Furman’s Harris talks NCAA brackets with The Independent

Furman University’s John Harris, a mathematics professor, explained how difficult it is to predict an accurate NCAA basketball bracket. Harris, part of a Furman team that develops models to predict potential March Madness upsets, told London-based The Independent that it’s almost impossible. “For each of these 63 games, there are two possible outcomes, and this means that there are a total of two raised to the 63rd power possible ways the tournament can play out,” Harris said. “This amounts to around 9.2 quintillion possible brackets, which is two quintillion greater than the estimated number of grains of sand on all of Earth’s beaches and deserts.” A math and computer science professor from Davidson College was also tapped for the article.