From the course: Everyday Statistics, with Eddie Davila

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March Madness

March Madness

From the course: Everyday Statistics, with Eddie Davila

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March Madness

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- [Narrator] Since 1939, the NCAA has used a single-elimination tournament to determine its men's college basketball champion. Back in 1939, the tournament included only eight teams. In 1951, the field was expanded to include 16 teams. By 1975, the field grew to 32 teams. Then, to 40, 48 and finally, in 1985, the field was expanded to the modern-day 64-team tournament. Sure, there have been some play-in games added in to expand the field to 68, but we will not speak of those atrocities today. Instead, we'll focus on the tournament of 64 teams we refer to as March Madness, the one that turns offices and dorms upside down, as people fill out their brackets and try to predict the outcome of all 63 games. By the way, the odds of predicting the winner of all 63 games is, well let's just say the odds are not good. If all 325 million people in the United States each filled out 28.3 million unique brackets, we still might not get a perfect bracket. With 34 years of data of a 64-team…

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