Previous Sweet 16 Themes: [ 13 - SportsNation | 12 - Amazing Race | 11 - Year-by-Year | 10 - Health Care | 09 - American Cancer Society | 08 - Who Is The Mole? | 07 - TV Shows | 06 - Awards ]
And may the odds be ever in your favor!
![[ Quicken Loans Billion $ Bracket Challenge ]](https://www.hwci.com/ncaa/2014/images/n2014_billion$bracket.png)
Of course, the odds up to the start of the Round of 32 was still 4,294,967,296 (4.2 billion) to 1, not accounting that each game has a different probability of winning (e.g., the 4.2 billion assumes each game has a 50/50 chance of either team winning but we know, for example, the #16 seed has basically >1% chance). So try beating 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 1 (9.2 quintillion) to get all 63 games correct (that number is greater than the national debt of $17,560, 724,125,874 (17.5 trillion). Even ![[ National Debt 3/27/2014 ]](https://www.hwci.com/ncaa/2014/images/n2014_debt.gif){kind=small}
if you were to weigh each game (e.g., #1 has 90% beating #16, #2 85% over #15, #3 80% over #14, etc.), you still would be about 70 billion to 1. And for the first 32 games, it’s about 45,000 to 1 (very reasonable and has happened (not in our pool) quite a few times in the past in other national pools). Over 20 years, we’ve had only 1,559 entries which means sometime in the next 569 years we will have our perfect 32-0 bracket! If the games were split evenly over the first two days (e.g., two #1 seeds play Thursday, two on Friday), then weighing the probabilities, it’s only 211 to 1 to be a perfect 16-0. And in our pool, we’ve had 5 perfect 16-0 entries (including 2 this year) which means our actual ratio is 312 to 1, which is close to 211 to 1. Don’t you love it when the math works out?
Anyway, if you had gone 48-0 by now, the odds are only 1 in 32,768 or if weighted, as good as 1 in 4,114 (it’ll be higher because not all #1, #2, #3, and #4 seeds will make the Sweet 16) to complete the perfect bracket. Seems reasonable. So, if I had a hot tub time machine and was able to tell myself how to pick the bracket to get to 48-0 to be on my way to a Billion Dollar bracket, here are 16 pieces to the puzzle.
- Chalk. Start with all the favorites (seed-wise). There were only 14 upsets of the 48 games.
- N’names. A couple big schools have some weird Continue reading