Update 11:48 a.m.
This is the week that "the-people-seeking-attention" are really cashing in on their bet.
They're betting that you won't pick a perfect NCAA March Madness bracket, but you will give them all kinds of personal information to take a shot at it.
As Carl Bialik from the lauded Five-Thirty-Eight blog puts it:
No sum of money can beat the math.
(See how statisticians calculate the odds in the original post below.)
ESPN.com's Rick Reilly figures the company sponsoring the contest stands to make a lot of money by gaining "as many as 15 million new sales leads with the registration process alone on this thing."
"You can't buy that kind of PR," [the guy] says. "We love this."
Reilly sat down with the rich guy backing the bet, who isn't too worried about someone picking a perfect bracket. He knows the odds, and he's known how to play them to his advantage all his life:
[The guy] loves making bets that tilt toward his wallet. When his three kids were growing up, he paid them their allowance in dimes. That's because he had a 10-cent slot machine in the house. "By the end of the night," he says, "I'd have most of my money back."
Original post, January 21, 2014
You're more likely to get struck by lightning, but what the heck.
The odds of you picking a perfect NCAA bracket vary.
Some say it's 1 in 9.2 quintillion.
In his video, Jeff Bergen of DePaul University says there's a 1 in 128 billion chance of picking a perfect bracket. He says the odds are a smidge better given that you would follow the rankings.
http://youtu.be/O6Smkv11Mj4
The organizers of the contest say the odds are better – 1 in 4.3 billion. (There's no indication of how those odds were calculated.)
If you pick a perfect bracket, they'll give you a billion dollars. More specifically, they'll give you $25 million a year for 40 years, or a one-time payment of $500 million.
So there isn't much in it for you, but there's a lot of free publicity for them. You'll see them in your Facebook feed, or on the Google.
