Nate Silver suggests Barack Obama is playing politics -- with his NCAA bracket. It's a neat bit of mathematical detective work:
I set up a simple logistic regression model containing two independent and one dependent variable. The dependent variable is an indication of whether Obama picked the favorite or the underdog; the variable took on the value of 1 if Obama selected the favorite (that is, the team with the lower seed) and 0 if he took the underdog (the team with the higher seed). In cases where both teams had the same seed (this only occurs once the teams reach the Final 4), the favorite is designated as the team with the higher Associated Press ranking.The first dependent variable, seeddiff, is the seeding difference between the two clubs. For example, in a game featuring a 7-seed and a 10-seed, seeddiff is 3.The other dependent variable, swingdiff, is an indication of the relative closeness of the two states in the November election.
Nate finds that "the value for seeddiff is significant and positive, indicating (unsurprisingly) that Obama was more inclined to pick the team with the superior seed, and that this inclination increased with the seeding difference. However, the value for swingdiff is also positive, and significant at the 90 percent probability threshold (although not quite at the 95 percent threshold). It appears probable, therefore, that Obama did in fact have some tendency to prefer teams from swing states in filling out his bracket."These are not brackets I can believe in.
