Crafting the perfect March Madness bracket is nearly impossible. One missed shot can be the difference between a Cinderella story and a dream deferred. Even so, many of us will still try to predict which teams will come out on top.
Is there a science to making the right picks? Albert Cohen, director of Michigan State University’s graduate certificate in sports analytics, says analyzing statistics could give you a leg up in your bracket pool. But the numbers don’t lie — there are too many potential outcomes to perfectly predict every matchup.
Cohen is director of program development for the Actuarial Science Program, as well as a senior academic specialist in the College of Natural Science’s math department and the statistics and probability department. And while it may seem counterintuitive, statistics and actuarial science are more closely related to sports than you might think.
The College of Natural Science recently sat down with Cohen to talk about statistics, sports and the science of bracketology.
What do statistics have to do with sports?
I look at life based on risk. The risk is the gap between what you want and what you get. And so to measure that trade-off and mitigate it, you need statistics. How many times did this adverse outcome happen versus this positive outcome? For example, how many times did we score on a power play versus not scoring? That percentage is important. That tells us a little bit about the effectiveness of the team as well as an individual player. So statistics, in general, gives us a way to measure what’s going on in a game and to tweak it and to advance the strategy to be better, whether it’s in-game statistics or postgame statistics.
Is this similar to what we saw in the 2011 movie “Moneyball”?
The Moneyball Theory is probably the first thing I talk about in sports analytics. It says you can look at microstatistics in baseball, like how many times did the pitcher lead the mound, how many bases on balls, how many hits did he give up? The macrostatistic is how many runs did the team give up over the season, and how many runs did they score over the season?
It turns out that the runs scored and surrendered in a nonlinear formula, known as the Moneyball formula, is a very good predictor of the overall winning percentage. If you didn’t know the individual scores, but only the aggregate score, you could still predict your winning percentage quite nicely.
The Moneyball Theory basically says that if I can buy more runs and also buy defense against giving up runs, then I can increase directly in my winning percentage, and that’s the kind of player I want to buy in the free agency market or in the trade market. The movie is about baseball, but it can also be applied to other sports.
If it all comes down to numbers, how do you factor in upsets and the unpredictable nature of games?
In mathematics, we talk about deterministic versus probabilistic. So, we would like to think that planetary motion is deterministic, like gears in a clock. In contrast, you look at the stock market. Information comes and goes, and people have different opinions on how a company should be valued.
In sports like hockey, where a vulcanized rubber puck is going 100 miles an hour, some things just happen, like an awkward bounce. You’re trying to maximize the probability of a good thing happening, or the probability of being prepared. A great coach keeps his or her players ready to react.
Looking to March Madness, how does a statistician fill out a bracket sheet?
I’ve put an actual number on it, but there are an unfathomable number of possible brackets. It’s weird to look at everything as being equally possible. If you have some conditional or inside information before you fill out your bracket, your chances are much better. But I don’t play the game if there’s money riding on it just because it’s very difficult. One bounce of the ball, one upset, and everything is busted.
Because of my work, I have the most risk-averse nature. I don’t like going in casinos. I’ve never been interested in gambling or fantasy football.
What advice would you give people filling out their brackets this Selection Sunday?
I would do some research and look at historical matchups and see the true likelihood of a team pulling off an upset. I’d also consider filling out multiple brackets and not being too sad if one or two or three of them fall, because maybe one of them has a chance.
Maybe one of the reasons March Madness is so hard to predict is because it all comes down to a single game. A five- or seven-game series is easier to predict, but couldn’t anyone have a great game on any given day?
I think there’s certainly the random nature of it. I think for me, the most interesting part about it is, how likely is the No.1 or No. 2 seed to win the whole tournament? That may be more interesting than getting every single pick right.
Is there anything mathematical behind hot streaks in sports?
People have studied it — they call it the hot hand fallacy. The fact is, if you made 10 buckets in a row, that doesn’t mean you’ll make the 11th. Some people have said there is such a thing as momentum in sports. I’m somewhat agnostic about this, but I’m interested in this notion of lead changes, especially in the playoffs, where lead changes are monumental in basketball and hockey. I would argue that there is a memory property where if you lost a previous game, that’s going to affect you.
What do statistics say about underdogs and Cinderella stories?
There are teams in basketball and hockey that are constructed for the playoffs. Their job is just to get in. Then, everybody starts from square one. I would argue that some of that could hold in March Madness.
If a team is undervalued, they might be more likely to take risks because they have nothing to lose. In a one-and-done situation like the NCAA Tournament, if you’ve constructed a team that’s bold, that’s very well connected and understands each other, is willing to take risks but also holds each other accountable, I think that’s a dangerous team.
Why do you think we’re so interested in trying to predict the outcome of sporting events?
I think it’s just human nature. We like to make order of disorder. Sports allow us to do that if we have a certain pattern that we’ve noticed, even if it’s not mathematically or numerically backed up. We like sports because it helps us to feel like we have some sort of control over things that we really don’t.