EAST LANSING, Mich. — As college basketball fans stress over their NCAA tournament brackets, the odds of picking every game correctly remain astronomically low.
WATCH BELOW: MSU Math professor breaks down the odds of a perfect bracket
While Spartan and Wolverine fans might be confident in their choices, getting every single game correct is incredibly difficult. I consulted an expert to understand the math behind the madness.
Albert Cohen, is a professor in the math department at Michigan State University who focuses on actuarial science. While usually applied to things like insurance, those principles can also be applied to sports.
"There's very little determinism in these kinds of products, and the same thing with sports. There's the bounce of the ball at the end of the game that busts your bracket. These are the things that we try to predict and what makes it so infuriating and appealing to us as humans," Cohen said.
There are 63 games to predict across the span of the bracket, creating a massive number of possibilities for how the actual results will shake out.
"Imagine now that you've got to flip a coin 63 times. That's two to the power of 63, which your calculator will get mad at you if you try and put that in and get all of the digits. It's an astronomical, I'd almost say financial number given financial numbers these days," Cohen said.
The odds of finishing with a perfect bracket are around one in 9.2 quintillion, which is a nine followed by 18 digits.
"Your chance is holding a lottery ticket that's won 5 times in a row, while being bitten by a shark that's jumped out of the ocean and landed in East Lansing in a thunderstorm. That's the chance," Cohen said.
While the odds are stacked against you, Cohen suggests strategies that might give you a good shot at winning your bracket group. He recommends picking your tournament winner or Final Four first, then working backwards through the bracket.
When picking early-round games, fans should scout to see which teams are coming in with momentum, especially when looking to predict Cinderella runs.
"You may want to spend a little bit of time thinking about, hey, has a player been missed? Has a player just been overproducing relative to their peers, that maybe will carry over into this huge game they've got coming up against? And again, for some of these smaller teams, winning that first round means everything to them, and everything else is gravy afterwards," Cohen said.
Ultimately, predicting the tournament is tough because a lot comes down to randomness and the human element. So good luck, and have fun.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
Want more FOX 47 News? Here's how you download our Roku app
You can also see the latest news from across our mid-Michigan neighborhoods by liking us on Facebook or following us on X.
