one more thought on March Madness (pools)

From Mindy Belz in World...

The odds on randomly picking every game correctly for the NCAA tournament:

For any savvy college basketball fans with illusions of achieving perfection in their March Madness tournament bracket this year, consider this: The odds of correctly selecting every winner in the 64-team field are about one in 9 quintillion—9,223,372,036,854,775,808, to be exact. That number doubles if the play-in game is included.

Were some mathematical zealot to fill out every possible 64-team bracket on letter-size paper, the sheets would bury the entire surface of the globe 50 feet deep. To pull the right page from that pulp stack is about as likely as winning California's Super Lotto Jackpot three times in a row.

Of course, many games in the first round of the tournament are near locks, reducing the odds considerably. No 16 seed has ever dethroned a top seed. Still, even if the entire first round is discarded, the chance for perfection is about one in 2 billion.