Alex Trebek suffers 'minor heart attack'

Barret was actually a robot project of Tagg Romney's.

funnily enough I was just reading this

the 18k bet was a good move because the daily double was on the 2nd row (questions get harder the lower down the board they are). i don't think they put daily doubles on the first row, so that was the easiest possible daily double to get, so might as well bet it all.

I like Barrett. I'm clearly only ever going to (fantasy) date Republicans.

he did singlehandedly make the teen tournament entertaining, which I usually dislike watching (I schedule my workouts around Jeopardy, damnit). I love the contestants that aren't afraid to get a few wrong.

― frogbs, Wednesday, February 13, 2013 8:25 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

did you see the ep last week where the kids were betting like insane gamblers and everyone ended up with $0?

That was hilarious -- a semifinal match with nobody going to the final. If any bit of tv deserved the sadtrombone, that was it.

i did not but i do think that contestants are maybe too conservative on Daily Doubles in general.

but what you're saying doesn't really figure in, because if you just don't answer and another contestant gets the answer, you're still looking at a $1000 net loss by that math.

ooooh, you're right. so let me do it again, then, assuming a 2-player version of Jeopardy, and an 60% chance that you know the correct answer, and an 60% chance that your opponent knows the answer

Deciding not to answer
Opponent gets it right (-1000 x .6) vs. Opponent gets it wrong (+1000 x .4) + an EV of $-200, relevant to your opponent, for choosing not to answer

Deciding to answer
You answer the question correctly (1000 x .6) vs. You answer the question incorrectly and your opponent answers correctly (-2000 x .24) vs. You answer the question incorrectly and your opponent answers incorrectly (0 x .16) ~ + an EV of $120, relevant to your opponent, for choosing to answer.

so you're right, the correct choice would seem to be choosing to answer, even if you're only 60% sure.

relevant = relative, fuck

also, this doesn't take into consideration the possibilities that a)you decide not to answer, the opponent answers incorrectly, and then you hop in with the correct answer (2000 x .?), and b)you answer the question incorrectly and the opponent decides not to answer (-1000 x .?)

Exactly - the point I was trying to make though is that if you penalize the guesser because their opponent would then get it right and "double" the loss, then you also have to give them credit for getting it right and not letting the opponent even try. As a whole, your opponents are going to average way in the positive on questions you don't answer so if anything I'd think that's more incentive for just guessing, especially when you figure it over a 3 player game.

with three players there's more incentive to let the other two duke it out if you're not reasonably sure.

I can see why since "net +" is really hard to calculate w/ 3 players but I still don't see why you wouldn't want to answer anything you were more than 50% sure of. I'm saying that if not answering/getting it wrong results in a big net$+ for an opponent then it seems to suggest that answering even when you're at like 45% is correct. Like in Z S's example, it would be more in favor of guessing if your opponent was more than 60% to get the question right. Your average Jeopardy contestant can get like 70-75% (according to Ken Jennings' book, that is) and you can't assume that YOU being "only" 60% to get it means your opponents are.

how do you calculate on the fly if you're more than 50% sure of an answer? you're treating that like it's a real statistic instead of just meaning "i think i know the answer but i'm not confident about it"

"frogbs, how did you score a zero in Jeopardy!?"
"I was so busy calculating the probability that I knew the answer that I forget to buzz in ;_;"

you just activate your Terminator HUD and have it calculate the probability really quickly

http://images.wikia.com/terminator/images/archive/d/dc/20080606144629!T-888_HUD.jpg

Basically, in addition to the standard EV of guessing something you're more than 50% on, getting it right also deprives your opponents of answering, which is a hidden bonus.

my jeopardy strategy if I ever get on would be to just to eat a lot of taco bell the night before and then fart a lot and hope that it distracts the opponents enough to give me the edge

ideally I would be in the center position

"um, can i have the center position?"
"why?"
"....*fart*"

with more people, the more likely it is that one of them does know the correct answer. if the other two are about evenly matched, they'll cancel out each other while you steeple your hands and murmur "excellent" in your best burns voice.

ken jennings' secret is finally revealed. no wonder he couldn't beat a computer.

how do you calculate on the fly if you're more than 50% sure of an answer? you're treating that like it's a real statistic instead of just meaning "i think i know the answer but i'm not confident about it"

Given what Ken writes in Brainiac I think that people who compete probably have a good sense of it. I agree that in most situations this kind of math is useless because for most questions it's either you're 98%+ sure or can't offer anything but a wild guess (and Jennings does talk a bit about how trivia contestants do this). I definitely think there are questions for which a contestant has an answer in mind but isn't totally sure and I'm arguing they should go for it anyway. There are also questions for which a contestant doesn't know the answer right away but can figure it out with the extra 3-4 seconds that buzzing in gives you. Certain categories that feature wordplay are pretty good for this.

