How often are sport statistics right?

There's a challenge to correctly predict the entire bracket of the USA basketball teams. This is (mostly) a game of chance. But I wondering how much is it a game of chance?

If we know how often the basketball statistics can predict the correct outcome of a match, we can calculate what are the odds to get it correct. Here are my quick-I-just-got-up-this-morning calculations:

Statistics accuracy in predicting the winner: chance to win
100% accuracy: 1
90% accuracy: 1 / 763
80% accuracy: 1 / 1274473
70% accuracy: 1 / 5738831574
60% accuracy: 1 / 94726442140000
50% accuracy (all teams are equally good): 1 / 9223372036854775808
n accuracy: n^63

So, how good are statistics in predicting the outcome of a match these days?

probability-models

asked 22 Jan '14, 03:56

Geoffrey De ... ♦
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@lamclay's blog has some nice posts about this topic: https://punkrockor.wordpress.com/tag/march-madness/

For instance, GATech's LRMC team claims 70-80% accuracy for its model-based approach:

link

answered 22 Jan '14, 12:24

fbahr ♦
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accept rate: 13%

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Asked: 22 Jan '14, 03:56

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Last updated: 23 Jan '14, 03:54

How often are sport statistics right?

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