I received this from Trevis Litherland today, and it was absolutely too good not to share with everyone.
   Ah, yes, it’s not been a good year for my program.
I was expecting 50 +/- 14 points after the first round,
and I got __2__ standard deviations below my
average: 22. I made up a little ground the second
round, but not too awful much. In a typical year,
I’d be delighted to have 7 of my Elite 8 intact without
having to repick, but I’m pretty much in the same
ark as everyone else this year.
 I looked at my numbers and it appears that there
was about a 3.5% chance that all 4 top-5 seeds
(i.e. the top 25 teams) would make it past the first
round, as they did. That’s not infinitesimal, but small
enough that you’d expect to wait at least as
long (23 years) as we have before seeing it.
Arg.
Here are the updated winning probabilities for
the remaining field of 16:
UNCÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 21.09%
Florida       18.49%
Kansas       15.65%
Ohio State   12.55%
Georgetown   7.80%
UCLAÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 6.52%
Memphis      6.40%
Texas A&MÂ Â Â 3.26%
Pittsburg        2.24%
Oregon          1.66%
Butler            1.31%
UNLVÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 0.92%
Tennesse       0.76%
SIUÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 0.74%
USCÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 0.38%
Vanderbilt       0.21%
(Georgia Tech: 0.00%)
 With respect to the Iron Law of Never Having
All Number One Seeds for the Final Four, I
estimate the probability that all Four Top Seeds will
in fact make it to the final for at: 6.85% —
which seems to qualify as more of a Bronze
Law really. The numbers above
show that its about 2:1 (67.8%) in favor of one of
the Top Seeds winning the whole thing.
 I also need my own $4 coffee about now, but the
campus stuff is closed. But our music is better. (I
have noticed that some of the newer restaurants
— Moe’s, e.g. — seem to have done some sort of banalizing
market research to get their own mix of — “whatever”
actually does seem to be the right word — that I always
hear every time I go in. It’s like one of our better local
stations, which plays Tom Petty about once every
two hours.)
 I’m on spring break, so I’ll be going up to Jasper to see
my sister/grandparents in a couple days, and will watch
Thursday’s and Friday’s games from the Bosom of
Abraham there in Indiana.
Hoopsidaisy,
Trevis
Oh my goodness! Quite a chore to log on. I must say, I love the scoring. You never know until it’s over.
this brings to mind a particular quote from a fellow named Clemens regarding certain types of lies and statistics … 😀
oddly (and perhaps less interestingly), i went thru the (first iteration of the) repick process yesterday, and made choices based on – should the Almighty allow – what would get me the most number of points, even though my head was (generally) pointing me in the same direction as do the numbers above.
so, should i be the engineer and base repicking on facts, statistics, and what i’ve observed in the tournament to date … or do i don my management hat and go with the name of my favorite muppet?
Just a suggestion for the future, Jeff…I don’t know the coding involved, but I think it might be helpful to have the first two rounds grayed out in the re-pick phase, then after the re-picks, somehow distinguish between original picks and re-picks (again, perhaps some graying). That would tell us, at a glance, which games are potentially worth more points for us. You could even gray out the first two rounds, leaving them as we picked them (use lighter red and green for the boxes, gray out the background), but have the correct teams in the 16 boxes (with the appropriate red and green still).
Jason