http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati ... s/6410185/Quicken Loans and Warren Buffett are offering up to 15 million people a very, very, very small chance to win a very, very, very big prize — a billion dollars for filling out a perfect NCAA men's basketball tournament bracket.
No one in recorded history has done it. "People realize it's a long shot,'' says Jeff Bergen, a mathematician at DePaul University in Chicago. "They don't realize how long.''
The tournament's field and pairings are announced Sunday. Since the Quicken contest to predict its outcome has no entry fee, many entrants presumably will enter knowing nothing of men's college basketball, other than they'd like to make a billion bucks off it.
Result: A lot of brackets are going to border on random selection, which means winning is going to take a lot of luck.
How much luck? Bergen says the chance of randomly predicting the outcome of the main draw's 63 games is one in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808.
Still, the Billion Dollar Bracket Challenge has an appeal.
"How many ways can you make March Madness fresh?'' asks Brad Carlin, professor of something called biostatistics at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and an amateur bracketologist who admits he's intrigued by what amounts to a stunt.
"A billion is a big number,'' he says. "It's a bet the bookies won't take.''
Jason Mandel, a Philadelphia legal recruiter who's run the Mandel Madness tournament pool for the last 21 years, agrees: "It's a great piece of marketing, a great gimmick.''
Don't be totally discouraged by those long odds. With a modicum of knowledge, you can improve them.
For instance, a No. 1 (highest) seed has never lost to a No. 16 (lowest) seed in any of the four regional tournaments into which the big one is divided since 1985.
With information like that, Bergen estimates, you can significantly reduce the odds against you … to 128 billion to 1.[Okay, now we're talkin!]
That means you'd still have less chance of winning the billion than of:
Seeing your favorite team win the next seven World Series.
Predicting which political party will win the presidency in every election from 2016 through 2160 (assuming the winner is always a Republican or a Democrat).
Flipping a coin and getting heads 37 times in a row.
"It's highly, highly, highly unlikely anyone will win,'' Bergen says, "but you can still have fun with it.''
The Billion Dollar Bracket Challenge is backed by an insurance policy issued by a company in Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate. The contest is limited to 15 million individuals, each of whom can submit one bracket.
In addition to the big prize, Quicken will award $100,000 for each of the contest's 20 most accurate brackets.
Players, who must register online through Yahoo! Sports, have until 1 a.m. ET Thursday to submit their selections. The tournament's first 16 games are played later that day.
You Can Be A Billionaire!
You Can Be A Billionaire!
But don't start taking out loans against your winnings, just yet:
Last edited by Lord Jim on Fri Mar 21, 2014 12:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: You Can Be A Bilionaire!
I think there are two "L's" in "bilionaire."
If Italy were still on the Lire, we could all be bilionaires any time we wanted to.
If Italy were still on the Lire, we could all be bilionaires any time we wanted to.
Re: You Can Be A Bilionaire!
First game and most of the billionaire brackets are busted -- only 19% of the players had Dayton beating Ohio State.
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, paraphrasing Sarah Moore Grimké
Re: You Can Be A Bilionaire!
I guess it won't come as a surprise to learn who I'm rooting for to win it all...
(I watched our historic triumph over Duke "Richard Nixon's Law School" University in the ACC Championship...
Great game
)
We have our first "test " in The Big Dance against these no account over-achievers:
ETA:
Q. What kind of a school names their sports teams after a medieval fairytale rooster?
A. The kind that loses...
(I watched our historic triumph over Duke "Richard Nixon's Law School" University in the ACC Championship...
Great game
)We have our first "test " in The Big Dance against these no account over-achievers:
What kind of a school names their sports teams after a medieval fairytale rooster?Playing in the second round, the No. 1 UVA Cavaliers take on the No. 16 Coastal Carolina Chanticleers.
ETA:
Q. What kind of a school names their sports teams after a medieval fairytale rooster?
A. The kind that loses...
Last edited by Lord Jim on Fri Mar 21, 2014 1:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: You Can Be A Bilionaire!
Well thank you, you Miss Maggie Arglestrope wanna be...dgs49 wrote:I think there are two "L's" in "bilionaire."
If Italy were still on the Lire, we could all be bilionaires any time we wanted to.
I've corrected the typo in the subject line, so now you can find something else to be anal retentive about...
Re: You Can Be A Billionaire!
Actually, my second choice at a reaction was to refer to winning a "Brazillion" dollars, in reference to Al Gore's apocryphal error.
Re: You Can Be A Billionaire!
Forget long shots, I'm heading to the junk yard for my millions:
LONDON, March 19 (UPI) -- A U.S. scrap metal dealer intending to melt down an ornament for its gold was shocked to discover it was a $33 million Faberge egg, a British expert said.
Read more: http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2014/03/19/ ... z2wbqzp9lZ
Re: You Can Be A Billionaire!
The Bison over the Sooners, there went a Billion $
Glad I didn't have it spent already
Glad I didn't have it spent already
Sometimes it seems as though one has to cross the line just to figger out where it is