FiveThirtyEight started out as Nate Silver's Political Prediction site for the 2008 Presidential Election. Following the Silver's move from the New York Times to ESPN last July look for more empirical outputs from the site.
Today they released their NCAA Tournament Predictions. Their model...
...calculates the chance of each team reaching each round, taking into account a composite of power rankings, pre-season rankings, the team’s placement on the NCAA’s 68-team S-curve, player injuries and geography.
Click around and have fun.
Here are the possibility percentages that they gave the Villanova Wildcats.
- 1st Round Win: 95%
- Advance to Sweet 16: 64%
- Advance to Elite 8: 41%
- Final Four Bound: 21%
- National Finalist: 9%
- NCAA Champion: 4%
The Arizona Wildcats Louisville Cardinals are their favorites to be National Champs.