5-E CLASSROOM STEM ACTIVITY: BRACKETOLOGY AND MARCH MADNESS: PREDICTING THIS YEAR’S BRACKET

Dr. Candace Walkington, Assistant Professor of Mathematics EducationSouthern Methodist University

March Madness Bracket

20 WINTER 2015 // STEMJOBS.COM

COVER STORY // STATISTICS & ANALYTICS

HOW TO STATISTICALLY WIN YOUR MARCH MADNESS BRACKET

March Madness is a college basketball legendary time that takes over the national sports world from the second week of March into the first week of April. It is supported by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments. These tournaments determine the national champions of college basketball.

BY NICOLE RAYE

PREDICTING THE WINNER IS ALL IN THE MATH.

StatisticallyWin Your

How to

Odds of picking a perfect bracket:

approximately 9.2 quintillion to 1.

During March Madness, fans everywhere put to-gether their predictions on a bracket of the teams they expect to go all the way to the Sweet 16, the Final Four and eventually win the national championship. These brackets are fun and competitive and make for an even more entertaining March Madness.

Here at STEM Jobs, we know the importance that statistics plays in filling out your brackets. While guess-ing which team will win by which colors you like best or which mascot would beat the other is amusing, if you actually want to win, it all comes down to the stats.

We spoke to a stats expert from ESPN and he gave us the 411 on filling out our bracket this year, so keep reading if you want to blow away your friends with your awesome predictions and great skills this season.

Jeff Bennett is a Sr. Director II with ESPN’s Stats & Information Group. He oversees the Produc-tion Analytics Team and the Production Research Department.  The Analyt-ics Team developed Total QBR, an evaluation tool for NFL quarterbacks, and the Basketball Power Index, a team-rating system for men’s college basketball.  Bennett won four Sports Emmy Awards for his role as the lead researcher on ESPN’s SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight studio shows from 1996-2003. Prior to joining ESPN in 1994, Bennett graduated from Worcester Polytech-nic Institute in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics. 

22 WINTER 2015 // STEMJOBS.COM

HOW TO STATISTICALLY WIN YOUR MARCH MADNESS BRACKET

Stats-ketball shoes

Where’s your stats game at, bro?!

Here are some tips from Jeff himself:“When the bracket is released for Se-

lection Sunday on the 2nd or 3rd in March at 6 p.m., take a night to sleep on it. Fill in what you know like the easier teams that are a sure win but then give it a few hours to really think about your choices.

“Follow it closely, where teams are slotted surprises.

“Use a Basketball Power Index, which predicts team events and what the num-bers say about how they are seeded and who has a higher chance. You can find these online.

“Just because a team is seeded higher does not necessarily mean that it is the best team. Look at their stats by game points, such as how much they usually win by. If they are winning by a lot of points every time, that is a good indica-tion that they are going to go far.”

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Get a job at ESPN in Statistics & AnalysisThere are full-time and part-time jobs for seasonal college sports, and positions available in the Stats and Analysis Team at ESPN.

STATS ANALYST

This position includes scoring games, taking in data, ensuring all data is accurate and then seeding all of the teams. Gathering information about data and looking for good story lines in sta-tistics which can be broadcasted and shared on ESPN network-ing channels is also part of the job.

PRODUCTION RESEARCH

Takes info, such as quality of shots and where they get their points from, and puts it in context for the production team to broadcast.

Just because a team is seeded higher does not necessarily mean that it is the best team.

“Bennett also said to keep in mind that

not all four No. 1 seeds make the final four. Sometimes no teams that were seeded at one make it at all, like in 1979, but there’s usually a couple.

“I won’t go all top seeds in any round, I like to mix,” said Bennett. “Play safe in early rounds. I don’t predict upsets but sometimes you can tell when a team is just better at scoring, and that’s the team to go for.”

At ESPN, there are a lot of predictive systems to help seed teams that Ben-nett uses. However, it is all public data and can be found online. You can use the predictive systems or put the informa-tion together yourself and statistically analyze which are the best teams.

These are all things that you can learn from your statistics classes and then use toward your bracket, such as subjective evaluation for seeding. Seed-ed teams win more games than lose on average but it can be misleading with their win and loss records because it doesn’t take into consideration by how many points. It is definitely something to keep in mind when choosing teams.

“You have to look and see if they’re winning games by a lot. It most often carries forward and those teams do better,” said Bennett.

With 350 college basketball teams it can be hard to keep track of all of it, but if you love statistics there’s no reason you can’t put all your STEM knowledge to work for your bracket and impress your friends with STEM!

5-E CLASSROOM STEM ACTIVITY: BRACKETOLOGY AND MARCH MADNESSHere are some ideas for how high school teachers could use this story as a launching point for integrated STEM learning. Our activities follow the 5-E Learning Cycle Model, and the activity below is intended to last three to four 1-hour class periods (although portions of the activity could be used in shorter time periods).

