spORts Resources

Video Library

March Madness and Advanced Analytics: Improving Your Bracket Odds

Presented by Sheldon H. Jacobson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) men’s Division I college basketball tournament (more commonly known as March
Madness) is an annual competition which draws widespread attention in the United States. The presentation will cover the following items:

  • Background on March Madness and Bracketology,
  • Advanced analytical methods that can be used to assess the odds of different seed combinations in different rounds of the tournament,
  • Showcase the web site, bracketodds.cs.illinois.edu, which allows fans to assess their own brackets,
  • A real-time assessment of the 2014 tournament (which will be occurring during the conference) up until the time of the presentation

Sports Analytics:  The good, the bad, the….

Presented by Stephen Chambal, The Perduco Group

Sports analytics is an exciting field with numerous opportunities for applying advanced analytics to develop unique and creative solutions for the industry. The Perduco Group has made a strategic push into the sports domain, leveraging analytical expertise from the defense industry as a baseline for solving similar challenges within sports. The Perduco team supports four major business lines: B2B, team consultation, gaming, and fantasy sports. With nearly two years of experience, we have identified countless opportunities and nearly as many obstacles. This talk is intended to be informative, but more importantly, interactive with the audience to answer analytics and business questions related to opportunities within the sports analytics domain.

Sports Analytics Taxonomy