Math in… NCAA Bracket

March Madness is wrapping up soon, with the Final Four this weekend and the NCAA Tournament Championship game on Monday. There are now 8 ways this tournament could wrap up:

Combinatorially, 3 games with 2 possible outcomes each have 2^3=8 ways to unfold. At the beginning of the tournament, when there were 64 teams with 63 games ahead of them, there 2^63, or 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 ways the tournament could have gone. That’s over 9 quintillion!