IStock Photo 3633209 © munktcu

When the news broke that an autistic teen named Alex Hermann had picked every game correctly through the first two rounds of the NCAA men's basketball tournament, reports focused on the unlikelihood of the event. After all, the odds of maintaining a perfect bracket through two rounds—if you choose the top seeds in every game—are a mere 1 in 13,460,000. (Alex's unlikely feat appears to be unverifiable, because the website he used allowed changes after the fact, but for our purposes we'll assume it happened as reported.)

What people often lose sight of amid the excitement and human interest of stories like this is the fact that extremely unlikely things happen every day. People win the lottery, even though the odds a Mega Millions entry will win the jackpot are just 1 in 175,700,000 and the odds for a Powerball entry are 1 in 195,200,000. Those odds are an order of magnitude less likely than Alex's March Madness picks (assuming, for the sake of argument, he chose the top seeds).

Lottery odds are purely mathematical. Even if, by some chance, no one had ever won the lottery, the odds of a given entry winning would remain the same. But in meat-and-potatoes situations, when we calculate that the odds of something happening are 1 in some very large number, we are able to do so only because the "unlikely" event has in fact occurred. Here are two examples of occurrences with odds similar to 1 in 13,460,000 second-round perfection:

• The odds a person in Missouri will die from contact with a handheld power tool in a year are 1 in 13,250,000. How do we know that? Because in a typical year, during the given time period, some non-zero number of people were killed by their tools in Missouri. It happened.

• The odds an Asian or Pacific Island person will be diagnosed with tetanus in a year are 1 in 13,690,000. How do we know? Because in that year, some non-zero number of people in that demographic group were, in fact, diagnosed with tetanus. It happened.

Similarly, what are the odds you'd bump into that old friend on the street—in a city you're just visiting? It happens. What are the odds your mother will call just as you were picking up the phone to give her a ring? It happens. What are the odds a meteorite will hit your house? The odds against such events range from high to, well, astronomical. Yet they've all happened, and will probably happen again. To someone.

It's only natural to remark upon an unusual event like holding a perfect bracket through two rounds, and to speculate on whether Alex's autism made it more likely. Many autistics are known for impressive feats of memorization and mathematical analysis, and Alex does report that he watches all the teams during the year and studies and memorizes some of the statistics. If he just chose randomly, rather than picking all the top seeds, his odds would actually be much, much worse: 1 in 281,475,000,000,000 (281 trillion). If, as it seems, he evolved an inner “power system,” his inherent odds could be better than the previously mentioned 1 in 13,460,000.

With millions of people participating in online bracket challenges like the one Alex entered at CBSSports.com, even those 13-million-to-one odds don't look so crazy after all.