So I wrote a blog post about my process of creating my March Madness bracket last year, so I figure this year I’ll revisit it and explain what I changed. (Note: I know this post is actually after March Madness started… but I’ve been busy. I did actually create the bracket before the games began.)
I used Coder’s Bracket again for a couple reasons. First, it was pretty cool last year, and I wanted to try it again. The second was that I was really busy all week at Big Break with Cru, and I didn’t have much extra time to fill out a bracket, so just slightly modifying last year’s algorithm was really easy.
If you haven’t read my post from last year, you should probably go back and read it first for context.
I stuck with forcing seeds better than 5 in the first round and better than 2 in the second round to win. I did this to make sure my bracket doesn’t end up too crazy. Next year, I should try to remove that and see how I do.
What I changed, however, was making that check actually work :) . Last year, I used the >=
operator for the condition, checking if the seed was greater than or equal to 5 and 2, which had the opposite effect than what I intended. This year, I’m using the <=
operator, which actually does what I want.
I’ve also changed my scoring algorithm to remove winning percentage from the calculation. I’m already using RPI, so it seemed a tad redundant.
Additionally, I messed with the weights, because I felt like it. This isn’t a totally scientific process, contrary to what my comment might indicate :)
And that’s pretty much all there is to it! You can view my completed bracket on the Coder’s Bracket site here.
Here’s the code: