March Madness: Fewer grains of sand on earth than odds of picking the perfect bracket, says Waterloo statistician

Just one day into this year’s March Madness tournament, a handful of upsets are breaking hearts and busting brackets.

Thursday saw several top-seeded teams knocked out, as Kentucky, South Carolina and BYU were each handed first-round exits.

“It definitely just eliminated a lot of people’s brackets,” said Isaac White, a fan in Waterloo.

Sports network ESPN collected 22.6 million brackets by tip-off Thursday. Coming into Friday, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) reported only .00038 per cent of brackets submitted to it remain perfect.

“It’s outstanding to me,” White said. “I find it very unreal that it’s so hard to pick a perfect bracket.”

Why is March Madness so hard to predict?

The NCAA claims there is a 1 in 9.2 quintillion chance of predicting a flawless bracket just by randomly guessing on each game.

“It’s been estimated there around are about… 7.5 quintillion grains of sand on the planet. So 1 in 9.2? That’s more than there are grains of sand,” says Michael Wallace, an associate professor of biostatistics at the University of Waterloo.

Wallace says rough estimates suggest you would be more likely to win Ontario’s Lotto Max jackpot, die from a shark attack and be struck by lightning simultaneously than perfectly predict all 63 games of the NCAA tournament.

"About one in four games are upsets and if one in four games are upsets and you're trying to predict a 63-game tournament, even the best math in the world isn't going to get you there," Wallace explains.

Has anyone had a perfect March Madness bracket?

No, but just a few years ago, a neuropsychologist from Columbus, Ohio got close. In 2019, Gregg Nigl posted in the longest verified streak in history. Nigl correctly predicted the first 49 games of that year’s tournament, until Purdue’s overtime win over Tennessee busted his bracket in game 50.

No one has ever predicted a perfect bracket that’s been verified by the NCAA, and it’s a trend that’s not likely to change in our lifetime.

Although even with near impossible odds, most fans would agree, you can never say never.