Improving Your Ncaa R Bracket With Statistics

Improving Your NCAA® Bracket with Statistics

Twenty-four million people wager nearly $3 billion on college basketball pools each year, but few are aware that winning strategies have been developed by researchers at Harvard, Yale, and other universities over the past two decades. Bad advice from media sources and even our own psychological inclinations are often a bigger obstacle to winning than our pool opponents. Profit opportunities are missed and most brackets submitted to pools don’t have a breakeven chance to win money before the tournament begins. Improving Your NCAA® Bracket with Statistics is both an easy-to-use tip sheet to improve your winning odds and an intellectual history of how statistical reasoning has been applied to the bracket pool using standard and innovative methods. It covers bracket improvement methods ranging from those that require only the information in the seeded bracket to sophisticated estimation techniques available via online simulations. Included are: Prominently displayed bracket improvement tips based on the published research A history of the origins of the bracket pool A history of bracket improvement methods and their results in play Historical sketches and background information on the mathematical and statistical methods that have been used in bracket analysis A source list of good bracket pool advice available each year that seeks to be comprehensive Warnings about common bad advice that will hurt your chances Tom Adams’ work presenting bracket improvement methods has been featured in the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and SmartMoney magazine.

Reauthorizing the Higher Education Act

Evaluating and Responding to College Guidebooks and Rankings

The proliferation of college guidebooks and reputational rankings has become of increasing concern to many in the higher education community. Public relations and admissions staff view such publications from a marketing perspective and the potential positive or negative consequences for enrollment. College presidents share these concerns along with the broader implications for the overall stature of their institutions. The validity and integrity of the information reported is of particular interest to those who work in the area of institutional research. Acknowledging the fact that the public, the consumers, has a great need for information about different institutions in order to make informed college choices for themselves or their children, all of these groups in higher education share alarm about the burden imposed on institutions in responding to the ever-increasing number of publishers requesting information for these guidebooks and rankings. This volume explores some of the major facets of and issues surrounding college guidebooks and ratings. The background and development of these publications are traced, followed by discussion of major issues and perspectives—consumer use of the publications, validity of ratings, and the institutional burden of supplying the needed information. View from both the institutions and the publishers are presented. This is the 88th issue of the quarterly journal New Directions for Institutional Research. For more information on the series, please see the Journals and Periodicals page.