Another regular season has come and gone, which means it’s time to run our postseason simulator again to see who the title favorites are and where to look for the most likely upsets along the way.
Methodology
We collected all of the scores from the 2023 season and removed those from gymnasts who are known to have season-ending injuries. We wrote a script that randomly selects scores from the remaining pool to simulate a meet, with gymnasts who competed more often during the season being more likely to make the lineup in the simulated meet. We also accounted for the fact that there are more judges in the postseason by adding or subtracting 0.0125 from some of the scores, determined randomly in each simulation. Finally, we expanded the script to simulate the entire bracket, starting with the play-in rounds and finishing with the national final. We ran this script 10,000 times.
As teams that perform better as the season wears on generally have a better showing at regionals and nationals, we prioritized the weighted simulation method we introduced last year. In the results below, runs are weighted by month, meaning late-season scores count more than early-season scores to capture the impact of teams gaining momentum over the course of the season.
Additionally, to allow…
