what are the odds of someone winning the prediction contest?

Winning the contest is just 1 out of however many people play.

Winning the jackpot is complicated. It depends on the "true" probabilities of people finishing in certain places.

If you know the top 10 in each of the four races, but not the order, and each had the same odds of being in any given position (e.g. a 10% chance of finishing 1st, 10% chance of finishing 2nd...) your odds are 1 in 4x(10!)=4x3628800=14515200 or .00000688932981%

This is definitely lower than the actual probability because Chelanga/Stanford/Villanova have much higher than 10% chances of winning, the individual most likely to finish 10th probably actually has slightly less than a 10% chance of actually finishing 10th. Odds are still very low, though. Say that Ben Cheruiyot and Barnabas Kirui are most likely to finish 9th and 10th. Kirui then probably has a 5% chance of finishing better than 5th, 10% chance of finishing 5-7, 6% chance of finishing 8th, 8% chance of finishing 9th, 10% chance of finishing 10th, 8% chance of finishing 11th, 7% chance of finishing 12th, 6% chance of finishing 13th, and 40% chance of finishing >13. Give the same distribution to Cheruiyot (shifted one) and you have only a 1% chance of picking just those two correctly.

Man, how many times do I have to teach you about probabilities?

There are only two possible outcomes - either someone gets it all right or nobody does. Therefore the odds are 50-50.

QED.

The Odds Maker wrote:

Man, how many times do I have to teach you about probabilities?

There are only two possible outcomes - either someone gets it all right or nobody does. Therefore the odds are 50-50.

QED.

Nope your incorrect! There is only 1 way to get it right and numerous ways to get it wrong!

I don't know what all you have to select to get it right but lets SIMPLY calculate the top 10 men...if 250 ran then it is:

250x249x248x247x246x245x244x243x242x241 = the number of total possible combinations. divide 1 by that number and you get a % chance of you guessing right...This means anybody has a chance to win when in fact Sammy C was the obvious choice for #1...so if you just started with SC at 1st then the equation above would start with 249 and not 250!

So what did you have to guess right? Tope 10 M & W + top 10 teams on both sides?? Statistically "impossible" if everybody has an equal chance of winning...that would be like hitting the powerball with balls drawn out from 2- 10 ball sets each from approx 250 + 10 balls drawn out twice from two 30 ball sets...thats pretty close to 7.5 x 10 75th

or:

7507689370770770000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.00

But remember most of the combinations would not make sense. One example is to pick all 5 OSU guys to finish 1-5 but Texas to win the team title. It would take a long time to factor out the impossible outcomes from the number above.

The poster Moe's Tavern is the most f***ing awesome player ever. Didn't he take go 1-2 for the Beijing olympic picks then he got disqualified for playing twice?

What were those odds?

The correct answer is: NEGLIGIBLE

There is no way to calculate this because the events are not random.

"in no other branch of mathematics is it so easy for experts to blunder as in probability theory" - Martin Gardner

So you're telling me there's chance,.... YEAH!!!!!

Lloyd Samsonite wrote:

So you're telling me there's chance,.... YEAH!!!!!

ha! Too bad the name is Lloyd Christmas! I suspect the name is registered though.

Think about it this way:

In the 2007 Kentucky Derby, there were 20 horses. A correct superfecta bet of $2 would have paid off close to $30k. The superfecta means you have to pick the top four horses in the correct order. Now imagine if the race had nearly 300 horses. And you had to pick the top TEN in the right order. And then, you had to do it again in an identical second race (men and women).

It's nearly impossible to calculate the probability of a correct pick because each runner has a different chance of winning. However, suppose that each runner has identical ability and has an equal chance of finishing in any spot. If there are 250 runners in the mens and womens race (so 500 runners total) then the probability of a double perfect 10 is the inverse of (250 x 249 x ... x 241)^2 = 1 / (6.3 x 10^47). For comparison:

-There are an estimated 3 to 7 x 10^22 stars in the universe.

-The average sized star has 10^57 hydrogen atoms (stars are mostly made up of hydrogen).

-The universe is only around 4.4 x 10^17 seconds old.

-The Milky Way is only 10^24 millimeters across.

In other words, it's real tough to win.