If your brother-in-law or someone at work asks you to fill out a March Madness bracket, don’t worry about not being an expert . . . it won’t help much . . . because it’s basically impossible.
The odds of finishing with a PERFECT bracket . . . guessing all the games correctly . . . is 1-in-120 BILLION. That’s assuming you know something about college basketball going in, and consider how the teams are seeded.
If you’re a non-fan who just guesses based on something arbitrary like flipping a coin, the odds soar to 1-in-9.2 QUINTILLION.
One mathematician put it this way: “You have better odds of winning the Powerball with two consecutive tickets than getting a perfect bracket . . .
“[And] you have better odds that a family of four will all get hit by lightning [separately] in their lifetime.” (Which is kind of bleak, but sure.)
And: “There’s a 1-in-10,000 chance that you get injured by a TOILET in your lifetime . . . so there are better odds that that same family of four all get injured by a toilet than picking a perfect bracket.”
And NO ONE has officially submitted a perfect bracket . . . ever. The longest streak of perfection was a neuropsychologist from Ohio who managed to pick the winner in the first 49 games in 2019 correctly. There are 63 games in total.
So just fill it out for fun . . . and who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky, and everyone in your family will trip over a toilet and get struck by lightning. (???)
(CNN)