March Madness Bracket

Question

What are the odds of someone predicting/guessing an entire region?

I realize the odds of predicting/guessing a perfect bracket are very long. However, my friend predicted/guessed an entire region. The Midwest Region. 15 correct picks. I was just really impressed and couldn’t find data on it. Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

Eric is correct if you assume that each team has an equal chance of winning each game, but this isn't true in practice. The 1 seed in a region has a much higher than 50% chance of beating the 16 seed for example. You would need to know the true probability that each of his picks would win that specific game in order to accurately calculate this.

Answer 2

Hi Matt,

In a region, there are 16 teams, which means there are 15 single elimination matches to be played. Thus the odds of correctly predicting each match correctly is 1/(2^15), or 1/32,768. So he did something that is only expected to occur 0.003% of the time.

Congrats to your friend on making the right picks!

Best,

Eric