March Madness is here and data scientists from the University of Illinois have their own tips for filling out your NCAA Tournament bracket.
They say by picking the top-seeded team from each region as the Final Four contestants and working backwards from there, you’ll have a higher bracket score on average than by first picking the winners of the first-round games and continuing in order.
If you’re submitting multiple brackets to boost your chances at winning March Madness prizes, starting with the Final Four is still a good strategy; but you should also diversify your brackets as much as possible to maximize your chances.
“If you can only pick one bracket, then leaning heavily on the tops seeds makes sense.
“However, all bracket challenges allow you to submit multiple entries. A person does not need all of their brackets to score well; just one will do.”
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There are more than 9 quintillion possible bracket combinations. Picking a perfect bracket, with all 63 games correct is extremely unlikely, even when submitting multiple brackets. The new approach is a way of reducing the number of games you’ll have to take a guess on, helping your odds because the top seeds are more likely to reach the Final Four than any other teams, statistically.
“Once you pick a set of Final Four teams, 12 additional game outcomes become fixed, effectively reducing the number of games that you must pick”. The “research suggests that anything that can be done to reduce the uncertainty in your picks, while simultaneously expanding the diversity of your pool, will give you a step up in having a good scoring bracket amongst your set of brackets.”