a lot of questions also lend themselves to being narrowed down by the two chumps who answer ahead of you. like "this stooge was the stoogiest of the three stooges"

on average, how many answers do the contestants whiff on every show?

the amount of whiffing depends on whether or not dayo is the center contestant

Hubris is a bitch. Barrett was so sure he was right on a lot of those wrong answers...his jaw-drop reactions were satisfying.

xp to no-one in particular

speaking of that reminds me of a pretty infuriating episode where a Double Jeopardy category was "Also a chess piece". All the answers were chess pieces which means there were only 6 possible answers. The first four were hit, then the last was a Daily Double. Meaning there's only two possible answers left, and you have the entire clue to go off of. And yet the contestant only wagered like $3000 instead of their whole stack. I mean I know that guessing wrong sucks but you have to think you're 90% or more to get that one right.

Hubris is a bitch. Barrett was so sure he was right on a lot of those wrong answers...his jaw-drop reactions were satisfying.

"But Rush Limbaugh told me it was like this!"

http://i.imgur.com/C0gJTe6.jpg

Clarifying some points (in response to reports on Sajak's idiocies):

I consider myself a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. I believe that climate change exists, and is contributed to by human activity. I have seen firsthand the effects of climate change, in trips to Antarctica and Mt. Kilimanjaro, both of which are showing huge changes due to global warming. I’m in favor of equal pay for women, and the Lilly Ledbetter act. I believe in equal rights for the LGBT community; in fact, this winter, I braved the Minnesota winter weather to attend a gay wedding (which was officiated over by my wife).

damn... thats brave

All Minnesotans appear to think their winter is the worst thing on earth.

I've been to Cloquet, MN in January, so they're not too far off the mark

All Minnesotans appear to think their winter is the worst thing on earth.

Considering that there are more people who live in Minneapolis-St Paul alone than the entire state of Alaska, what you're really seeing is that there are more people around to complain about the winters.

Twins' starting rotation is out of sight/mind in the winter

Alex Trebek will not be denied.

Ah man:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cInGyxCY9k

Aw crap. Fingers crossed for him.

I must say I cannot believe he is 78 years old.

oh no

grim news, his pluck is perhaps admirable but man I would not want to do one more day of work if godforbid someone told me I had advanced pancreatic cancer. even if I was on television!

Sorry, Alex, but stage 4 pancreatic cancer is not something you "beat" or a contest you "win." It is something you either die from or, in a few cases, you survive. Any way, good luck and stay hopeful. And if it helps you to imagine you are beating up on your cancer, like Popeye bashing on Bluto, then I guess it can't really hurt.

That’s a sneaky one too. Jonathan Gold found out he had his pancreatic cancer just days before he died. Same with Gene Upshaw.

I remember him well from his days in Canada. Best wishes to him. pic.twitter.com/bU5n52RTBw

— Les Williams (@leswilliams2) March 6, 2019

Still processing that Alex Trebek news. Reminder that if you're on Amazon Prime, you can watch him on Celebrity Bowling and Double Dare 76/77. pic.twitter.com/QhGeNviudX

— Pablo Hidalgo (@pablohidalgo) March 6, 2019

really sorry to hear about this. i binged all the jeopardy on netflix over 3-4 days or so a few weeks ago; it was a wonderful time. alex trebek is a key part of what makes the show work. i guess the good news is that he has the best doctors and insurance money can buy, i assume

it's strange to hear him delivering this news in the same clipped cadences he reads the jeopardy clues

"i'll take 'grim cancer diagnoses' for 200, alex"

p.s. sad news. i wish him the best.

my cousin was his radiologist recently iirc

alec trebel 4eva
http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=LF2jdTQyyyE

lol Aimless's pedantry knows no bounds

my dad told me about this time when alex trebek came to his high school, because he used to tour around presenting reach for the top (kind of like a canadian university challenge i guess? except high school? idk if you have it everywhere else) and the kids were all brought to the auditorium to watch this match between dad's school and whoever else. alex trebek got very cross with the crowd being loud at some point and said "if you don't settle down, we won't be able to continue" which of course set off the crowd even more. i guess that's the whole story, my dad's school being jerks to trebek. idk why i brought it up

jeopardy was on every day in my house as early as i can remember, my parent's favourite show (and eventually, one of mine, even though i don't have cable anymore) and alex trebek has been there the whole time. now i do trivia all the time and host a pub quiz. he's one of those guys i kinda forgot was even mortal. this is heartbreaking. that he manages to even put a fact (50,000 diagnoses a year) in his announcement is so perfectly trebek too.