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Ken Jennings can't lose on Jeopardy!!

M

MrMoore

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Nov 2, 2006
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Doctor Q said:
On Star Trek Next Generation the character named Data couldn't use contractions, despite his sophistication with human language. I always thought that was a clever way to remind us that he wasn't really human (oops I mean "was not really human" ;)) but I also thought that is was silly from a technical point of view. Data could understand when people said "it's" or "can't" -- and that's the hard part. Saying "it's" instead of "it is" and "can't" instead of "cannot" would be trivial for Dr. Soong, his programmer.

At least I thought so. Now we have Watson, who omitted the articles in his questions. Where a human would say the question was "What is the United States?" he would say "What is United States?" instead. Were articles too hard a challenge for the IBM programmers?
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I hate to get geeky, but the reason Data could not speak in contractions was something Dr Soong did on purpose. Lore (who was made before Data) could do contractions.
 
W

Wondercow

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Aug 27, 2008
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Doctor Q said:
On Star Trek Next Generation the character named Data couldn't use contractions, despite his sophistication with human language. I always thought that was a clever way to remind us that he wasn't really human (oops I mean "was not really human" ;)) but I also thought that is was silly from a technical point of view. Data could understand when people said "it's" or "can't" -- and that's the hard part. Saying "it's" instead of "it is" and "can't" instead of "cannot" would be trivial for Dr. Soong, his programmer.
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Me too; I mean, Data could learn new words and new languages, etc. so why couldn't he learn "isn't" or "didn't"? What I find interesting now is that my three-year-old will not use contractions, though her comprehension of them is perfect.

"Please don't touch that"
she touches
"What did I just say?"
"You said 'do not touch that'"

Maybe it's a necessity of artificial intelligence—or at least of Data and Watson—that they communicate like three-year-olds :)
 
yellow

yellow

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Doctor Q said:
If they did, they shouldn't have. Watson seemed to produce more incorrect questions on the final day.
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Agreed, which made me wonder if they tweaked.

Either way, I was fascinated by the challenge and hope to see more in the future. Perhaps Watson versus Watson 2.0 versus a Speak & Spell?
 
Doctor Q

Doctor Q

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Tilpots said:
Watson isn't done just yet. Docs are now repurposing the massive computer to help diagnose patients. House beware!
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If it's like the Jeopardy! version, I expect it will usually confirm the doctor's diagnosis, it will sometimes make amazing diagnoses the doctors missed, and once in a while it will recommend a lobotomy for a scraped knee.
 
Doctor Q

Doctor Q

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David Ferrucci, lead developer of Watson, talks about their approach here: the use of massive parallelism and the merging of results from multiple techniques of analysis.
 
Doctor Q

Doctor Q

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Excellent TechRepublic article by Jo Best on the history, present, and future of the Watson project, including the hope to turn Watson from medical clinician assistant into the equivalent of a physician that can pass the general medical licensing board exams, and the possibility of Siri-like use of Watson.

Image from IBM:

watson-siri.jpg
 
Tilpots

Tilpots

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Doctor Q said:
Excellent TechRepublic article by Jo Best on the history, present, and future of the Watson project, including the hope to turn Watson from medical clinician assistant into the equivalent of a physician that can pass the general medical licensing board exams, and the possibility of Siri-like use of Watson.

Image from IBM:

View attachment 432975
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Takes all the allure out of playing doctor.:(
 
Doctor Q

Doctor Q

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James Holzhauer, a professional gambler from Las Vegas, nearly beat Ken Jennings' Jeopardy! winnings record, but fell just short, losing on the show broadcast earlier this week. One more win very likely would have made him #1.

He lost to a librarian Emma Boettcher, who wrote her Master's thesis on the game.

Holzhauer was on the show for 33 games and earned $2,464,216. By comparison, Ken Jennings earned $2,520,700 in 74 games.

He not only has the record for the highest earnings on one show ($131,127), but he has the 15 highest spots on that list! He averaged almost $77,000 per game.

