“Matt”:http://mattweiner.net/blog/archives/000163.html thinks he can jump in the philosophy/basketball competition. Not so fast. Below is the __definitive__ take on how to confuse philosophy with basketball, with a surprise twist at the end.
First, the methodology. As with most debates in methodology, I’m going to pull a method out of, er, the sun, and then move on. You can try arguing against me, but I’m not going to give you many arguments to attack.
A school’s ranking is the product of two factors:
bq. (a) it’s tournament seed, and
(b) it’s “Leiter ranking”:http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/overall.htm
Note that for Leiter ties, I’ve averaged out the places the school is tied over. So Arizona, which is in an 8th/9th/10th/11th place tie, gets a Leiter ranking of 9.5 for current purposes. Ties get resolved in favour of stronger philosophy ranking. As an old-school traditionalist, I refuse to use any names for the conferences other than North, South, West and Midwest. So here are the rankings.
*Midwest Division*
Washington – 268
UIC – 481
By far the weakest philosophy/basketball division.
*Eastern Division*
Pittsburgh – 15
Wisconsin – 135
If you divide by 15, the Pitt/Wisconsin matchup is a 1 vs 9. Yesterday I was watching a 1 vs 9 from last year (Arizona/Gonzaga) on ESPN Classic, and they reminded us that the 1 seed is 39-2 in those games. That’s like 5% chance of Badger success. I like those odds!
*South Division*
Princeton – 28
Duke – 28
Texas – 43.5
North Carolina – 72
Arizona – 85.5
Pretty good field. Arizona is 8th overall and 5th in their division. If Brian gave us the second decimal place on the Leiter rankings, Princeton could move above Pitt (if it’s first) or fall almost as far as Texas (if it’s third). I was really tempted to pick Princeton over Texas in my bracket, and I’ll be cheering for them regardless. Ivy League strength baby!
*Western Division*
Stanford – 6
Connecticut – 81
Maryland – 122
Syracuse – 160
Having Maryland seeded above Syracuse is crazy, as will be proven on the weekend.
So the overall standings are
# Stanford
# Pitt
# Princeton
# Duke
# Texas
# North Carolina
# Connecticut
# Arizona
# Maryland
# Wisconsin
# Syracuse
# Washington
# UIC
But we need to note a last minute piece of information. On the _Daily Show_, Jon Stewart, that well known basketball expert, said he was betting it all on Cornell for the second straight year. (Obviously he didn’t get it right last year, but he was close – only off by 60 miles. In college basketball, that’s close.)
Given how prestigious this pick is, I think we should make Cornell an honorary #1. That would give Cornell an overall score of 17.5, moving them into third place on the list.
But wait! Without wanting to be too self-indulgent, I think we need to factor into this the importance of TAAR moving to Cornell. It’s hard to measure just how important this is, but I think the following premise will be agreed to by all parties.
bq. Cornell philosophy is now stronger than Cornell basketball.
I think that’s fairly uncontroversial. So if Cornell’s a 1 is basketball, they have to be _at least_ a 1 in philosophy. That gives them an overall ranking, of, let’s see here, I think it’s 1. So the new completely impartial and obviously correct philosophy/basketball rankings are
# Cornell
# Stanford
# Pitt
# Princeton
# Duke
# Texas
# North Carolina
# Connecticut
# Arizona
# Maryland
# Wisconsin
# Syracuse
# Washington
# UIC
For a somewhat less serious take on the tournament, here’s “my bracket”:http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/homepages/weatherson/bracket.mht. (I saved that out of IE6, so I suspect it will only open in browser’s that are Satanically possessed.) For a more serious take, here’s “Andy Egan’s bracket”:http://www.geocities.com/eganamit/bracket.html.
I might write something up over the weekend about the moral dilemma one faces in making brackets like this between the (entirely appropriate) desire to crush one’s enemies in competition, and the (weak-willed) temptation to support your favourite team. Andy of course gave in to temptation, cheese-eating surrender monkey that he is, while I stayed on the crush kill and destroy path.
I think the support is nice though. I was talking to the Wisconsin players last night, and several of them said that if Andy hadn’t picked them to go all the way, they couldn’t have faced the world. They would have basically packed it in. They couldn’t have even beaten “Richmond”:http://richmondfc.com.au/. And losing to a team that doesn’t contain a single basketball player, that would have been awful. So maybe this is all for the best.
If Wisconsin does go deep in the tournament, Andy will win the pool by a long way. On the other hand, if Stanford go deep, I’ll still be competing with the 20 other people who also picked Stanford. So maybe Andy’s strategy is the right one here.