Picking perfect bracket a tough numbers game

I think the math professor needs to check his math. While I agree with his assertion that the odds of picking the perfect bracket are about 1 in 100 million trillion, the paper required to have one of each possibility would in no way fill the universe.

A cubic meter of paper contains somewhere on the order of 150,000 sheets - using standard office paper, that would be a stack of 500-sheet reams that is 5 wide, 3 deep and 20 tall. Filling out one sheet for each bracket possibility would take 670 quadrillion of these cubic meters containing 150,000 sheets each. That sounds like a lot, and it is - it would take a cube about 87,000 meters (or about 54 miles) on a side to contain it all. And while that volume of paper would fill the Grand Canyon many times over, it comes nowhere near to filling the universe.

Jeff Martin of MN 5:23PM March 14, 2012