The Odds

[Fred588]

There was a story on one of the news pages today to the effect that there is an offer of a nice prize [to the tune of one Billion dollars] to anyone who can correctly call the entire NCAA basketball bracket. What are the odds? Let's assume you are a basketeball genius and can reliably get it right 60 percent of the time. [If you could actually do that forget the prize and just become a gambler and you will soon own the universe.]

Anyway, suppose you can pick games 60 percent of the time. That means that the chance of winning a bet on one game is .6. If there are two games you have that chance on each game, but the challenge here is to crrectly call BOTH games. The odds of doing that are .6 times .6 or .36. If there are three games the odds become .6 times .6 times .6, which is .21. But the entire tournament is, I believe, 68 games. The odds become .6 raised to the 68th power. That comes to .00000000000000082. Not so good.


I will bet even money there is no winner.

[Fred588]

And I'll also bet that the team that scores the most points will win the Super Bowl.

[BSink42]

Still, it's hard not to be tempted to try for a perfect bracket with money like that on the line.

And I don't even pay much attention to College Basketball until it's Final Four time.

[MadMax359]

I've done a March Madness bracket every year since the 70s, even won the pool I was in a couple of times
but I consider it great if I only miss 2-3 per Regional, I can't even imagine getting Every Pick right

did anyone see, what does this cost to enter?

[Fred588]

I've done a March Madness bracket every year since the 70s, even won the pool I was in a couple of times
but I consider it great if I only miss 2-3 per Regional, I can't even imagine getting Every Pick right

did anyone see, what does this cost to enter?

I believe there is no cost (perhaps a stamp to mail the entry?). If there was a charge to enter it would probably be considered a form of number game, which would be illegal I think.

[Chimerix]

Well, 68 games in a single-elimination bracket isn't THAT many combinations, cosmologically speaking. Start filling in entry blanks!

[Fred588]

Actually it fits in really well, cosmologically. Two raised to the 68th power is not too far off from the estimated number of elementary particles in the universe. According to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

the number of hydrogen atoms in the entire universe is 10 to the 50th

[Duncan Edwards]

You don't get this kind of stuff on ESPN.

[Fred588]

You don't get this kind of stuff on ESPN.

No, you don't. You get "experts" who can, right off the top of their heads, predict the bracket and get around half of their predictions right.

I will predict that, in every case, the team who "mascot" name is alphabetically first will win every game in the tournament. Further, I predict that I will be right about half the time.

[Duncan Edwards]

You don't get this kind of stuff on ESPN.

No, you don't. You get "experts" who can, right off the top of their heads, predict the bracket and get around half of their predictions right.

I will predict that, in every case, the team who "mascot" name is alphabetically first will win every game in the tournament. Further, I predict that I will be right about half the time.

I've been tossing a quarter and I think you're right. I was once told that 50% of all statisticians finish in the bottom half of their class. Those must be the group that television hires from.