Greatest Golf Moments Probability Question

[Danenania]

So I was looking through a Golf Magazine and happened upon an interesting contest. The Magazine is listing the top 45 golf moments of all time, 5 at a time per issue. The contest works like this: correctly predict the top 10 of these moments, in order, and win $45,000.

This got me thinking a bit and I was trying to figure how difficult it would be to win a contest like this. There are so many combinations that I imagine it would take a large group of people all sending in their lists (and splitting the profits) to win.

I decided that with some research it would probably be possible to narrow down to about 20 or 25 candidates for the top 10. It would then be necessary to weight each candidate mathematically as some would be more likely to be in the top 10 than others. A few would even be locks, which would help a lot.

My question is, assuming no inside knowledge, how large of a group would you need in order to have a good chance of winning this contest? Have fun.

[daryn]

no idea, but #1 is that time i made a hole in one on the 18th hole at hago harrington's mini golf to not only win the game by 1 stroke, but win a free game as well.

[aloiz]

Even if you somehow knew the top ten, there'd still be 3,628,800 possible orderings. With 20 possibilities you're looking at 2.43E18 orderings. So let's say you could get it down to 15 possibilities, with 3 locks, and 4 others you're sure are in the top ten. Now you're looking at C(8,3) * 7! = 282,240. In other words, I doubt you'll be able to get it down to a number where you could cover all possibilities, and be near certain that you got the answer.

aloiz