His technique was new and different from past winners. He worked his way from the bottom of the board up, hunted for Daily Doubles, and bet huge amounts when he found one. But he also knew his trivia, answering almost every questions correctly and handling his buzzer timing.

Holzhauer plans to go back to gambling, despite all the money he earned on Jeopardy!.

Meanwhile, Emma Boettcher won two more games, but lost today.
 
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A

agreenster

macrumors 68000
Dec 6, 2001
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15 years ago. 15 years since I commented in this thread.

4 cross-country moves, 6 jobs, purchased probably 5 Macs, and now I’m a dad.

And Ken Jennings record holds strong. It’s a good day.
 
Doctor Q

Doctor Q

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The Jeopardy! Greatest Of All Time (G.O.A.T) tournament is in progress.

It's Ken Jennings versus Brad Rutter versus James Holzhauer. Each one-hour match is a pair of two half-hour shows with the point totals combined. The first to win three matches wins $1,000,000 and the G.O.A.T title. The other two each win a mere $250,000.

Ken Jennings had the longest winning streak in Jeopardy! history (74 wins in a row) in 2004. Brad Rutter has won the most money on Jeopardy! ($4,876,036) from 2000 to the present. James Holzhauer, who played in 2019, had the highest one-game score ($131,127), holds the top 16 single-game records, and had the highest average score ($75,362) in regular game play.

Given how much money they each already have, winning the title of Greatest of All Time is probably more important to them than the cash they'll get.

Each match is from 8:00pm-9:00pm Eastern time:

Match 1: Tue January 7 (complete)​
Match 2: Wed January 8 (complete)​
Match 3: Thu January 9 (complete)​
Match 4: Tue January 14​
Match 5: Wed January 15​
Match 6: Thu January 16​
Match 7: Fri January 17​
results at Wikipedia
 
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Doctor Q

Doctor Q

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The tournament ended with a "photo finish" moment, and I'm pleased with how it turned out. You can click the link above for the results.

It's amazing how much trivia these three men have stuffed into their brains, and how they can pull it out in an instant, and under pressure.
 
4

44267547

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I didn’t watch the GOAT Jeopardy series, but I did watch Holzhauer before he was eventually defeated back in May I believe.

What amazes me more than anything, is how quickly he was able to process the questions prior to answering. Actually, if you watch closely back at some of his episodes, he already knows the answer to some of these questions before Alex Trebek even is through asking. So Aside from being able to retain that amount of information compiled, to respond that quickly shows how acute his motor skills are [Including a very high accuracy rate]. It’s like they process these questions at ‘hyper speeds’, which the average contestant literally takes 4 to 5 seconds longer before they can physically answer.

All three of these contestants would be excellent candidates for an FBI Pysch-process. They (The FBI) actually will ask you a series of questions based on how quickly and accurately you can respond, and there’s no doubt they would pass with flying colors given their intelligence level.
 
Doctor Q

Doctor Q

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Check out J! Archive for all of the clues and answers, including from the Greatest Of All Time tournament.

The amount of knowledge in the heads of these three guys might be hard to fathom, but I can feel smug that I knew a couple of questions that one of them got wrong, such as the question to this answer:

Of the 4 main blood groups, this one is the most common; that group negative is the universal donor​

and that I knew the question to this answer that stumped all three of them:

Beware of these types of programs that track every stroke you make while typing in an effort to glean your password​
 
chown33

chown33

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Doctor Q said:
The amount of knowledge in the heads of these three guys might be hard to fathom, but I can feel smug that I knew a couple of answers that one of them got wrong, including knowing the question to this answer that stumped all three of them:

Beware of these types of programs that track every stroke you make while typing in an effort to glean your password.​
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What is a Flash Updater?

What do you call a lumberjack working on the Florida Keys?
 
Doctor Q

Doctor Q

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Time for a thread review!


What will he do next?

