Three Georgia Tech engineering professors have developed LRMC (Logistic Regression Markov Chain), a computer ranking system designed to predict this year's NCAA Final Four matchups.  LRMC predicts that the Final Four will most likely be Ohio State vs. Duke and Kansas vs. Brigham Young University (BYU), with Ohio State beating Kansas for the championship.

Since the 2000 season, LRMC has correctly predicted the outcomes of more NCAA tournament games than competing ranking systems and major polls.  Last year, LRMC correctly predicted the winners of 51 out of 64 NCAA games – beating out more than 50 of the top ranking sites. In 2008, the system predicted not only the Final Four, final two and the eventual victor, but also several upsets in earlier rounds.

Developed by Georgia Tech Industrial and Systems Engineering Professors Joel Sokol, Paul Kvam and George Nemhauser, with assistance from Mark Brown, math professor at City College of New York, LRMC utilizes data such as home court advantage, scores, teams competing, margin of victory in past performances, and even statistical methods to determine potential underdogs to calculate likely victors.  “The system bounces from team to team looking at their results, trying to hone in on who is really No. 1,” Sokol said. “The team that it keeps coming back to most often is our No. 1, and so on.”

The system has proven more reliable with its predictions than the NCAA’s own Ratings Percentage Index (RPI). Historically, the upgraded LRMC method has picked the winner of more than 74 percent of tournament games correctly, while the RPI has been right less than 70 percent of the time.