march madness probability?

[slickterp]

ok. first, let me say that as a reader of osme posts here, i bow to the vastly superior mathmatical knowledge here. i am often lost halfway thorugh reading posts, though i do find them very interesting, as i enjoy the challenge, etc. that said, can one of you guys tell me the probablility of guessing every single game on a march madness bracket? 64 teams, 63 games. i have always wondered, but never found an answer. thanks in advance if anyone can answer this.

[Lexander]

There isn't going to be a nice, perfect answer to this.

Since you have to get 63 distinct events correct, you could in theory assign a probability of getting each one right, and then multiply them all together. Properly constructed, your chances of getting a 3rd round winner correct would require some conditional probabilities.

Since we don't know the 63 unknown probabilities, at best we can estimate them. Since this is pretty close to a binomial distribution, using it to provide some estimates might be instructive. If you average 19 in 20 correct, you are still 1 in 40 to get 63 independent picks right, and since that is a bit optimistic but you still average 3 in 4, your chances are over 74 million to 1. It gets worse from there.

[slickterp]

all i needed was that ballpark. 74 million to one. thanks alot.