The NCAA men's basketball tournament bracket was announced yesterday, which has kicked off the usual round of people "predicting" the outcomes based on totally silly criteria like the Academic Progress Rate of the schools in question.
This is, of course, completely frivolous. What you really need is solid, relevant information. Like predictions based on the ranking of physics graduate programs:
(Click for a slightly larger image.)
The algorithm used to fill this in was simple:
- The school with the higher-ranked physics program wins
- Schools with no physics program ranking lose to schools with any ranking whatsoever
- In case of a tie (two schools with the same ranking, or two schools with no ranking), the higher seed wins.
More like this
there are many ways to rank a program: including its reputation, its performance, and more subtle quantitative indicators, some of which are contradictory and mutually inconsistent.
Later this month, the National Research Council will, finally, release the much awaited and much anticipated Data-Based Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs.
I'm trying not to obsessively check and re-check the Dog Physics Sales Rank Tracker, with limited success. One thing that jumped out at me from the recent data, though, is the big gap between the book and Kindle rankings over the weekend.
Daniel Collins of Down To Earth blog, did a little research on the power law as it applies to the recent and current standing of various (mostly science) blogs, with some interesting obervati
Woot! Go Bears!
You're the only person I know with any Maryland connection, so I feel obligated to do some trash talking. And yet, an ACC team will probably take the Bears to the woodshed.
If you want though, I can teach you the California Drinking Song... got me through many a loss, it did.
Go Bears indeed!!
you know... this is not as ridiculous as I first thought. There seems to be a pretty strong correlation between physics program quality and basketball program quality. I guess more money is good for everything.
Cornell/Berkeley West quarterfinal ftw!
*semi-final
"There seems to be a pretty strong correlation between physics program quality and basketball program quality."
Correlation? Heck, it's probably entanglement.
There seems to be a pretty strong correlation between physics program quality and basketball program quality.
In a bracket where two double digit seeds (#10 Michigan and #12 Wisconsin) make the Elite Eight? And no seed higher than 5 (Illinois) makes the Final Four?
It would be a more interesting tournament than what will probably happen. Wisconsin over top seed Pittsburgh in the Sweet Sixteen would be something to talk about.
Of the only 16 private schools in the tournament...
8 are eliminated in the first round (Siena, Dayton, Robert Morris, BYU, Marquette, Villanova, Radford, Butler).
Wake Forest, Boston College, Cornell, Gonzaga, American, Duke, Xavier and Syracuse survive to the second round.
Only Cornell and Syracuse win two games. None win three games.
I'm not a physics person...the only surprise to me is that American beats Villanova.
Cornell would have been a real bracket buster if not for the misfortune of being pitted against Berkeley in the Sweet Sixteen.
If Stony Brook, UCSB, or Northwestern were in the tournament there would be more upsets.
I'm not a physics person...the only surprise to me is that American beats Villanova.
I was surprised by that, too. Villanova doesn't appear to have a grad program in physics (at least, they're not in the rankings), but American does. Go figure.
I did the same thing, except with rankings of graduate music programs. I have the same winner (or at least would if I didn't make a mistake on the ESPN site), but the rest of the final four are different, showing that research universities have different strengths.
By architecture programs, Cornell wins the tournament. Cornell, Syracuse, USC and Texas are the Final Four.