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Take Buffett's Billion

takebuffettsbillion.com

17 pointscjcenizal27 comments

For the people outside of this world like me, a March Madness Bracket [0] is a classical grid of a championship involving US basketball teams.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_Madness_pools#Brackets

I've always been curious how many actually unique brackets get submitted to the major bracket places. I'd imagine there's about 5,000-10,000 unique brackets that cover 99% of the people.

It's the one feature I'd love to be able to see is if I have submitted a 100% unique bracket on my own.

Was going to sign up (because why not?), but then I didn't like some of the questions they're asking me.

https://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/quickenloansbrack...

Hate to be the skeptic, but what's to guarantee that the winner will distribute the winnings evenly? It's not like the site has any official connection to the contest.

Came here to post this, especially because the wording about splitting the money seems purposefully vague.

This is exactly what I was thinking. What's to stop someone from pulling a "Oh, hey, thanks for the winning lotto ticket..."

If the answer is "personal integrity and honor" then, well, call me a skeptic - but some people may just come up a little short after a billion-dollar soul searching.

Hey, I'm one of the guys working on this project. You're right, we're not sure how to make sure the winner splits the money with everybody, but given how unlikely it is that anyone wins at all, we're just focusing on executing the bracket distribution for now. If someone actually wins, figuring out how to get that person to split up the money is kind of a nice problem to have! Just think of the drama...!

FYI - this isn't a good pitch to get me to sign up.

At least have a TOS saying you'll distribute the winnings.

wow this is amazing haha!

when you say "statistically best bracket choices", does that mean you're applying a prior on the guesses?

If yes, could you give us some more details on how you're arriving at the best way to spread our guesses?

My colleague was doing some work on sports betting and remarked how the current odds are actually really good predictors for the outcomes.

cool idea well done :)

So this pool has 8,832 members. Even if they're unique, 8832 out of how many possibilities there are isn't changing your odds much.

The idea is nice, but the statistical odds are against you. Say you have a 50% chance of picking it right each time. With the play in games, you have a 1 in 4 chance of getting those right. With the regular 32 games, you would need to get all of them right, or 1 in 2^32. With the next 16 games, you would need to get 2^16 correct. Then 2^8, 2^4, 2^2, and then 2^1.

Multiply them all together, you get 1 / (2^2 * 2^32 * 2^16 * 2^8 * 2^4 * 2^2 * 2^1) = 1 / (2^65)...crazy small odds.

Assuming each outcome is equally likely, which it isn't.

Of course, but if you read what the site is doing, it is treating it as if it is in randomly picking a unique bracket.

It's not random. It's using a model to create what it believes the most likely bracket outcomes are. Those unique brackets are then distributed, obviously in order of most likely to least likely.

No, I think it clearly states a smart statistical analysis will be used when generating brackets. Even references some Duke professor.

I don't know what statistical method they plan on using, but Nate Silver/FiveThirtyEight already put out percentages for the whole bracket based on statistics/matchups[1]. It wouldn't be too hard to hand out brackets generated using the highest percentage brackets from something like that.

I still don't think it will work. Even if a million people took part it would still be like a 1:1000 shot at best. And assuming they did distribute it evenly (don't think this is really possible given taxes and everything) at a million people that's only $1000 per person.

[1]http://fivethirtyeight.com/interactives/march-madness-predic...

I'm not typically a gambling man, but 1:1000 for $1000 is pretty good odds if you ask me, particularly considering there is no buy in (I think).

Well you're giving your details to Quicken Loans and presumably yahoo. That includes name, address, DOB. While those details don't have a monetary value to you, they certainly have value to the companies you're giving them to.

What's the most tax efficient way to get that prize money if you win? How much could you actually keep?

Detailed analysis of the tax implications of winning $1 Billion:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2014/01/21/warr...

Uncle Sam will take any chance they can to steal money from people. That's a lot.

Ah yes, the poor plight lottery winners. With the reduced incentive of taxes I'm sure it would be impossible to find someone willing to take the risk of winning so much money...

It's not a $1,000,000,000 check, you get a 40 year annuity with an annual payout of $25,000,000 OR a one time payment of $500M.

Blast. It's only available for people living in the United States (or overseas military bases).

"We're sorry, but something went wrong."

All sign ups were recorded, and this error has now been fixed! Sorry about that.

Is it just me or was this removed from the homepage?

Seems like it was, not sure why though.

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