March Mathness 2023 - The Plan
It's tough to pick a perfect NCCA tournament bracket at random, in fact, the odds are over 1 in 9 quintillion (9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to be precise). Cue your best infomercial voice, because surely there must be a better way! Let's borrow some psychometric language and methodologies to improve our bracket.
For starters, we can look at this past season like an exam. Candidates answer a series of items (play games), and the number of correct answers (wins) corresponds to their ability. Picking teams based on their overall win rate should be better than chance, but it assumes that every team played the same series of games (took the same exam). Just like different exam forms, one schedule may be easier or more difficult than another. Thankfully, your friendly psychometricians have a few tricks up their sleeves.
Brandon, a proponent of efficiency and expertise, will be picking the team with the highest seed. Why second guess the experts on college basketball?
Zachary, a nerd who doesn't watch sports, will be picking the team with the best mascot. Ferocity, uniqueness, whimsey, these will all be important factors in determining the true champion.
Finally, we are going to apply the same mathematical model we use for ARRT exam development to the 2022-2023 women's basketball season. We will treat each team like a candidate, and each schedule like a test. As with certification exams, we will use common opponents (exam items) to link the teams together into a single comparison. Tune in to a future Volunteer Connection to see how we do.
