March MATHness

Learn 3 popular sport ranking methods and how to create March Madness brackets with them. Let math make the picks!

3.90 (315 reviews)

Udemy

platform

English

language

Math

What you will learn

By the end of the course, you will be able to rank sports teams using 3 popular sports ranking methods and create brackets for March Madness.

In this course, you will learn how to rank using winning percentage, the Colley method, and the Massey method, and how to adapt each ranking method to integrate momentum.

Why take this course?

A Faculty Project Course - Best Professors Teaching the World

Every year, people across the United States predict how the field of 65 teams will play in the Division I NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament by filling out a tournament bracket for the postseason play. Not sure who to pick? Let math help you out!

In this course, you will learn three popular rating methods two of which are also used by the Bowl Championship Series, the organization that determines which college football teams are invited to which bowl games. The first method is simple winning percentage. The other two methods are the Colley Method and the Massey Method, each of which computes a ranking by solving a system of linear equations. We also learn how to adapt the methods to take late season momentum into account. This allows you to create your very own mathematically-produced brackets for March Madness by writing your own code or using the software provided with this course.

From this course, you will learn math driven methods that have led Dr. Chartier and his students to place in the top 97% of 4.6 million brackets submitted to ESPN! See more:

Math Improves March Madness Predictions

Bracketology 101

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Reviews

Gary

January 13, 2019

I never studied linear algebra in college, so I thought that I would try this course. I you learn better by applying math to tangible problems, I recommend this course. This course seems to have been published about six years ago. With the increase interest in data science in that period and the readily available software packages, it would be nice to see some updates.

Jonathan

March 14, 2017

Very informative on how rankings are determined using various methods and taking different factors into account. Can't wait to get to bracket building!

Cathy

March 6, 2017

I like how you made this as basic as possible to try to help those without much math knowledge understand.

Lew

January 25, 2017

This course begins with a basic understanding of Bracketology to ensure everyone is on board for more advance/complex scenarios.

Mara

March 7, 2016

I really enjoyed this course, and/but I really enjoy linear algebra and sports analytics. I think that someone without college algebra could certainly enjoy this course, and skip along according to their interests (perhaps "the math behind…" sections would be a bit confusing). Some of the links have changed. As of now, this link takes you to the equivalent of the link referred to throughout the course with up-to-date data for this 2015/2016 season: http://marchmathness.davidson.edu/ranking_choice.html

John

March 19, 2015

Really confusing; not useful for my purpose which was insider statistics for March Madness. The final link to take you to that information didn't work so it was wasted effort with no payoff

George

March 28, 2014

The Prof has created a practical and relevant Maths course. The course is easy to follow with plenty of activities to consolidate ideas. Great to see even Australian Football in the Masseyratings. I will use this course for my senior maths students.

Abram

March 15, 2014

This course provides a solid foundation to developing your brackets, but the applications go beyond an office pool. These methods can be applied to many different scenarios, which are discussed by Dr. Chartier, and aren't only restricted to the sports realm. As a mathematician, it was also refreshing to see the mathematical reasoning/proof behind these methods as well. Highly recommended for sheer interest value, even if you aren't particularly interested in mathematics. Definitely provides some insight into how teams are perceived, and gives a framework on how to develop your own thoughts on what is most important in determining a ranking system.

Carlos

January 20, 2014

It was informative, and with some simple coding, someone could do everything mentioned because the links to the Davidson pages are dead.

Steve

January 17, 2014

I am from the old school, now if I can get all this down, I might fare better in March than I ever have. The course was presented in a very professional, interesting, and well balanced way. I wish the web sites would work but oh well. A course for anyone, not just sports fans, but everybody who wants to analyze a large amount of data.

Jim

March 11, 2013

You do need a math background to really understand the concepts. The two zip files are .class files which are basically no good if you are on windows. I had to go to my wife's iPad to open them.

Kevin

February 26, 2013

I was not aware that rankings were based on linear models; this was very insightful and my goal is to try and code these programs using Matlab. Thanks to Professor Chartier for sharing this! I hope that I can do better in the office pool this year with this information!

Kannan

February 8, 2013

1. Heartening to see that mathemaitcs can be effectively taught over the Web. 2. Hope that the days of video taping of monotonous class room lectures are over. 3. Instructor's body language is even more important than the spoken language. Mashup Creator tool has certainly helped in the presentation of the lecture. 4. Regarding the content of the course I wish there was at least some reference to Arrow's paradox and the importance of choice theory. 5. Also, giving the details of ranking of Google pages through the eigenvectors of the matrix of an appropriate Web graph would have been helpful. 6. Finally, hope more exemplary mathematics courses will come from Udemy in the near future.

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