{"388211":{"#nid":"388211","#data":{"type":"news","title":"ISyE Research Predicts Kentucky and Villanova Matchup in NCAA Tourney Final","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EEvery March a relatively small research page run by a professor from the\u0026nbsp;H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial \u0026amp; Systems Engineering gets a sudden spike in traffic, jumping from a handful\u0026nbsp;of visitors per week to thousands in a few days.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThat\u0027s because Joel Sokol,\u0026nbsp;Fouts Family Associate Professor,\u0026nbsp;and his colleagues happen to conduct research on one of the biggest sporting events of the year- the NCAA basketball tournament. Their Logistic Regression\/Markov Chain (LRMC) ranking system is a computerized model that has had a respectable level of success in picking the men\u0027s national basketball champion and overall tournament results over the last several years.\u0026nbsp;During the season, the LRMC uses basic scoreboard data to create a weekly ranking of all 351 Division I NCAA teams. The mathematical formula looks at every game and factors in the margin of victory and where each game is played. The research has been published in several jourals and presented at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAfter this year\u0027s tournament field was set on March 15,\u0026nbsp;Sokol\u0027s team released its bracket, and now sports fans looking for help filling out their own brackets are finding their way to the LRMC website. The model has shown to be more effective than 80 others, including the NCAA\u0027s own\u0026nbsp;Ratings Performance Index (RPI).\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe 2015\u0026nbsp;LRMC \u0022Profs\u0027 Picks\u0022 have top seeds Kentucky and Villanova meeting in the final after each beating two seeds in the Final Four. The model also predicts some early upsets- Texas over Butler and Ohio State over Virginia Commonwealth, as well as a few ninth seeds knocking off eighth seeds.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFor more about their methodology\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www2.isye.gatech.edu\/~jsokol\/lrmc\/about\/lrmcteam\/\u0022 rel=\u0022nofollow\u0022\u003Evisit the LRMC website\u003C\/a\u003E, or skip ahead and\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www2.isye.gatech.edu\/~jsokol\/profspicks\/profspicks15.pdf\u0022 rel=\u0022nofollow\u0022\u003Ego straight to their complete bracket\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www2.isye.gatech.edu\/~jsokol\/profspicksW\/profspicks15w.pdf\u0022 rel=\u0022nofollow\u0022\u003EOn the women\u0027s side\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;the professors and their model have projected a final consisting of Connecticut and Notre Dame with no major upsets in\u0026nbsp;the opening round.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESokol is joined on the LRMC team by fellow IGeorgia Tech professors Paul Kvam and George Nemhauser\u0026nbsp;and professor Mark Brown of City College, City University of New York, as well as a dedicated group of undergraduate students.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ELRMC\u0026nbsp;basketball ranking system a value source for bracketologists\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"LRMC basketball ranking system a value source for bracketologists"}],"uid":"27868","created_gmt":"2015-03-17 13:44:30","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:01:54","author":"Lizzie Millman","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-03-17T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2015-03-17T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"107631":{"id":"107631","type":"image","title":"Joel Sokol Makes NCAA Tournament Predictions","body":null,"created":"1449178188","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 21:29:48","changed":"1475894725","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:45:25","alt":"Joel Sokol Makes NCAA Tournament Predictions","file":{"fid":"194004","name":"12c3046-p1-003.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/12c3046-p1-003_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/12c3046-p1-003_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":2221546,"path_740":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/12c3046-p1-003_0.jpg?itok=-ZtTMAl6"}}},"media_ids":["107631"],"groups":[{"id":"1242","name":"School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISYE)"}],"categories":[{"id":"134","name":"Student and Faculty"}],"keywords":[{"id":"1200","name":"joel sokol"},{"id":"8967","name":"LRMC; Final Four; NCAA"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:barbara.christopher@isye.gatech.edu\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EBarbara Christopher\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIndustrial and Systems Engineering\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E404.385.3102\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["bchristopher@isye.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}