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The goal of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives. The purpose of this blog is to provide a more immediate, online mechanism for dissemination of visioning concepts and community discussion/debate about them.


University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Computer Science Tries to Predict March Madness

March 16th, 2017 / in Uncategorized / by Khari Douglas

March Madness logoNeed some last minute help with your bracket before March Madness tips off? Check out the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s (UIUC) Bracketodds, which uses probability theory and statistics to predict and analyze the success of teams in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament based on seeding.

The website was created in 2011 as an educational project with undergraduate computer science students at UIUC and is intended to be used as “a tool to evaluate and compare various seed combinations in later rounds of your bracket and to assess your bracket odds” as the model does not have the accuracy to give probabilities for games before the Sweet Sixteen.

If you’re struggling to complete your bracket, the bracket generator can build a bracket for you by sampling across the 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 possible brackets. However, it is important to note that the generator is blind to the teams themselves and only makes predictions based on seed matchups.

Rather unsurprisingly, higher seeds have better odds of winning the championship than do lower seeds, but the greatest thrill of March Madness is found in the upsets and deep runs by lower seeds.

Check out more about Bracketodds on their website and find out how to catch all the March Madness action on the NCAA website.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Computer Science Tries to Predict March Madness

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