Those Haze March Madness Pools
There has been a lot of noise that certain people think their numbers aren't good, or that Tommy is "rigging it" in our favor. We even get messages as soon as the numbers are drawn before basketball is even played:
Tommy and Brian got the best numbers
Not that I mind the insinuations, but really we have no way of knowing how the results before hand, or we would play the lottery and stack money. And while some of you have trouble understanding how numbers in general work, like so:
Theres a 50-50 shot my numbers hit this game
I really had no firm response, but just based on the randomness of basketball I had a feeling that there were no "good" or "bad" numbers for box pools in the NCAA Tournament.
So I took the time to compile all the data from the tournament from 1985, when the league expanded to 64 teams, to 2019. The following are the results:
Average Margin of Victory, by Round
- Round 1 - 12.96 points
- Round 2 - 11.28 points
- Round 3 - 9.92 points
- Round 4 - 9.71 points
- Round 5 - 9.49 points
- Round 6 - 8.26 points
This dispels the statements that having the same number makes it harder in later rounds, since the average difference in points is actually around 10 points.
Number of times digits appear as winners/losers
| Number | As Winner | As Loser |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 225 | 213 |
| 1 | 204 | 229 |
| 2 | 226 | 209 |
| 3 | 225 | 233 |
| 4 | 226 | 237 |
| 5 | 252 | 210 |
| 6 | 206 | 200 |
| 7 | 215 | 199 |
| 8 | 215 | 252 |
| 9 | 211 | 223 |
None of these differences are significant, and all boxes have the same 1% chance to win, good luck!