Original title: Out of 15M brackets, only 1 remains to win Warren Buffet's $1B March Madness bet<p>http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaab-the-dagger/there-are-no-longer-any-perfect-brackets-left-in-the-billion-dollar-bracket-challenge-003853949.html
There are currently still 3 perfect brackets on ESPN.<p><pre><code> 1. http://games.espn.go.com/tournament-challenge-bracket/2014/en/entry?entryID=576318
1. http://games.espn.go.com/tournament-challenge-bracket/2014/en/entry?entryID=4155737
1. http://games.espn.go.com/tournament-challenge-bracket/2014/en/entry?entryID=10928050
</code></pre>
<a href="http://games.espn.go.com/tournament-challenge-bracket/2014/en/leaderboard" rel="nofollow">http://games.espn.go.com/tournament-challenge-bracket/2014/e...</a>
From a game design standpoint, that was one problem with this design. Since half the tournament occurs in the first round (well, not counting the wildcard round), there's no drama; everyone gets shot down immediately. In the movie version of this, it'll come down to at <i>least</i> the Final Four before our hero gets knocked out, no matter how implausible the odds of making it that far are.
A friend and I today discussed if you had a perfect bracket after the great 8 round, going into the Final 4, would you, and for how much, sell a stake in your bracket to hedge your money?<p>The numbers, though it's a "billion $" bracket, that's actually $25M over 40 years, or an optional $300M single payout. In the US, you could expect about 55% of that after taxes, so $165M. There are 3 games left at the Final 4 game.
Some background: Warren Buffett Offers $1 Billion For Perfect March Madness Bracket<p><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2014/01/21/warren-buffett-offers-1-billion-for-perfect-march-madness-bracket/" rel="nofollow">http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2014/01/21/warr...</a>
From a "get people to play with numbers" perspective, this was actually a pretty cool challenge on Warren Buffet's part. Most people are going to spray-and-pray (my facebook feed is full of facetious "shit, there goes my billion dollars") but I would be surprised if there weren't a large number of people who put more effort than they otherwise would have into trying to figure out statistical models for who wins basketball games.
There is still one bracket left as of 11:27p EDT.
<a href="https://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/quickenloansbracket/2030973" rel="nofollow">https://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/quickenloansbrack...</a>
It's not in the article but my guess would be that none of Warren Buffet's money was ever actually on the line. The last time Pepsi had a contest for $1 Billion, they bought insurance against someone meeting the conditions to win the prize. Who'd they buy that insurance from? Berkshire Hathaway.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Billion_Dollar_Sweepstakes#Insurance" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Billion_Dollar_Sweepstake...</a>
Assuming you could pick game winners with 80% probability, your odds of selecting a perfect 63 game bracket are less than 1 in a million. I.e.<p><pre><code> >>> .8 ** 63
7.846377169233378e-07
</code></pre>
Even at 90%, your odds are little better than 1 in a thousand:<p><pre><code> >>> .9 ** 63
0.0013100205086376223
</code></pre>
Needless to say, I didn't even bother entering.
LOL, this is hilarious. I was talking to my Girlfriend and all of my friends and I told them: You have a better probability, after being born, of becoming a billionaire just because you're alive versus you wining Warren Buffet's money. Then they countered, with: But if we play, we at least have some chance. I just laughed and got back to programming.
Buffet said he calculated what he thought the odds were of a perfect bracket and took a premium on top of that. I wonder what return he got on his $1B bet.
There's still one perfect bracket after BOTH days (though not in the Buffet challenge): <a href="http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2001973-this-is-the-only-perfect-ncaa-tournament-bracket-left?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=programming-national" rel="nofollow">http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2001973-this-is-the-only-...</a>
Upsets are common. However so many of them appeared I'm completely unsurprised the money is already safe. Watching brackets in my company pool crumble left and right had been crazy.<p>With weighted results, I wonder what the odds of this set of outcomes happening even was (note, some of the "upsets" by seed weren't really, like the CU vs Pitt game where Pitt ran them over).
They should have put more emphasis on the top 20 non-perfects winning 100k. That's still pretty good! But I suppose the goal was harvesting information for quicken loans so mission accomplished.
So I have absolutely no idea how this works, but I've seen it around a lot.<p>So I assume that you can enter once, how many unique entries would there need to be to actually get a combination that would win?
Well, duh. At 63 games this has an expected value of $1e-10.<p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=1000000000%2F2%5E63" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=1000000000%2F2%5E63</a>
This stunt actually makes me angry. Not a good PR move imo.<p>"I have enough money that I can risk giving up a billion $. And I may just give it to you if you can beat the odds that's harder than getting hit by lighting multiples times in 1 year."<p>How about offering pot of 100 million to top (aka sweep) 16 instead...<p>But never mind, it's their money...