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The odds behind picking a perfect bracket

UT Tyler assistant professor, Scott Lalonde, talks about the odds of picking the perfect bracket. He also mentions other things people have a better chance a doing than picking the perfect bracket.
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With all the March Madness hoopla going on and everyone seems to be filling out a bracket.

We wanted to see what the odds are of picking out a perfect bracket are.

UT Tyler assistant professor of mathematics, Scott Lalonde, talked about the odds of picking a perfect bracket. He says there’s a 1 in 9.2 quintillion odds of picking the perfect bracket.

To put that into perspective there are an estimated 7.5 quintillion pieces of sand on the earth. Now, don't let those odds get you down. he did mention that you have better odds at winning the Powerball than picking a perfect bracket

"I looked up the odds of winning the Powerball earlier and that's about 1 in 292 million,” said Lalonde. “Almost a thousand times better odds than even the best estimate I’ve seen for picking the perfect bracket."

Your chances are a little better however the more you know about the sport.

"Even if you say pick every two out of three games correctly that's still going to amount to that 1 in one hundred and something billion odds," added Lalonde.

According to the NCAA website, you have a 1 in 11,500 chance of winning an academy award and a 1 in 10 million chance of becoming president.

"No matter what, it's still in some sense comes down to chance and you are always going to have to make some simplifying assumptions,” Lalonde said. “To actually come up with a reasonable answer and so there’s no perfect way to model things exactly."

Now, there are a few other things you have better odds at doing than picking a perfect bracket.

The odds of finding a four leaf clover are 1 in 10,000 and odds of making a half-court shot at a halftime competition are 1 in 50.

If you haven't filled out a bracket you click here to download yours today.

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