March Madness

Today we learned about single-elimination tournament brackets. This style of tournament bracket shows you all the possible teams before a game is played. Each classroom held a competitive game of Rock Paper Scissors to model this. Next we moved on to the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament. We don't watch basketball! But we can make some predictions based on a few statistics. The teams are given a ranking from 1 to 16, which is easy when a 1 plays a 16, but what about when 2 (Michigan State...sob) loses to a 15 or when an 8 plays a 9? And which of the 4 1st seed teams are the best? We also discovered that the win/loss record was provided for us. We wondered why a 29-4 team have a lower rank than a 26-7? Did they take into account the difficulty of the teams they played? Some students chose based on names (Butler has a kind of a silly sounding name), some chose based on mascot, some record, some ranking, some chose familiar locations and places they've visited, and still others chose to remain loyal to their parents' alma mater. In the end, we an epic Wall o' Bracket. Prizes go to anyone who picks the correct championship winner. Also prizes to go to those who pick the highest number of correct winners. 

Green = correct pick

Pink = incorrect pick 

We'll continue to update this blog entry as it gets closer to the National Championship!