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Activity Number: 272
Type: Contributed
Date/Time: Tuesday, August 4, 2009 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Sports
Abstract - #303964
Title: An Equitable Scoring System for March Madness Pools
Author(s): Ted A. Gooley*+ and Barry E. Storer
Companies: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Address: 1100 Fairview Ave. N., Seattle, WA, 98109,
Keywords: March Madness ; pools ; scoring systems
Abstract:

Every March, basketball fans and non-fans alike take part in office pools related to the NCAA basketball tournament, many of which involve picking winners in each of the 63 games played over 6 rounds. Such pools involve point systems for correct picks, often with the number of points constant within, and increasing with each, round. Little or no theory accompanies these systems, and some invite strategizing unrelated to basketball acumen; for example, picking only higher seeded teams to advance. With data from the 1985-2008 tournaments, we used logistic regression to devise a point system based solely on the estimated probability of a team with a particular seed winning a game in a particular round, thereby rewarding correctly picked upsets. We show how we estimate these probabilities and apply them to a pool for the 2009 tournament, comparing results to more common point systems.

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