Creating a March Madness bracket with Machine Learning

March Madness is upon us here in the US. This annual college basketball competition pits 64 teams in a single-elimination tournament, and the team that goes undefeated for all 6 rounds will be named NCAA Champion. Predicting the winners of the competition, and in particular completing a "bracket" of the teams you predict to make it to the final 32 or 16 and eventually win, is a popular pastime (and foundation for many wagers). Some use their knowledge of the teams or the betting markets to select their bracket. If you'd like to try your hand at your own predictions based on machine learning, Azure ML (part of the Cortana Analytics suite) provides all the data, algorithms, and R and Python support you need.