The Old New Thing

Highly scientific - The Old New Thing

Raymond's highly scientific predictions for the 2014 NCAA men's basketball tournament

March 18, 2014 Mar 18, 2014 03/18/14
Raymond Chen
Once again, it's time for Raymond to come up with an absurd, arbitrary criterion for filling out his NCAA bracket. This year, I look at the number of followers of of the basketball team's official Twitter account, or one tenth of the number of followers of the school's athletic department if the school's basketball team does not have its ...

Raymond’s highly scientific predictions for the 2013 NCAA men’s basketball tournament

March 19, 2013 Mar 19, 2013 03/19/13
Raymond Chen
Once again, it's time for Raymond to come up with an absurd, arbitrary criterion for filling out his NCAA bracket. This year, I look at the number of fans of the basketball team's official Facebook page, or one tenth of the number of fans of the school's athletic department, whichever is greater. The fraction 1/10 is completely arbitrary...

Raymond's highly scientific predictions for the 2011 NCAA men's basketball tournament

March 15, 2011 Mar 15, 2011 03/15/11
Raymond Chen
Once again, it's time for Raymond to come up with an absurd, arbitrary criterion for filling out his NCAA bracket. This year, I look at the strength of the school's football team, on the theory that a school with a strong football team and a strong basketball team has clearly invested a lot in its athletics program. My ranking of football ...

Raymond's highly scientific predictions for the 2010 NCAA men's basketball tournament

March 16, 2010 Mar 16, 2010 03/16/10
Raymond Chen
Once again, it's time for Raymond to come up with an absurd, arbitrary criterion for filling out his NCAA bracket. This year, we go to the well-known dispute arbiter Google Fight. The criterion is the number of Google hits for the quoted phrase "%s basketball", divided by the school's seed. (I would have used Bing hits, except Bing's ...

Raymond’s highly scientific predictions for the 2009 NCAA men’s basketball tournament

March 18, 2009 Mar 18, 2009 03/18/09
Raymond Chen
Once again, it's time for Raymond to come up with an absurd, arbitrary criterion for filling out his NCAA bracket. This year, the criterion is the school's graduation rate for basketball players. Lower graduation rate wins. However, if the teams are seeded 11 or more positions apart, I'll give the win to the favorite (just to get rid of ...

Raymond's highly scientific predictions for the 2008 NCAA men's basketball tournament

March 21, 2008 Mar 21, 2008 03/21/08
Raymond Chen
It's that time again: Raymond comes up with an absurd, arbitrary criterion for filling out his NCAA bracket. This time, I studied all the games played in the NCAA men's basketball tournament since 1985 and computed how many of the games were won by the favorite and how many were upsets, broken down by the numerical difference between the ...

Raymond's highly scientific predictions for the 2007 NCAA men's basketball tournament

March 12, 2007 Mar 12, 2007 03/12/07
Raymond Chen
Every year, when it comes time to fill out my NCAA bracket, I choose an arbitrary criterion. You'd think this would take less work, but it actually takes more. My original plan was to rank teams based on how much they pay their head coaches, but it turns out that the salaries (and bonuses and perks) of the head coaches of school basketball ...

Raymond's highly scientific predictions for the 2006 NCAA men's basketball tournament

March 17, 2006 Mar 17, 2006 03/17/06
Raymond Chen
Methodology explained earlier. Update: Correct predictions are in green. Incorrect predictions are in red. (!) marks upsets correctly predicted. (*) marks upsets predicted but did not take place. (x) marks actual upsets not predicted. Dayton mini-bracket Monmouth (2003) Hampton Hampton (1978) Atlanta bracket Duke (2004...

Really, college athletics is about education (not)

March 16, 2006 Mar 16, 2006 03/16/06
Raymond Chen
Okay, somebody handed me a NCAA Men's Basketball Bracket to fill out. I don't know squat about college sports, so I decided that I would fill in the bracket based on the following simple principle: The school whose President (or Chancellor) has served longer will win the match-up. (Not counting the first-round games of the top five seeds in ...