A March Madness Pool (Modeling the Madness as a Marketplace)

We are pleased to be working with the University of Chicago on a free March Madness Pool.  Carlton Chin devised the pool with a Financial Markets class -- that models each game as a financial marketplace.  As a result, the pool is run "round-by-round."  The pool is open to all and several organizations have contributed prizes.  Note that entries are due a few days earlier than most pools to generate closing price information.

Opening pricing will be available for the first round on Monday morning.  Closing prices will be a function of market participant entries -- and will be used to award points for correct picks.  Pricing can be used as a proxy for the probability of a team advancing to the next round.  

For more information -- and to get your first round entries in -- please visit the March Madness link at http://www.caratcompanies.com/.

March Madness: Coming Soon!

March is coming up fast, and we will have our "quant facts" analysis of the sports psychology factors for the Final Four.  In the meantime, we are excited to be working on a pool for the NCAA Men's Tournament - where the match-ups of each round are modeled as a financial marketplace.

The pool will be open to all, and there will be prizes.  Note that this pool will be round-by-round, and that entries are due a little earlier than for other pools.  Please visit our blog for more information as the March Madness Tournament gets closer.

Super Bowl, Championship Factors & Quant Facts Recap

Congratulations to the Green Bay Packers and their legions of fans.

Green Bay's Super Bowl victory drops our book's blog's record to 20-11 in "quant fact" predictions, still impressive considering that our championship factors sometimes make interesting predictions (like picking the underdog) based on a quantitative analysis of concepts of sports psychology.

As usual, even at a high level of competition, errors are often the deciding factors in championships.  It is notable that this is true not only for athletes, but success in many activities.  Athletes need to perform at a high level of competition while minimizing mistakes.  Some of the traits associated with "minimizing errors" include championship characteristics such as consistency factors, experience, and confidence.  

That is, players and teams that are experienced, confident, and good at the more "consistent" tasks -- will tend to make fewer mistakes and prevail.  The "quant facts" we have studied with respect to sports psychology help to "put the wind at our backs" -- and can be useful characteristics for any sports orgranization -- at any level.

In Super Bowl XLV, we predicted that the Pittsburgh Steelers would prevail based on a variety of championship traits.  Our factors showed that play-in and play-out, the Steelers would tend to control the game better -- and would tend to have fewer mistakes.  However, the game needs to be played out -- and in Super Bowl XLV, the Green Bay Packers made fewer mistakes -- and won the big game.