How To Calculate March Madness Bracket

3/18/2022 admin

Ratings

Article Archive

March Madness Bracket Scoring

There are a variety of scoring systems in NCAA pools. The most common is to double the points for each round: 1-2-4-8-16-32. This puts a lot of emphasis on the championship, making the early rounds largely irrelevant. The other extreme is to make all points the same: 1-1-1-1-1-1. This has the opposite effect of making the championship largely irrelevant. I wanted to find a mathematically ideal balance. I discovered that Fibonacci scoring or something similar was the best fit.
To start with, I pulled National Bracket data from ESPN to get a measure of the variation in how people pick their brackets. I compared it to the actual tournament results dating back to 1985 when the field was expanded to 64 teams.
Using those two pieces of data, I was able to calculate how much of a spread there is in the number of correct picks people have:

Most people get 22 or 23 picks right in the first round, with a standard deviation of 2.4.
In the second round, most people get 9 picks right, with a standard deviation of 1.9:

Most people get 3 of the 8 games right in the third round, with a standard deviation of 1.4:

The best way to ensure that each round is equally valuable is to scale each round so the standard deviations are approximately equal. In trying to balance that with keeping a points system with simple, whole numbers, the solution I came up with was:

2 points
Round 2	3 points
Round 3	4 points
Round 4	6 points
Round 5	10 points
Round 6	17 points

Google March Madness Bracket

How To Calculate March Madness Brackets 2019

SEC Bracket 2021 & SEC Tournament Predictions SEC Tournament Information. 2021 SEC tournament site: Bridgestone Arena, Nashville, TV 2021 SEC tournament dates: March 10th-14th, 2021 These 2021 SEC tournament advancement odds and average projected. Simplify your life this year by letting RunYourPool.com manage your March Madness Bracket Pool for you. We take care of accumulating your members' picks for the field of 64 teams, updating the games, calculating the results, and generating easy-to-understand reports for your members.