Who’s Going To Win The NCAA Basketball Tournament? Find Out Using LinkedIn Profile Data

LinkedIn NCAA Champion

LinkedIn NCAA ChampionThe Madness has finally arrived folks. Monster upsets and heartbreaking buzzer-beaters are on the way! But who’s going to win it all? As a basketball fan, March Madness always brings a certain level of excitement unlike any other sport. I love filling out brackets and predicting winners, despite never being right. Well, today LinkedIn is lending a hand with an interesting new way of picking the brackets using data analyzed from over 200+ million profiles on LinkedIn.

See college basketball fans are a dedicated bunch, so LinkedIn has come up with a “dedication score” based on people’s LinkedIn profiles using the following formula.

For each school in the tournament, LinkedIn calculated:

(# of current students and alumni with the word “basketball” in their profile) / (total # of current students and alumni) = Dedication Score

Whatever teams have the higher “dedication score” wins their game and advances into the next round of the bracket.

So who was the big winner?
Gonzaga University!

LinkedIn NCAA Champion

It turns out Gonzaga has over 15,700 students and alumni on LinkedIn, and nearly 2.5% of them reference the term “basketball” in their profile. And no bracket is complete without some Cinderella story teams, and LinkedIn’s bracket doesn’t disappoint with Valparaiso. With around 14,000 students and alumni on LinkedIn and a “dedication score” of 1.8%, the Crusaders will shock powerhouses Michigan State, Duke and Louisville in route to the Final Four. Now you may be thinking what does team dedication have to do with performance on the floor? Well, never underestimate the 6th man in the crowd when every tournament game seems to go to the wire. Plus, I’ve never come close to calling a perfect bracket before so this “dedication score” seems like a neat angle to go with for a few spoilers this year.

But college basketball is just one of many tools in which people use to stay connected to their schools and old friends. Check out LinkedIn’s Alumni tool, which allows you to find and connect with other people who graduated from your alma mater.

So who do you like to win the NCAA Championship this year?

 

Daniel Zeevi

By Daniel Zeevi

Daniel is a social network architect, web developer, infographic designer, writer, speaker and founder of DashBurst. Full-time futurist and part-time content curator, always on the hunt for disruptive new technology, creative art and web humor.

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