Doctor Q in 2004 said:
...after he's done on Jeopardy!, will we hear further from Ken Jennings? ... If he wanted to, he could be a public speaker, write a book, promote academic decathelons, sell the story of his life for a made-for-TV movie, fill all nine positions on Hollywood Squares, or who knows what else.
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emw in 2004 said:
If I'm Ken, I win my $1 Million, then retire while people still somewhat like me, and go on the talk show circuit and write a book or something.
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emw in 2004 said:
Now, that's a nice chunk of change, and I'm sure he'll get endorsements or books or other things, so he probably won't have to "work" again, but I doubt we'll see stories of him whooping it up in his new Miami Beach condo.
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We were right about him writing a book. More than one, in fact.


Is he the greatest?

~Shard~ in 2004 said:
It's nice to see that he was a gentleman about it (as he should be after winning so much for so long!) and that the crowd gave him a standing ovation. No doubt he'll be regarded, rightly or wrongly, as the greatest Jeopardy player ever...
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He wasn't for a while, but he is once again on top, after the Greatest Of All Time tournament.


Did Kerri become a high school history teacher?

Doctor Q in 2005 said:
Tonight, a blind 17-year-old named Kerri, from Bethpage, New York, played in the Jeopardy! teen tournament. She got on the show by placing in the top ten in the New York tryouts last year, and then being selected from among the finalists. ... Her dad, who is a firefighter, encouraged her to try out for the show. The online version of Jeopardy! didn't work with her screen reader software, so she practiced with her brother instead. After college, she hopes to work as a middle school or high school history teacher. Good luck, Kerri!
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I'm pretty sure this is Kerri, 15 years later. She's not a school teacher but is still someone who can teach us all a lesson. In her own words she's now a paralegal, reader, singer, theater geek, sports fan, dog lover, fangirl, proudly blind, and fighter for justice. Still somebody to admire.


Anybody remember Ken Jennings?

~Shard~ in 2005 said:
This will just be another one of those passing things. 5 Years from now no one will even remember who he is.... ;)
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Lucky you put that wink in your post, ~Shard~!


What about programmers?

Doctor Q in 2005 said:
Now that computer-programmer-hero Ken has missed his chance to be The Greatest, I can no longer claim that we programmers are a superior lifeform. I'll guess I'll just crawl back in my hole now. :(
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Once again I can claim that programmers, or at least former programmers, are a superior lifeform. :)
 
compwiz1202

compwiz1202

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MongoTheGeek said:
Reminds me of a guy back in the 80's who was on Tic Tac Dough. He until recently with who wants to be a millionaire etc. had the record for the most money won. 300k or something like that. Most of it was in cars.

He was on for over a year. Lt Tom McGee IIRC.
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Ooh forgot about Tic Tac Dough!
 
Doctor Q

Doctor Q

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Ken Jennings is one of the rumored replacements as Jeopardy! host. He's certainly personable enough.

People often assume that Alex knew all the questions for the answers, but he had them in front of him, and they filmed retakes if he got something wrong. So even thought Ken knows more facts than the average (or above-average) person, I don't think that's actually a requirement for the job.
 
4

44267547

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Doctor Q said:
Ken Jennings is one of the rumored replacements as Jeopardy! host. He's certainly personable enough.

People often assume that Alex knew all the questions for the answers, but he had them in front of him, and they filmed retakes if he got something wrong. So even thought Ken knows more facts than the average (or above-average) person, I don't think that's actually a requirement for the job.
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In the end, it’s about viewer ratings. It doesn’t matter if it’s Ken Jennings or James Holzhauer, the network totally understands the numbers may not be what they once were given Trebek is no longer around, and now they need to select someone to ‘lock in’ viewers where ratings see growth. Personally, I don’t think Ken Jennings is really was all that entertaining and certainly not any more personable than James Holzhauer, they’re both different, but still nerds in the same respect. I’d also suspect it probably depends who wants to make the commitment to take-over a Program away from their families or any other livelihood.

Be that it may, I remember when Weaselboy posted a thread that Trebek announced cancer in March 2019, it was lightly rumored at that time that Ken Jennings would probably be the replacement in the future, but of course, there’s no confirmation of that.
 
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