gaming screen names image
whitesox09
In Yahoo's "Tourney Pick'em" game for March Madness, you can enter up to 5 brackets per screen name. March Madness is a 64-team, single elimination college basketball tournament. Assuming I am going to create brackets with each possible combination, how many Yahoo screen names do I need to make to guarantee myself 5 million dollars?
By the way, you win 5 million dollars if you have a perfect bracket.
LOL, Ben... just another example that anything is possible.
Answer
Half an hour with no solutions? I'm flabbergasted.
= ^ )
We already have the 64 teams arranged in their starting positions of the bracket. So our first decisions come with the first round of games, of which there are 32. Each game has two decisions we need to make. Similarly for the second round, there are 16 games, each game has 2 choices (we're certainly not going to choose one of the teams we've decided earlier will lose). Continuing, we end up with a total of
1+2+4+8+16+32 = 63
games, each with two choices for us to make, so
2^(63)
different brackets we could fill out. Dividing this by 5 will give you the number of screen names you need to guarantee the 5mil. My calculator, surprisingly, can do this out, and it would appear we need approximately 1.845*10^(18), or 1.845 quintillion screen names.
Let's keep going with this. I estimate it should take you, say, 30 seconds to create each screen name (without computer aid, and without messing up any of the forms). Then perhaps another 2 minutes to fill in a bracket (I have no idea how yahoo wants those entered...).
So every 5 brackets takes you about 10.5 minutes. Then we need
1.845 * 10^(18) * 10.5 / 60 = 3.228 * 10^(17)
or 322.8 quadrillion hours...we have about 18.5 hours at the time of posting this before tip-off. We seem to be a bit short of time.
Perhaps more later...how many people would it take helping, what kind of probabilities we have, etc...
EDIT: I'd be happy to join in the efforts, for my share of the profit. Perhaps others would do the same. Let's see how many people we would need in order to get it done in the 16 hours we have left (at the time of this edit).
We've already decided a total of about 322.8 quadrillion hours need to be put in. Dividing this by the number of helpers will give us our total number of working hours, which needs to be at most 16. Thus, we need
322.8quad / 16 = 2.018*10^(16)
or 20.18 quadrillion people. There are what, 6.6 billion people on the planet right now? So we're a factor of 3 million shy of our goal, and we would each earn well under a penny if we divided up the 5mil evenly. Perhaps we should have started planning earlier?
Let's see...the first games tend to have pretty good odds in favor of one team or the other, so let's just go with the odds on those. Then we have only 31 games to choose our favorites, for 2^31 choices. Then we need only have 429,496,730 yahoo accounts, for about 75,161,928 hours of work. Dividing again by 16 hours remaining, and we need only 4.5 million people to help out! Yay! (We'll still only get $1.06 cents each, but we can "forget" to pay some people.) Let's start recruiting fellow answerers...everyone reading this, if you get at least twenty people to join in, I'll make sure you get your fair share.
; )
(Wouldn't it be interesting if this question got shut down by Answers personnel? I'd laugh hysterically. For hours. Sixteen hours, actually.)
Half an hour with no solutions? I'm flabbergasted.
= ^ )
We already have the 64 teams arranged in their starting positions of the bracket. So our first decisions come with the first round of games, of which there are 32. Each game has two decisions we need to make. Similarly for the second round, there are 16 games, each game has 2 choices (we're certainly not going to choose one of the teams we've decided earlier will lose). Continuing, we end up with a total of
1+2+4+8+16+32 = 63
games, each with two choices for us to make, so
2^(63)
different brackets we could fill out. Dividing this by 5 will give you the number of screen names you need to guarantee the 5mil. My calculator, surprisingly, can do this out, and it would appear we need approximately 1.845*10^(18), or 1.845 quintillion screen names.
Let's keep going with this. I estimate it should take you, say, 30 seconds to create each screen name (without computer aid, and without messing up any of the forms). Then perhaps another 2 minutes to fill in a bracket (I have no idea how yahoo wants those entered...).
So every 5 brackets takes you about 10.5 minutes. Then we need
1.845 * 10^(18) * 10.5 / 60 = 3.228 * 10^(17)
or 322.8 quadrillion hours...we have about 18.5 hours at the time of posting this before tip-off. We seem to be a bit short of time.
Perhaps more later...how many people would it take helping, what kind of probabilities we have, etc...
EDIT: I'd be happy to join in the efforts, for my share of the profit. Perhaps others would do the same. Let's see how many people we would need in order to get it done in the 16 hours we have left (at the time of this edit).
We've already decided a total of about 322.8 quadrillion hours need to be put in. Dividing this by the number of helpers will give us our total number of working hours, which needs to be at most 16. Thus, we need
322.8quad / 16 = 2.018*10^(16)
or 20.18 quadrillion people. There are what, 6.6 billion people on the planet right now? So we're a factor of 3 million shy of our goal, and we would each earn well under a penny if we divided up the 5mil evenly. Perhaps we should have started planning earlier?
Let's see...the first games tend to have pretty good odds in favor of one team or the other, so let's just go with the odds on those. Then we have only 31 games to choose our favorites, for 2^31 choices. Then we need only have 429,496,730 yahoo accounts, for about 75,161,928 hours of work. Dividing again by 16 hours remaining, and we need only 4.5 million people to help out! Yay! (We'll still only get $1.06 cents each, but we can "forget" to pay some people.) Let's start recruiting fellow answerers...everyone reading this, if you get at least twenty people to join in, I'll make sure you get your fair share.
; )
(Wouldn't it be interesting if this question got shut down by Answers personnel? I'd laugh hysterically. For hours. Sixteen hours, actually.)
Have multiple PSN screen names, can I download 2 Free games on all of them?
otori_kats
I have multiple screen names on 1 PS3, can I download the 2 free 'Welcome Back' games on all of them?
Answer
i tried this and you can but listen
you have to have at least two accounts from different countries
EG - an English account ( for UK ) could give you Wipeout and Deadnation
- an American account ( for US ) could give you LBP and Rachet and clank
by having two accounts of the same country will only allow you to download two!
i tried this and you can but listen
you have to have at least two accounts from different countries
EG - an English account ( for UK ) could give you Wipeout and Deadnation
- an American account ( for US ) could give you LBP and Rachet and clank
by having two accounts of the same country will only allow you to download two!
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Title Post: How many Yahoo screen names do I need to win 5 million dollars?
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