If you’re new to Bracket Science, you may not know about the Madometer. It’s a way of measuring the relative unpredictability of the tournament.
The Madometer works by measuring the seed-position differences between actual winners and perfect high-seed success or failure in all six rounds of the dance. If the higher seed advanced in all 63 games of the tourney (perfect sanity), the cumulative seed value of the winners would be 203. If the lower seed always advanced (sheer madness), their cumulative seed value would be 868. The difference between the two—665—is the predictability range. If you add up all the seed positions of the teams advancing in the dance, then subtract 203 and divide by 665, you arrive at the percentage by which the tourney deviates from perfect higher-seed dominance.
Got all that? If not, don’t worry. I’ll calculate the Madometer value for you after each night of the tourney. Then I’ll report the reading on this handy gauge that displays the range between “complete Wooden sanity” and “utter Chitwoodin’ madness”:
If you want to know more about the Madometer, and see its readings for the last 28 years, check out this blog post: http://wp.bracketscience.com/?p=186
I fully expect this year’s dance to contend with 2011′s record of 19.8% unpredictability. We shall see…
Peter Tiernan has been using stats to analyze March Madness for 22 years. He writes for 
Hi everyone,
I see a lot of LOU, KU, IND, OHST as the average Final 4 (not just this site). I know this outcome wouldn’t shake up the mad-o-meter that much, but how “mad” would it be to have 3 of the 2012 F4 repeat in 2013???
From 07-12, there has been at least one repeat F4 team, with 2007 actually have 2 repeats (FLA, UCLA). 04-06 had 0 repeats. 00-03 had 1 repeat. 99 had 0 Repeats. 98 = 2, 97 = 1, 96 = 0, 95 = 1, 94 = 0, 93 & 92 = 1, 91 = 2, 90 & 89 = 1, 86-88= 0, 82-85 = 1. As far back as I went, there has not been 3 repeats.
I found two things interesting, and yes there are exceptions to these findings. First, repeat F4 teams tend to keep the team in tact (Exceptions like ’01 F4 Michigan St lost M Cleaves from ’00 F4). Maybe this is why Kentucky won’t repeat to the F4 this year (or even in the tourney in the first place).
Second, changes in trends (from trends of repeats to trends of no repeats and vice-versa tend to lag watershed moments in CBB. 85 was first year of 64 team model, next 3 years saw 0 repeats. 06 was first year of 1&Done rule, then next year & every tourney since has seen a repeat F4 team. Considering there wasn’t a watershed moment this year, I would pencil in at least one repeat, and even though IND didn’t go to F4 last year, they brought back everyone, so I like them in F4.
Great post, Mike.