Recently, the surge of predictive analytics competitions has improved sports predictions by fostering data-driven inference and steering clear of human bias. This article details methods developed for Kaggle’s March Machine Learning Mania competition for the 2014 NCAA tournament. A submission...

Computing and machine learning advancements have led to the creation of many cutting-edge predictive algorithms, some of which have been demonstrated to provide more accurate forecasts than traditional statistical tools. In this manuscript, we provide evidence that the combination of modest...

Predicting the outcome of a single sporting event is difficult; predicting all of the outcomes for an entire tournament is a monumental challenge. Despite the difficulties, millions of people compete each year to forecast the outcome of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, which spans 63...

We show that a classical model for soccer can also provide competitive results in predicting basketball outcomes. We modify the classical model in two ways in order to capture both the specific behavior of each National collegiate athletic association (NCAA) conference and different strategies...

The widespread proliferation of and interest in bracket pools that accompany the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament have created a need to produce a set of predicted winners for each tournament game by people without expert knowledge of college...

National Football League teams have complex drafting strategies based on college and combine performance that are intended to predict success in the NFL. In this paper, we focus on the tight end position, which is seeing growing importance as the NFL moves towards a more passing-oriented league....

We analyze the 2008 World Fly Fishing Championships data to examine two issues: (I) changes to scoring rules are proposed so that catching bigger fish is no longer a disadvantage; and (II) the relative role of chance versus competitor skill in determining the competition outcomes is investigated....

An absorbing Markov chain was used to model the 2012 PGA Tour Golf Season. Expected number of steps until absorption was used to establish expected scores for different locations (fairway, primary rough, green, etc.) and distances from the hole. Strokes gained analysis was then performed to...

A number of soccer officials have long debated whether to ban soccer games played at high altitude above sea level. This paper explores soccer player’s passing behavior when playing at high elevations using Copa Libertadores data. For this, I propose a range of direct indicators when playing...