It is time for the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Sixty-four teams dream big (er…I mean 68…well actually by now, 64) and schools like Iona and Florida Gulf Coast University (go Eagles!) are hoping that Robert Morris astounding victory in the N.I.T. isn’t just a flash in the pan.

My favorite part is filling out the bracket–see it below. (Imagine that…a statistician’s favorite part of the whole thing is making predictions.) Even President Obama filled out a bracket [see it here].

My method for making predictions, I use a complicated formula that involves “coolness” factors of team mascots, alphabetical order (but only conditional on particular seedings), waving of hands, and guesswork. But, that was because I didn’t have access to my student Rodrigo Zamith’s latest blog post until today.

Rodrigo has put together side-by-side visualizations of many of the pertinent basketball statistics (e.g., points scored, rebounds, etc.) using the R package ggplot2. This would have been very helpful in my decisions where the mascot measure failed me and I was left with a toss-up (e.g., Oklahoma vs. San Diego State).

Rodrigo has also made the data, not only from the 2012-2013 season available from his blog, but also the previous two seasons as well. Check it out at Rodrigo’s blog!

Now, all I have to do is hang tight until the 8:57pm (CST) game on March 22. Judging from the comparisons, it will be tight.