During a commercial break for the FOX News At Ten, Joe Keiley wondered aloud if it was easier to win the Powerball, or to correctly pick every game right in your NCAA Bracket.
I put my friend “Miami Dave” to the test – and of course – he seems to have figured it out. He tried to explain it to me, but it was way over my head. So here is Miami Dave: guest blogger. Long story short: play Powerball.
kevin
SUBJECT: BRACKETOLOGY
Greetings to my friends in the Orange Couch nation!
This is Miami Dave, the oft-mentioned sometimes-sidekick of your soon-to-be-famous weekend sportscaster, Kevin “The Michael Jordan of Sportscasters” Hull.
I have pondered for some time now a worthwhile first foray into the Orange Couch. Nothing ever seemed quite right. But this evening, during a short conversation with Kevin (which, I can assure you – corporate eavesdroppers – did not happen on company time), it all dawned on me.
For those of you who do not know me, I am a numbers guy. That’s why I became a broadcast journalist. Wait, never mind. I can tell you – off the top of my head – that the odds of hitting a “yo bet” in craps (11 on the first roll) are 1 in 18 – though it only pays 16 to 1. Stupid Vegas odds. When it comes to cards, I can tell you with absolute certainty that you should call any bet in a limit game of Texas Hold ‘Em if you have nine solid outs. Unless, of course, you are playing against someone with the same first name as a city. Then you should get up and walk away from the table. Ten minutes ago.
But more than anywhere else, my affinity for numbers bears itself out in a glorious computer program, Microsoft Excel. I have an Excel spreadsheet for just about everything: the family grocery list, my investment accounts, budgets… and most importantly, my Fantasy NASCAR Team: Spreadsheet Motorsports. Last year, with no prior knowledge of the sport, the Fantasy NASCAR spreadsheet (complete with vital driver statistics, photos, sponsor logos, and detailed statistical formulas for each track) vaulted me to the top of the standings in the ORANGE COUCH Fantasy NASCAR league by Week 3, where I would remain for 33 successive weeks en route to a stunning championship victory. Keep in mind, I cannot even change the oil in my 1998 Acura. Who needs any knowledge of racing when you can use standard deviation instead?!
Back to our conversation tonight: Kevin off-handedly mentioned to me that there had been some discussion in the WECT newsroom about the odds of filling out a perfect NCAA bracket. And which was easier: winning the Powerball jackpot or nailing every pick in a 64-team tournament (we’ll spot you the play-in game).
Seemed simple enough, really. Keeping in mind that selecting winners in a tournament bracket requires dependent probability (since picking a winner in round two is dependent on picking the winner in round one), a perfect 63 for 63 selection streak can be represented statistically as:
2 to the 63rd power.
Or, if you’re like me, you enter 2 into the first cell of a spreadsheet, then multiply it by 2 in the next 62 cells. Which gives you the odds of pulling off this stunning feat:
1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 -or- 1 in 9.223 QUINTILLION -or- 9.223 million trillion to one. So, in case you are presently crying in your beer over missing that West Virginia win over the Blue Devils, know that the odds of picking a perfect bracket are so stupid, they cannot even be represented by a rational thought. Everyone on this blog is now dumber for just trying to conceive it.
In other words, start buying Powerball tickets. In fact, your chances of winning the Powerball jackpot (1 in 146,107,962) are actually 63,127,100,745 times better than picking the perfect bracket. Statistically speaking, you would hit the Powerball Jackpot 63 BILLION TIMES before you hit your first perfect NCAA bracket.
Those sound like good odds to me. Can someone buy me a ticket? They don’t have Powerball in Miami.
In the meantime, Kevin and I have vowed to fill out each of these 9.223 quintillion brackets so we can be the first to claim perfection. He’ll start by picking all the favorites. I’ll do the same, but pick all the underdogs. We should meet somewhere in the middle, around 4.1 quintillion brackets later – or sometime tomorrow night.
I assure you, none of this will be done on company time.
Kevin again: I hope some of that made sense to you, because I don’t get it at all. And don’t worry, I’ll post something stupid in the next couple of days to dumb the site down again.
Best part: Miami Dave isn’t my only friend who could have figured this out. I have no idea how I ended up with so many smart friends because there is NO WAY I would have even known where to start on this problem.
Most importantly – Siena plays tomorrow. Here’s hoping for a trip to the Sweet 16.
Anyways – the photo is of Miami Vice since “Miami Dave” was our guest blogger. It was on some other blog so we’ll just say its from NBC.
