2012 Bracket Odds

Been quiet for a while, though I felt inspired tonight and updated the Bracket odds for the 2012 tournament. Some shortcuts were taken, such as only using Ken Pomeroy's statistics this year and advancing the better of the two teams for each play-in situation.

For users in Excel 2007 or later, you must ensure macros are enabled for the custom functions driving the simulation.

Bracket Odds 2012

Original Author- Erich

Original Release Date- 20120311

World Cup Simulator

While I cannot recommend a particular approach to estimating probabilities in soccer, I can provide a simulation framework for the coming World Cup tournament. The schedules were compiled from the FIFA and Wikipedia sites, and the structure is there to input team ratings, churn through a hastily modified log5 approach, and generate simulations in a Monte Carlo method.

Email or comment with advice on improvements, including team ratings and a formulaic approach to assess win/lose/draw probabilities given those ratings.

World Cup Simulator
Original Author- Erich
Original Release Date- 20100603

Best of 7 Playoff Simulator

Although I released an NBA Playoff simulator last year, I wanted to improve upon it by allowing for re-seeding and thus cover the NHL and NFL playoffs too. I apparently did the work on the file, but never posted it.
With the NHL playoffs starting tonight, my memory was jogged. I cleaned up the file and now share it with you.

Like the NBA Playoff simulator, this runs off conditional probabilities. Selecting the reseeding option will force the highest seeded team to play the lowest seeded survivor on each side of the bracket. This also can work for the NFL playoffs with the included instructions. Please comment or email me with any bug reports.


Best of 7 Playoffs
Original Author- Erich
Original Release Date- 20100414

Bracket Odds

While this is not the most refined workbook released, this is sure to be one of the most interesting. This workbook generates advancement probabilities for each team in a 64-team tournament and is designed with basketball in mind.

In the past, my bracket picks generated by such a model were graciously hosted on David Berri's Wages of Wins blog (article links available here).

Additional credit for this workbook's development goes to its statistical forefathers, Ken Pomeroy and Jeff Sagarin, and to Adam M., a former blogger and now proud resident of the Contrarianville community for his input on conditional probabilities.

Note that macros must be enabled for the custom functions to operate properly. This workbook has calculations set to manual due to the volume & complexity. To trigger a calculation, press F9. To turn on automatic calculations, use Tools\Options and find the Calculation tab.

Bracket Odds

Original author- Erich

Revision date- 20100308

Edit: File updated with 2010 seeding and metrics, corrections on results validations
Revision date- 20100320

NBA Season Simulator

While I'm at it, the NBA's schedule just came out and I've updated the season simulator for the NBA. Note there are new fields for an over/under threshold and also an update to the schedule page that will allow users to easily filter to a specific team.

Do note that while the basic version employs a pythagorean approach, I encourage users to modify the formula for any other number of approaches, such as incorporating basketball's four factors.

NBA Season Simulator
Original author- Erich
Revision date- 20090821

NFL Season Simulator

Back by popular demand, this Monte Carlo season simulator looks at the 2009 NFL season.

Note that this is an early release and has a clearly visible bug. The Wild Card calculations are not perfect yet, but everything else seems to be fine. I'll update this post with the wild card fix in a few days. The baseball simulator was posted here.

NFL Season Simulator
Original author- Erich
Revision date- 20090801

Update: The spreadsheet now correctly handles wild cards and probabilities in scoring a bye week.
Revision date- 20090806

NBA Draft Lottery Odds update

Given this year's ping pong ball distribution, I have updated the NBA Draft Lottery Odds worksheet (originally introduced here).

NBA Draft Lottery Odds Generator
Original Author- Erich
Original Release Date- 20080514
Revised Release - 20090513