Lunardi delves into the early days of Bracketology, details its growth, and dispels the myths of the process The NCAA Tournament has become one of the most popular sports events in the country, consuming fans for weeks with the run to the Final Four and ultimately the crowning of the champion of college hoops.? Each March, millions of Americans fill out their bracket in the hopes of correctly predicting the future. Yet, there is no true Madness without the oft-debated question about what teams should be seeded where—from the Power-5 Blue Blood with some early season stumbles on their resume to the mid-major that rampaged through their less competitive conference season—and the inventor of Bracketology himself, Joe Lunardi, now reveals the mystery and science behind the legend. While going in depth on his ever-evolving predictive formula, Lunardi compares great teams from different eras with intriguing results, talks to the biggest names in college basketball about their perception of Bracketology (both good and bad), and looks ahead to the future of the sport and how Bracketology will help shape the conversation. This fascinating book is a must-read for college hoops fans and anyone who has aspired to win their yearly office pool.

Every March, the NCAA men's basketball tournament blankets newspapers and the Internet, and attracts millions of television viewers over the course of three weeks. Will a perennial favorite like Duke win? Or will it be a dark horse like Gonzaga? The phenomenon known as March Madness galvanizes a nation of viewers as few other sports events can. The reason? Bracketology. America eagerly watches as 64 teams become 32, then 16, then 8, then 4, then 2, and finally #1. Now it's time to use the same rigorous method for everything that really matters in culture, people, history, the arts and more. In The Enlightened Bracketologist the editors have organized the world's most haunting and maddeningly subjective questions into a scheme of binary pairings that finally reveal what is truly the best in its class: La Tache or Chateau Latour? (1) Barry Bonds or Terrell Owens? (2) "Vissi d'arte" or "Dove Sono"? (3) OJ verdict or JFK assassination? (4) "Top of the world, Ma" or "Nobody's perfect"? (5) Two by two, The Enlightened Bracketologist pits our cultural mainstays against each other; only the finest survive. Every double-page spread of this book will contain a series of brackets compiled by experts and celebrities, with text call-outs that highlight the reason why one competitor moves on and another doesn't. Already committed are Elvis Costello on popular songs; David Bouley on cookbooks; Leon Fleisher on piano music; Reneé Fleming on opera arias; Henry Beard on French phrases; Joseph Ward on wine.

From simulating complex phenomenon on supercomputers to storing the coordinates needed in modern 3D printing, data is a huge and growing part of our world. A major tool to manipulate and study this data is linear algebra. When Life is Linear introduces concepts of matrix algebra with an emphasis on application, particularly in the fields of computer graphics and data mining. Readers will learn to make an image transparent, compress an image and rotate a 3D wireframe model. In data mining, readers will use linear algebra to read zip codes on envelopes and encrypt sensitive information. Chartier details methods behind web search, utilized by such companies as Google, and algorithms for sports ranking which have been applied to creating brackets for March Madness and predict outcomes in FIFA World Cup soccer. The book can serve as its own resource or to supplement a course on linear algebra.

I HAVE more than 25 years of political, non-profi t fund raising experience.. Preston Walker brings a riveting and innovative focus to the fundraising world. Prestons book captures the ideal fundraising enthusiast.Making fundraising fun and exciting. Sure up your funds is on the cutting edge of raising capital. Love it.. Jeff rey Walker, MBA/HCM Dir. of Quality & System Improvement, American Heart Association

BASKETBALL Smartiepants is the most complete book on basketball ever written. Basketball Smartiepants was written for any reader that has any interest in basketball including the serious player, the pickup player, coaches, officials and every level of fan. Topics include NBA history, today's player, fundamentals for improving a player's game, Chemistry, The versatile and efficient player, limiting turnovers, practice and training, footwork, angles and spacing, individual and team offense and defense, passing, rebounding, coaching, Emotional Intelligence, pickup game etiquette, Characteristics of winning teams, common basketball injuries and rehabilitation, the senior player, and inspirational comments. Also covered are coaching "blind spots" and mistakes, why officials sometimes do not make calls, why games are at times inconsistently officiated, how to recognize a good official and how to properly work an official. For the basketball fan topics discussed include attending and watching games, Bacteriology and wagering on games and basketball on social media. Also discussed are personal interaction stories with famous basketball personnel including Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Mark Cuban and others. The single best informational source on basketball ever written. Author is a former coach, former official and has been playing since 1966.

Edited by Mark Reiter and Richard Sandomir, and featuring contributions from experts on everything from breakfast cereal and movie gunfights to First Ladies and bald guys, The Final Four of Everything celebrates everything that's great, surprising, or silly in America, using the foolproof method of bracketology to determine what we love or hate-and why. As certain to make you laugh as it will start friendly arguments, The Final Four of Everything is the perfect book for know-it-alls, know-a-littles, and anyone with an opinion on celebrity mugshots, literary heroes, sports nicknames, or bacon. Bracketology is a unique way of organizing information that dates back to the rise of the knockout (or single elimination) tournament, perhaps in medieval times. Its origins are not precisely known, but there was genius in the first bracket design that hasn't changed much over the years. You, of course, may be familiar with the bracket format via the NCAA basketball tournament pairings each March. If you've ever watched ESPN or participated in a March Madness office pool, you know what a bracket looks like. The Final Four of Everything takes the idea one step further, and applies the knockout format to every category BUT basketball. In areas where taste, judgment, and hard-earned wisdom really matter, we've set out to determine, truly, the Final Four of Everything.

Voters can do nothing until they have the facts---the hard, cold, true facts, and that is what Hugh Hewitt provides in THE BRIEF AGAINST OBAMA: The Rise, Fall & Epic Fail of the Hope & Change Presidency. Hugh makes the case that Obama's has been a disastrous presidency, a fiasco in fact, and reveals the president to be a wholly unprepared and incapable-of-learning ideologue whose nearly every move has been wrong, and whose almost every decision has been ill-conceived and poorly executed. But for the SEALs' dispatch of bin Laden and the military's removal of al-Awalki and other terrorists---whom the president still seeks to remove from Gitmo to domestic courts in the United States---Obama would be wholly without anything to claim as an achievement of his time in the Oval Office. In addition to the monumental failures of Obamacare, the soaring unemployment rate, the 2009 "stimulus" and the massive debt, Hugh Hewitt examines the scores and scores of broken promises and fraudulent forecasts, dozens of dodges and hundreds of disastrous innovations that President Obama has inflicted on America. It has been a reign of incompetency not before seen in the country---ever. According to Hewitt, President Obama is not just a failed president, but the most spectacularly failed president of modern times, and Hewitt's precise and lawyerly indictment is made to help the American people see what has happened, and what desperately needs to be done in the upcoming election. The path for the American people is clear and urgent: Barack Obama mustn't be allowed to run the country into the ground as the Commander-in-Chief for four more years.