Communications of the ACM
Computer System Predicts Kentucky to Win Ncaa Tournament
University of Kentucky basketball players will have reason to celebrate during this year's NCAA tournament, a Georgia Tech computer system says.
Credit: AP Photo
Want to win the NCAA men's basketball office pool this year?
Then consider the predictions by Georgia Tech's Logistic Regression Markov Chain (LRMC) method, a computer ranking system that has historically been more accurate than the NCAA's own Ratings Percentage Index.
LRMC predicts this year's NCAA Final Four matchups will most likely be Kentucky vs. Michigan St. and Ohio St. vs. Kansas, with Kentucky beating Ohio St. for the championship.
Other predictions by the system include:
- Texas, Belmont, and N.C. State are the underdogs most likely to pull off an upset in the first round.
- California, N.C. State, Belmont, and Texas could be this year's "Cinderella" teams; they are the most likely double-digit seeds to make it to the Sweet 16.
- Michigan St. will be the No. 1 seed with the toughest second-round matchup.
- Wichita St. vs. Indiana and New Mexico vs. Louisville are other intriguing potential second-round matchups.
- The West Region, led by Michigan St., is the deepest of the four regions.
- Wichita St. vs. Indiana and New Mexico vs. Louisville are "intriguing" potential second-round matchups because LRMC says they will be close games, even though each involves a lesser-known team against a better-known team.
"Kentucky is the likely champion because they've won almost all their games," says Joel Sokol, operations research professor at Georgia Tech who along with colleagues developed LRMC. "They've won by convincing margins at home and on the road against very good teams, and they've done it all against a strong schedule, including Kansas, North Carolina, Indiana, and Florida."
Since the 2003 season, LRMC has correctly predicted the outcomes of more NCAA tournament games than competing ranking systems and major polls.
In 2010, for example, LRMC correctly predicted the winners of 51 out of 64 NCAA games — beating out more than 50 of the top ranking sites. In 2008, the system predicted the Final Four, final two and the eventual victor, as well as several upsets in earlier rounds.
Georgia Tech Operations Research Professors Sokol and George Nemhauser, and Statistics Professor Paul Kvam developed the LRMC method, along with Mark Brown, math professor at City College of New York.
View a video of Sokol discussing the origin and success of the LRMC method.
The system looks at the results of all the college basketball games played during the season. Specifically, it examines who the winner is, whom the loser is, where the game was played and the team's margin of victory. The researchers then run that data through several mathematical models — empirical Bayes, logistic regression, and Markov Chain — to determine the ranking of teams.
Yet even with the best formula, it's impossible to predict a perfect bracket, Sokol says.
About one-quarter of all tournament games are affected by upsets, injuries, or last-second, buzzer-beating baskets, as was the case last year when only one top seed made it to the regional finals. This human factor is where the LRMC predictions can falter.
Still, LRMC's odds aren't bad.
According to a study of historical data just completed by the research team, LRMC is significantly better at predicting NCAA Tournament games than almost all of the other complete rankings, such as Sagarin's predictor, Pomeroy's ranking, Las Vegas Favorite, and the NCAA's RPI.
Sokol, Nemhauser, and Kvam are professors in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering in Georgia Tech's College of Engineering.
The complete LRMC bracket is available at www.lrmc.gatech.edu.
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