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Pose the following questions: How are numbers used when playing sports? What sports statistics do you know about? Why are sports statistics useful? How are they used? What jobs do you think knowing about sports statistics would be important for?Have your class read the STEM JobsSM article “How to Statistically Win Your March Madness Bracket.”Pose the following questions: How many teams will be included in the NCAA tournament? What does it mean to get an automatic bid versus being “at large”? What are “seeds” in the NCAA Tournament? How do seeds differ from the s-curve rankings or “true seeds”? How is the s-curve used to keep each region balanced? What team statistics are used to assign seeds for the NCAA Tournament? What is a “bubble team?”(Note: see entertainment.howstuffworks.com/science-to-bracketology1.htm and ncaa.com/content/di-principles-and-procedures-selection) Have the class watch the following video: espn.go.com/video/clip?id=12314671 Ask students: What are the 4 statistics being discussed in the video? Which do you think is most important? Most informative? What mathematical procedures are used to calculate BPI and RPI?

Part 1: Engage

Your group is going to compete with other groups in the class by filling out a bracket for the March Madness games. Your group has two major tasks:

First, you much research relevant statistics (including BPI and RPI) for each of the 68 teams in order to fill out your bracket. Keep in mind the tips that you read about in the STEM Jobs SM article, and also feel free to do more research on strategies for filling out brackets. Be ready to defend your bracket choices to the class based on statistics. See espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/rpi/_/sort/RPI and espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/bpi.

Second, you must create a short bracketology “How To” PowerPoint to show to your classmates. The PowerPoint must:• Describe how RPI is calculated, and show the calculation carried out for a specific team. You do not need to use all games that team has played this season – use only their last 5-8 games. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rating_Percentage_Index.• Compare RPI to other measures like BPI and Strength of Schedule. You do not need to calculate these other measures, but you should discuss how they are different from RPI. See espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/7561413/bpi-college-basketball-power-index-explained.

Download copies of 2015’s fillable March Madness bracket after Selection Sunday from a site like printyourbrackets.com. Print copies for your students.Put the students in groups of 4, and then give each group the following task:

Part 2: Explore

1 STEMjobs.com Bracketology and March Madness: Predicting This Year’s Bracket

Have each group present their PowerPoint to the class, and then present their bracket.Questions to ask while students are presenting PowerPoint: Why use RPI/BPI instead of a simple win-loss ratio? What was hard to understand about the RPI calculation? What are some shortcomings of RPI? Why do you think RPI is so commonly used?Questions to ask while presenting bracket: How many games are played in the NCAA tournament, if we assume 64 teams? What sports statistics did you think were most important when you made your bracket? What if we compared two of the teams playing each other in your bracket using cbssports.com/collegebasketball/bracketology/team-comparison—what in this comparison did your group pay the most attention to?Pose the following issue to the class: How do you think our brackets should be scored? Should guessing one of the first-round winners correctly count the same amount as guessing the winner of the championship game correctly?Have students read the following article: aseaofblue.com/2014/3/6/5477590/scoring-your-tournament-brackets, and use class discussion to settle on a system for scoring their brackets.

Part 3: Explain

Part 4: Elaborate

Have students complete the following assignment prompt in their math journal:Conduct some research on your own about how numbers, statistics or probability calculations are used in a sport or activity that you are interested in. Describe some of the relevant statistics, how they are calculated and how they are useful to people interested in this sport or activity.

Part 5: Evaluate

Next Generation Science Standards:

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Ask students to come up with responses to the following scenarios in groups:a. How many different ways are there to select 68 teams for the NCAA tournament from the total of 350 teams? Note that the answer does not need to be fully worked out—it can be in factorial form. b. What would your chances be of getting a perfect bracket predicted in the NCAA tournament if there were only 4 teams in the bracket? Explain your answer.c. What are your chances of getting a perfect bracket predicted in the NCAA tournament for a bracket containing 64 teams? Explain your answer. Note that the answer does not need to be fully worked out—it can be in exponential form.d. Are these really the probabilities of getting a perfect bracket? What do these probabilities assume? How much do you estimate your chances would increase if you used knowledge of sports statistics to select your bracket?e. If everyone in U.S. filled out a bracket, and everyone used knowledge of sports statistics to do so, what do you estimate would be the probability of someone in the U.S. selecting a perfect bracket?Show students the following video which supplies the answers to the above: youtube.com/watch?v=O6Smkv11Mj4Ask students: What surprised you in the video? What do you still want to know about selecting brackets and probability?

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CCSS.Math.Content.HSN.Q.A.2. Define appropriate quantities for the purpose of descriptive modeling.

CCSS.Math.Content.HSS.IC.B.6. Evaluate reports based on data.

CCSS.Math.Content.HSS.MD.B.7. Analyze decisions and strategies using probability concepts.

Bracketology and March Madness: Predicting This Year’s Bracket