Winning the Lottery Twice
March 18, 2010 § 3 Comments
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So today is the first day of the NCAA tournament. If you haven’t filled out your bracket yet, well, it’s probably too late. Karen and I get excited every year (some more than others depending on how our team is doing) for the big opening day. You have a freshly filled out bracket. Nobody has lost yet so in your mind, the bracket you have filled out could very well be “The Perfect Bracket.”
Ah yes, the perfect bracket. How likely is it to have one? Well let’s see. According to this article, the number of ways to fill out a bracket, once the play-in game is out of the way: 9,223,372,036,854,775,808.
You are much more likely to win a multimillion-dollar lottery on consecutive weekends than getting a perfect bracket.
It would be easier to sit down today and correctly predict the winner of each of the next 12 World Series.
It would be the same as correctly predicting the winner of every presidential election (Democrat vs. Republican) through the year 2260.
So yeah, the likelihood of me having the perfect bracket is slim to say the least. But, I am feeling pretty lucky this year 🙂 We’ll see how I feel after today is over.
jacksmasterblog.wordpress.com 
I disagree with your math. You are assuming each team has an even chance of winning. 2^63 would yield your result, but some games are clearly favored for one team over the other. If the games were decided by a coin flip, then your number would be correct.
My head hurts.
The problem is that nobody in their right mind in a million yrs would ever pick a Northern Iowa over Kansas or an Ohio over Georgetown, which makes it that much more difficult unless you plan on filling out multiple quintillions of brackets. In three days.