4 ms·
The article misquotes the odds of picking the first two rounds correctly. 1 in 13,460,000 is the historical odds of picking the first 2 rounds correctly if you
by qeorge 17y ago
The article misquotes the odds of picking the first two rounds correctly. 1 in 13,460,000 is the historical odds of picking the first 2 rounds correctly if you always picked the top seed in each game.
In other words: think of the tournament's seeding as a bracket filled out by the NCAA itself. There's only a 1 in 13 million chance that it will be right through the first 2 rounds.
What this kid did is amazing. Its more than the inevitable result of enough random guesses.
- houseabsolute 17y agoHrm, hang on a second. That actually makes it sound substantially less impressive. There are five million people playing this year on ESPN alone. Even if we assume that only a quarter of them have guesses that are as predictive as the seed numbers, that would mean we'd only have to go a decade or so before we'd get a situation like this.
- qeorge 17y agoESPN is a great example. This year no one predicted even the first round correctly, much less the first two. In fact, only 3 people out of 5 million got only one game wrong in the first round. The main problem with your logic is that most people make the same choices. For example, only 1% of ESPN brackets had Cornell surviving the first 2 rounds this year, while 73% thought Kansas would make the championship. To my knowledge, no one on ESPN.com has ever predicted all 65 games in the first 2 rounds correctly.
- houseabsolute 17y ago> The main problem with your logic is that most people make the same choices. You are right, my analysis is terrible. Boom, inferiority admitted.
- WarDekar 17y agoThat would indeed be tough, considering there are only 48 games in the first 2 rounds.