This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's March 27 Analytics Issue. Subscribe today!
Decisions, decisions. For 11 years, as we have prospected for March Madness Cinderellas, our Giant Killers project has followed one principle: Isolate the statistical elements common to big favorites and deep underdogs from the past, so as to screen new contestants for those traits to predict the future. Works pretty well, but now-thanks to math professors Liz Bouzarth, John Harris and Kevin Hutson, our Giant Killer colleagues at Furman University-we've added a wrinkle, one that reflects more intuitively how humans make tough choices.