Chart of the Day: It's Tough Being Perfect

Today’s Chart of the Day from FiveThirtyEight highlights some truly eye‑popping statistics surrounding the NCAA March Madness Tournament.

Every year, millions of fans eagerly fill out brackets, chasing the elusive dream of perfection. Yet despite decades of attempts, no one has ever achieved a flawless bracket and the odds of doing so are downright shocking.

The probability of filling out a perfect bracket is 1 in 9.2 quintillion. To put that in perspective, you’d have a better chance of randomly selecting a specific grain of sand from the entire surface of the Earth or winning the lottery twice in the same year. Suddenly that “lock” pick doesn’t feel so safe.

As today’s chart shows, the chances of perfection plummet almost immediately, dropping to essentially zero before the first round of the tournament even wraps up.

So go ahead and enjoy the madness—because when your bracket inevitably busts, just remember… you were doomed from the start!