to fill in their bracket and ended up ranking in the 100th percentile at a rank position of 834 in ESPN’s Tournament Challenge. Read about their experience below.
Q: What class were you taking when you created your brackets? How did the idea of creating brackets with math algorithms arise?
Neil: The original research project came out of an elective course I took that focused on topics in operations research, which is an area of mathematics that focuses on the application of mathematics to solving complex problems in the real world problems. The class ...
Out of 6.5 million entries, the participants in the March Mathness group of the ESPN Tournament Challenge are doing very well. One third of our group is in the top 20%. Following are summaries from some of those in our group. They describe how they designed their brackets and how they are embracing the excitement of the tournament. The methods mentioned are described in the recently published Who’s #1? By Amy Langville and Carl Meyer.
More reports from our student teams: http://blog.press.princeton.edu/2012/03/23/more-from-our-leaderboard-students-describe-their-march-mathness-brackets/
Calley Anderson
Calley Anderson is a sophomore English Major with a Film and Media Studies Concentration at Davidson College. She is ...
Math editor, Vickie Kearn, interviews John Brenkus, host of ESPN’s Emmy Award–winning show Sport Science. You can follow John and his commentary throughout the tournament at http://twitter.com/sport_science
VK: We have 9 high school and college math classes across the US completing brackets for our March Mathness group on ESPN. They are all using different algorithms to predict their winner. However, we all know that statistics aren’t everything. What are some of the factors that are important to a team’s performance in the tournament from a sport science perspective? What are some of the key things that will make the difference between ...
The Davidson Wildcats beat Western Carolina 93-91 in the Southern Conference Tournament on March 5 and received an automatic bid to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. The following interview between Vickie Kearn (VK), Princeton’s math editor and Men’s Basketball coach, Bob McKillop (Coach), reveals what lies ahead for them in March Madness and how getting a high ranking after the tournament helps in recruiting new players.
Vickie Kearn: Congratulations on winning the Southern Conference Championship. It was a fantastic finish. What is the pressure like having to win in double overtime?
Coach McKillop: The experience of what we just did is draining ...
Inside Science Television spoke with Tim Chartier about how math can be used to predict the winners of March Mathness. They also provide additional resources for those who wish to learn more or teach this in their classrooms.
Tim notes in the interview that: “To do well in bracketology, you need to know how teams will do earlier. It’s often those teams that are very difficult to predict and those games that often our methods are picking up.”
He also reveals that, using data available at the time of the interview, his methods currently predict Kentucky will be the winner. Does that ...
On March 24 we posted some bold predictions on who would win the NCAA basketball championship game. We now have a winner and send our congratulations to Kelly Davis.
Vickie Kearn: My bold pick was Duke based on a little math, past performance, and the luck factor. The one thing missing from my equation was the upset factor and I will be sure to add that next year.
The winner of the ESPN bracket challenge is Joe Pearlman who filled out his bracket in 10 minutes and based his picks on a hunch. Out of 5.9 million entries, he is only one ...
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