Round one

Statistics results.

Ok, that West Virginia loss is going to hit the later rounds.

As is Purdue.  Not as bad as Michigan State, obviously.

Let's look at the comparison table:

#Bracket	N_R1	PP_R1	Nwrong_R1	P_R1
Mine	32	1	6	26
Heart-of-the-cards	32	1	10	22
Julie	32	1	10	22
BHO	32	1	9	23
538	32	1	8	24
Rank	32	1	13	19

The columns are the bracket identifier, the number of games in the round, the points per correct selection in the round, the number wrong, and the total points.  The brackets are mine above, the "Heart of the Cards" bracket taken by simply selecting teams based on the 2016 ranking I calculated, Julie's bracket, President Obama's, the 538 bracket taken by assuming constant composite rankings from their pre-tournament predictions, and a dummy bracket constructed by selecting teams based solely on their "sport rank" thing.  That's actually working out a lot better than I expected.  I was correct in shaking up the straight HotC numbers with a bit of historical data.  Looking at the mistakes:

Arizona:

26.562500       43.750000       40.625000               1       5       6       Arizona

25.000000       37.500000       53.125000               5       1       11      Wichita St

I didn't believe the numbers, given the #11 ranking.  From above, I should ignore the ranking in the future, because it's pretty crappy.  The problem is that my numbers suggest that Wichita State is the best team in the entire thing, which doesn't seem like it's right.

West Virginia:

28.125000       21.875000       1.562500                2       6       3       West Virginia

34.375000       39.062500       45.312500               2       6       14      SF Austin

Ditto.  My numbers predict that SF Austin is the second best team.  I guess if either of them come out winning, I can say that I predicted it, and then tossed it in the trash.

Baylor:

17.187500       23.437500       20.312500               3       3       5       Baylor

25.000000       18.750000       7.812500                3       3       12      Yale

No clue, but it sounds like everyone was surprised by this one.

Purdue:

29.687500       14.062500       -3.125000               4       3       5       Purdue

37.500000       -7.812500       -3.125000               4       3       12      Ark Little Rock

My numbers say they both suck, so I went with last year's numbers to break the tie.  I could have added in the 2014 values, but this was a #12 ranking, and I didn't believe those.

Dayton:

28.125000       26.562500       20.312500               4       7       7       Dayton

9.375000        7.812500        34.375000               4       7       10      Syracuse

This one I should have gotten right.  I folded the two previous years in, and that said that I should trust consistency over a sudden jump.  Maybe Syracuse has some new great player.

Michigan State:

35.937500       18.750000       28.125000               4       8       2       Michigan St

23.437500       3.125000        23.437500               4       8       15      MTSU

Again, this one seemed like it was a surprise to everyone.  There are only three values of my ranking between these two values, so that kind of suggests they're within ~5% of each other in terms of skill.  Oh well.