As many of you know, one of my insane features is that I try to provide people with data about the teams in case they want to do research on the teams. Each year, we get several people who have demonstrated the power of statistics by building models in order to predict the games. Some of them have been extremely successful with this – especially Bill Kahn with his Bradley-Terry models, showing that even something extremely unpredictable as sports can be forecasted through good statistical techniques. But the part of this that has made me happy – and why I do this – is because a few people who were not statisticians but were taking a stats training course at work used this data for their class project and ended up having some success – including our 2006 champion, David Shaddick.
So, since that point, I decided to provide the scores to everyone in an attempt to provide people as much of a chance to try to leverage data to make their decisions. I realize that most of you will probably spend three to five minutes just looking at the teams and figuring who will do best – I probably don’t need a model to decide that the number 1 seeds will beat the 16 seeds… In fact, I typically spend so much effort maintaining the site that I just randomly pick late Wednesday evening.
However, if I can give people a chance to try to learn something about statistics in a very fun environment, it is well worth the effort. So, just click on 2012 Schedule in one of the menus and get an Excel spreadsheet with summary box score information for each game for every Division I team. If I get time, I will try to add the standings sheet that was in the 2011 file.
My classic caveats on this data are the following: I have only checked that standings match – this year with the NCAA RPI page. I don’t have time to error check over 5000 box scores. I probably have a glitch in the RPI formula because all the records match by home, away and neutral games but a couple of the 200+ RPI schools have flip-flopped in the standings. Still figure with all the records right and the top 200+ right, it is close enough….. By the way, I am relatively pleased by this – if you look at the official site, and then look at CBS, ESPN and a couple other sites that post RPI numbers, none of them match – it is fascinating for something that seems so simple to calculate. Also, obviously, the championship games being played today are not in the file. If you notice something terribly wrong, let me know – no promises I have time to fix it, but at least everyone will know.
Enjoy the data!!!!
