Hoop fans rejoice--it's here! March Madness has arrived with it's usual frenzy! According to a survey, the NCAA's annual tournament costs U.S. employers $1.8 billion! 45% of workers enter office pools and spend about 20 minutes of their workday focusing on basketball.
So, just how hard is it to pick a perfect bracket? Check out the article below.
A Gazillion Chances To Miss A Pick
By Marlen Garcia
USA TODAY
DePaul math professor and NCAA basketball tournament buff Jeffrey Bergen has numbers that will make your head spin on how difficult it is to predict early winners in the tournament.
Bergen shared facts and figures with USA TODAY. They might help you or they may not help you as you fill out your bracket for your office pool or just for your own enjoyment. And they might intimidate you.
Either way, the odds are certainly daunting:
*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.
*It is virtually impossible to pick all of the first-round games correctly. The number of ways for the first round to turn out: 4,294,967,296.
Yet if you assume all of the No. 1 seeds will win in the first round, then the number of ways to pick all of the first-round games drops to 268,435,456.
If you assume all of the Nos. 1 and 2 seeds will win in the first round, then the number of ways to pick all of the first-round games drops to 16,777,216.
*The number of ways to pick the teams that will make the Final Four: 65,536.
If you assume that teams only seeded No. 1 through No. 8 will make the Final Four (this usually happens), then the number of ways to pick the teams that will make the Final Four drops -- to 4,096.
On the other hand, the NCAA is considering expanding the tournament to 96 teams.
If the tournament has 96 teams, then the number of ways to fill out a bracket explodes -- to39,614,081,257,132,168,796,771,975,168.
It would be only slightly easier to predict the winner of every game in a 96-team tournament than it is to win the state lottery four weeks in a row while buying one ticket a week.
Or it is the same as today predicting the winner of every presidential election (Democrat vs. Republican) through the year 2388.
Will the Chicago Cubs win the World Series by then?
(c) Copyright 2010 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
