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Beginning today, 30 million Americans, or 10 percent of the US, will participate in some kind of NCAA tournament pool. Experts estimate wagering may reach more than three billion dollars, with everyone, of course, trying to pick the perfect bracket. But the odds of that are not very good. Bell figures that the odds of picking a perfect bracket are 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 1. Thatʼs nine quintillion to one! How big is that number? It is a billion times as big as 9 billion!
Think of it this way: if every man, woman, and child on the planet randomly filled out 10 million brackets each, the odds would be LESS than 1% that even one would have a perfect bracket. How tall would every possible bracket be, on paper of normal thickness? That stack would reach from the earthʼs surface to the sun over six thousand times! That stack would be 19.5 million times the height of Mount Everest!
Think of it this way: if every man, woman, and child on the planet randomly filled out 10 million brackets each, the odds would be LESS than 1% that even one would have a perfect bracket. How tall would every possible bracket be, on paper of normal thickness? That stack would reach from the earthʼs surface to the sun over six thousand times! That stack would be 19.5 million times the height of Mount Everest!