March Madness Maths

Every year a basketball tournament is held across the United States that is called March Madness! The tournament is usually held from March – April each year. It is a women’s and men’s basketball tournament run by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).

This year the tournament was especially interesting for us, as we had started to collaborate with a Davidson College mathematician called Tim Chartier. Tim is currently serving as the Distinguished Visiting Professor at MoMath – the Museum of Mathematics in New York. Tim is fascinated by sports analytics and has a great book about data in sports, called Get in the Game. Tim made a video for us that accompanies the task (the link is in the handout), which should interest any student who is learning about probability.