Friday, March 17, 2006
Bracketology - First Day Results
ESPN.com has a place to enter your brackets for a shot at $10000. Well, after day 1, my 5 Entries have had mixed results. Actually, I have done well in all of them except one. I used different strategies for each one, and named them.
Gut Instinct - Self explanatory, I think. I essentially picked teams that I felt would do well, based on what I knew about them, or what state they were in. I was clueless on that Minneapolis bracket, but I did call the Milwaukee upset over Oklahoma. I'm saying Duke beats UConn in the championship.
Kitty - This is the strangest bracket I did. I did it though, because last year, my cat picked Vermont in that upset. Basically I hold out two fingers, and the one she goes towards is the one I pick. She went 11 for 16 on the first day. Unfortunately, she picked Syracuse to win the tournament, and Syracuse got eliminated tonight.
The Crazy One - George Mason University wins it all. Basically a parallel universe in which this happens. I did this because I get 5 entries, and I should be loyal to my school. Still, it's done 11 for 16.
Moneyball - I'm a Dodger fan, so this title should haunt me, but it's my best one so far, at 12 for 16. Basically, I made the assumption that having an even point spread among starters is a good plan, because that way you have plenty of strengths and options. I did think it was important if your leading scorer could put out a lot, though. So I took the scoring averages for the starters from MSNBC.com and made up the formula
PPG, of course, means points per game. What I really like about this statistic is that it favors George Mason heavily. In fact, it carried the Patriots to the final four. Once I got to the Final Four, though, I decided that Moneyball never wins championships in real life. So I made my picks based on states' electoral votes, giving Texas the win.
Virtual Coin Flip - This was out of laziness. First, I was too lazy to do another research bracket, so I figured I'd flip a coin. Then, I was too lazy to flip a coin that many times. So I just had a calculater give me a random binomial sample, and I determined the winner from there. ESPN.com was congested when I was submitting this, and I figured I must have picked some awful teams and was being rejected, so I changed some of them while I was waiting for it to submit. I ended up with UConn winning this one. Go figure. This has done the worst, at 7 for 16.
So those are my results. I use the gut instinct one in a pool with my roommates, and I have an early lead. Time will tell if it holds.
Gut Instinct - Self explanatory, I think. I essentially picked teams that I felt would do well, based on what I knew about them, or what state they were in. I was clueless on that Minneapolis bracket, but I did call the Milwaukee upset over Oklahoma. I'm saying Duke beats UConn in the championship.
Kitty - This is the strangest bracket I did. I did it though, because last year, my cat picked Vermont in that upset. Basically I hold out two fingers, and the one she goes towards is the one I pick. She went 11 for 16 on the first day. Unfortunately, she picked Syracuse to win the tournament, and Syracuse got eliminated tonight.
The Crazy One - George Mason University wins it all. Basically a parallel universe in which this happens. I did this because I get 5 entries, and I should be loyal to my school. Still, it's done 11 for 16.
Moneyball - I'm a Dodger fan, so this title should haunt me, but it's my best one so far, at 12 for 16. Basically, I made the assumption that having an even point spread among starters is a good plan, because that way you have plenty of strengths and options. I did think it was important if your leading scorer could put out a lot, though. So I took the scoring averages for the starters from MSNBC.com and made up the formula
((#number of starters with over 10 PPG) + (highest PPG of a starter))
(standard deviation of starters' PPG)
PPG, of course, means points per game. What I really like about this statistic is that it favors George Mason heavily. In fact, it carried the Patriots to the final four. Once I got to the Final Four, though, I decided that Moneyball never wins championships in real life. So I made my picks based on states' electoral votes, giving Texas the win.
Virtual Coin Flip - This was out of laziness. First, I was too lazy to do another research bracket, so I figured I'd flip a coin. Then, I was too lazy to flip a coin that many times. So I just had a calculater give me a random binomial sample, and I determined the winner from there. ESPN.com was congested when I was submitting this, and I figured I must have picked some awful teams and was being rejected, so I changed some of them while I was waiting for it to submit. I ended up with UConn winning this one. Go figure. This has done the worst, at 7 for 16.
So those are my results. I use the gut instinct one in a pool with my roommates, and I have an early lead. Time will tell if it holds.
Labels: NCAA Brackets
# posted by StolenMonkey86 @ 1:47 AM 
