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Holly Hart/Associated Press
The men's NCAA tournament routinely costs employers billions of dollars in productivity, and there's no question that filling out brackets is a major contributor to that deficit.
No matter your situation—diehard fan, casual viewer, regular March Madness watcher or simply someone with a pulse—we'll try nearly anything to pick an accurate bracket. Everything from team-by-team research and historical trends to coin flips, jersey colors and team nicknames may contribute to your choices.
What matters most, though?
To start, forget about perfection.
"A group of researchers at the University of Hawaii estimated that there are 7.5 quintillion grains of sand on Earth," Daniel Wilco of NCAA.com said. "If we were to pick one of those at random and then give you one chance to guess which of the 7.5 quintillion grains of sand on the entire planet we had chosen, your odds of getting it correct would be 23 percent better than picking a perfect bracket by coin flip."