My March Madness Bracket 2015
I’m just okay at picking basketball brackets. I usually finish somewhere in the upper third of the pack, IIRC.
However, it’s interesting to enter a bracket and watch the results come in (I almost never watch the games), so I usually make a bracket.
This year, I decided to use Coder’s Bracket to create my bracket.
If you haven’t already seen Coder’s Bracket, you should take a look. Basically,
you algorithmically generate your bracket using JavaScript. However, setting
that up manually is a lot of work. Fortunately, Coder’s Bracket has already done
that for you. You provide a function taking three object parameters (game,
team1, team2) that will call team1.winsGame() or team2.winsGame()
depending on what you determine. You start with a simple seed-rules algorithm
and work from there.
My algorithm runs basically like this:
-
If it’s round 1 and the seed is greater than 5, it wins.
-
If it’s round 2 and the seed is greater than 2, it wins.
-
Otherwise, compute my extremely not scientific score for each team and the higher score wins.
My scoring algorithm takes into account strength of schedule (RPI), Field Goal %, Free Throw %, 3’s %, and Missed 3’s. I weight the values to make my bracket interesting (probably at the cost of correctness…).
There are probably a million and a half (exactly) problems with this algorithm, but it was fun to create.
You can see my bracket on Coder’s Bracket’s website.
I’ve included my algorithm below.
function(game, team1, team2){
// Seeds 5 and better don't lose in the first round
if (game.round == 5) {
if (team1.seed >= 5 || team2.seed >= 5) {
if (team1.seed > team2.seed) {
team2.winsGame();
} else {
team1.winsGame();
}
}
}
// Seeds 2 and better don't lose in the second round
if (game.round == 4) {
if (team1.seed >= 3 || team2.seed >= 3) {
if (team1.seed > team2.seed) {
team2.winsGame();
} else {
team1.winsGame();
}
}
}
// Everyone else goes through my TOTALLY SCIENTIFIC scoring algorithm
if (calcScore(team1) > calcScore(team2)) {
team1.winsGame();
} else {
team2.winsGame();
}
// Scoring algorithm
// Mostly objective, but I tweaked the weights to make my bracket interesting
// I'm using the RPI, apparently a ranking of schedule difficulty to make win percentage be somewhat fair.
// It's divided by two to lessen it's impact
//
// The numbers on the far side are the weights for each item
function calcScore(team) {
var myScore = 0;
myScore += team.rpi/2 * team.win_pct * 10; // Winning percentage
myScore += team.rpi/2 * team.field_goal_pct * 7; // Field Goal percentage
myScore += team.rpi/2 * team.free_throw_pct * 4; // Free Throw percentage
myScore += team.rpi/2 * team.three_point_pct * 5; // 3's percentage
// Penalty for missing 3's. About 10 per game on average, so I divided by 20 to lessen the impact.
myScore -= team.rpi/2 * (team.threes_attempted - team.threes_made)/20 * 3;
return myScore;
}
}