Mondays w/ Michael
I assume that most of Jane's readers are female, so you may not realize it, but there is a basketball game tonight. Tonight's game will determine the 2009 NCAA basketball champion! The tournament began 3 weeks ago with 64 teams. And now only 2 remain: Michigan State and North Carolina. Every year, millions of people fill out brackets predicting who will win each game. To make a long story shorter, this year Yahoo said it would award $1 Million to someone who predicted each game correctly. Each Yahoo user is allowed to fill out 5 brackets. (I only filled out 3). Of course, I wasn't even perfect after the first day. But that got me thinking. If Yahoo decides to do this again next year, I will be ready for them. I can talk to a bunch of friends, we can each fill out 5 brackets, cover all the possibilities and walk away with $1,000,000! Then I started doing the math.
Once you get down to 4 teams, there are 8 possible outcomes. Let's assume A plays B and C plays D in the first round. In the championship, A could beat C or A could beat D or C could beat A or D could beat A or B could beat C or B could beat D or C could beat B or D could beat B. Eight possibilites once you have it narrowed down to 4 teams.
What about if there were 8 teams? I calculated this by hand too. I knew there had to be a formula, but I wasn't smart enough to come up with it on my own. (Yeah, it's a waste of time, but I enjoy math and I enjoy sports, so it was fun!) Anyway, if there are 8 teams, by my calculations, there are 128 possible outcomes.
But that's as far as I could get by myself. My dad is a former calculus teacher and he knew the formula that I would need. In the Elite 8, there are 7 games (there are 7 losers, so there has to be 7 games). In each game, there are 2 teams playing. So to calculate how many possibilities there are, you take 2 to the 7th power. 2x2x2x2x2x2x2=128. So this proves my math was correct.
Ok, but now lets look at the tournament as a whole. How many possibilites are there in a 64 team tournament? Well, using the logic above, there are 63 losers, so there are 63 games. 2 to the 63rd power is...are you ready for this....9,223,370,000,000,000,000. That's nine quintillion, two hundred twenty-three quadrillion, three hundred seventy trillion. Ok, and you are only allowed to fill out 5 brackets, so that means I only need to find 1,844,670,000,000,000,000 people to help. What's that? Oh, there aren't that many people on earth. Ok, assuming there are 6 billion people on the planet, each person would only have to fill out 1,537,228,673 brackets. But Yahoo only allows 5 per person. Simple solution: each person has to have 307,445,735 Yahoo accounts. So, if we can pull this off, we can split the million dollars with the 6 billion people on the planet and each of us would walk away with 16 one-hundredths of a cent.
So who's with me?
Make it a great Monday!
SON ; AFTER READING THIS I HAD TO GO AND TAKE A COUPLE OF ASPIRIN , MAYBE I IN NEED TO SPEND MORE TIME WITH YOU , MAYBE TAKE YOU PLACES . WELL MAYBE I'LL JUST GO AND TAKE A NAP ... LOVE YA! DAD B .
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, Lee - that's exhausting!!
ReplyDeleteMichael, you may have to talk to Klint about this one. He's aways up for a few extra bucks ;)
Michael, you are clearly a math teacher's son... whew. The only thing you forgot to emphasize is that it's the SPARTANS who made it to this final spot!! Can we rest our Spartans vs. Boilermakers debate now? ;)
ReplyDeleteLove,
The Michigan Cousin
Michael....There has got to be an easier way to make money. That post should discourage anyone from gambling or playing the lottery. I am sure the chances of a big win would fit in with your bracket calculations (somehow). Have you ever thought about a job change...maybe a sports analyst? You would love it and be pretty good at it too. If you would do that you would have to take dad along to be a color commentator! Love you,
ReplyDeleteMom
Michael,
ReplyDeleteThere is a group of engineering professors at Georgia Tech that have come up with a formula to predict who will win the NCAA games. The link is http://www2.isye.gatech.edu/~jsokol/lrmc/about_lrmc.html
However, I used their model for this year's bracket and I'm not very high in the family ranking (about 17 out of 30 brackets). But, it is interesting how they came up with it.
Lynn D.
Impressive work Michael, however, I hate to break it to you, it is all wrong. You forgot a minor technicallity that throws off everything. The play-in game between the two 16 seeds. By having that extra game, your calculations are completely off...sorry to rain on your parade.
ReplyDeleteJoel
by the way, Chicago Cubs perfect season starts today.
Wow! That was exhausting, and yet you (Michael) found it 'fun'! I suppose that's one of the many reasons we make such a perfect couple- I love you! (Go Louisville!. . .next year:)
ReplyDeleteNo wonder you and Nick get along so well. (the math part, not the basketball.) I hate be a disappointing friend, but I must say that as I was walking through the mall today and someone said, so did you watch the big game last night? (i think they said last night) and I was like "huh? what game?" the basket ball game, they replied... me - "what basketball game?" :) I'm NOT an animal lover OR a sports lover, and your wife is still allowed to be with me!! What a merciful man you are!
ReplyDelete;) Jessica (n)
Thanks for the fun post Michael. I read it to my husband. We both laughed that after filling out all of those charts, on all of those accounts each person would walk away with a mere pittance. But it does show that math is fun! =) Mr & Mrs C
ReplyDelete