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The Man Who Knew Too Much
theodp writes "For thrilling competition, Slate says the Tour de France pales next to the 25-game reign of Jeopardy! supercontestant Ken Jennings. The 30-year-old software engineer has won a total of $788,960, beating the previous record-holder by a margin of over $600,000. Watching KenJen play is like witnessing any great athlete in top form: He's the Michael Jordan of trivia, the Seabiscuit of geekdom, and his antics have once again made Jeopardy! required viewing. (Update: 26 wins and $828,960: 'When Jennings ran the Marvel comics category during the second round, host Alex Trebek asked: Have you done anything besides read comics? It pays to be a nerd, Jennings responded.')"
Personally, I thought it was wonderful when Jennings announced that his good luck charm was a stuffed Totoro doll from Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro), a Studio Ghibli/Hayao Miyazaki animated film. (See nausicaa.net for more)
You may treat all information submitted above as wild speculation.
Not only does Ken know a lot, he's got his "signalling button fu" working. He's going to be hard to beat as a result of that alone, as we've seen. But even when he guesses, he seems to guess correctly, so there's no doubt about the breadth of his knowledge. Go Ken!
I had only heard about him until two days ago when he won his 25th in a row, and his winnings for that day were only $14,000, which was his lowest in all 25 games.
This is very impressive. Maybe he has someone feeding him answers (conspiracy theory!).
Brings to mind the recent GSN (Game Show Network) airing on the Michael Larson "Press Your Luck" scandal. This guy learned their random board sequence was actually sets of predictable moves and won what was then large $. Then the network would not pay him, although IMO he did nothing wrong.
I've watched a few of his shows, and I have to say, he is definitely a learner. On the rare occasions that he misses a response, I've never seen him say "Oh, I knew that". Instead, he has this intense look, as if he's going to remember it for next time. If he's been doing that his whole life, then it's no wonder he has such a knowledge base.
Based on myself, and some others that read here, I suspect a lot of the Slashdot community is the same way. How else could we recall so much about Linux, servers, PC upkeep, and any number of topics that appear here on a regular basis?
I wish Ken the best of luck, and maybe we'll be able to talk to him here, at some point.
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
These games arent even close... last night he had 40k at the end, the next closest was like 4 or 5k. The night before that he had over 25k, both of the other people were in the red, for nearly the entire show. It's one thing to win 25 closely contested shows, its quite another to win by the impressive margins that he does every night.
Anybody seen Quiz Show? To increase viewer numbers, champions regularly stayed on a show for 20+ weeks. How they did it? Participants got the questions in advance and it was all just a big show... And no, this isn't fiction, it really happened - in the 1950...
Should make everyone wonder whether the network has really found a great candidate or just decided to increase viewer numbers again with a similar plot...
Firstly, I don't think he's cheating. People we're speculating on it the last time he was /.'d but he's just under too much scrutiny. The elimination of the five win rule set the stage for this new form of Jeopardy and I can't see how it can change from here unless the reinstate the rule. Ken will stay on top until someone like Ken but better comes along, and it stands to reason that whoever can beat him will remain unbeatable for a long run until some equally rare triv-master knocks them out. I noticed that last night when he referred to himself as a 'nerd' Trebek quickly insisted he was anything but; He used to seem more antagonistic to him. It's like Alex has Stockholm syndrome now that his show has been taken hostage by Ken. I wonder if the people who select the questions will deliberately start stacking the questions to exploit his weakspots or maybe they won't given the ratings boost he's bringing them.
Anyway, here's to Ken!
Intelligence is not knowledge, but there is are relations between the two.
An important part of what most of us regard as 'intelligence' is the ability to 'see' how things relate to one another and form conclusions about them.
One way to do that is to form an abstraction in your head.
Another way is to form an analogy and relate it to something which you do know.
For example the conclusion: "Fighting a war on two fronts is bad", could be reached either by abstract reasoning along the lines of how a two front war would divide one's resources and increase the chance of loosing the war. Or you could form an analogy to Germany loss in WWI.
The way I see it, they compliment eachother. But naturally, knowledge in itself is not intelligence, because you need a certain amount of abstract skills to be able to recognize an analogy.
I Am Not A Cognitive Psychologist, however.
Actually I am getting sort of tired of watching Ken. I used to watch Jeopardy every evening, but have tunned out lately. He has gotten the signaling button down. Most of the lower value questions are general knowledge and its a matter of who ever signals in first. If you can control the board you can choose the categories and can pic the ones you know more about, also you have a greater chance of getting a daily double. This give an adavantage to those who have been on for a few shows and has gotten used to the timing of the signaling button, regardless of knowledge.
I say bring back the five show rule and get some competition back in the game.
The thing is, the Jeopardy writers toss plenty of clues into their "answers", and generally reward players that have Intro level knowledge of a wide variety of subjects.
Impossibly hard trivia -
STAR WARS
"This person played Boba Fett in the original SW films."
"Who is Jeremy Bulloch?"
Typical Jeopardy question -
STAR WARS
"Jeremy Bulloch played the role of this deadly intergalactic bounty hunter."
"Who is Boba Fett?"
Disagree. This way, he's got a significant amount to show for it if he flubs up. On Millionare, you could get stiffed by a question that they had the wrong answer to, anyway (referring to a gentics question as the 500,000$ prize, to which they had the ultimate wrong answer; the guy got it wrong, anyway, but if he had used that 50/50 lifeline or whatever and they removed the appropriate answer, there would have been legal trouble, guaranteed.)
Besides, earning yourself 1,000,000 over a months time going head to head with 52 other people, you take more than just money away from that experience - you take away satisfaction.
Informatus Technologicus
There was a guy in Croatia who made a nice income from the local version of the show. I think he was eventually banned as a phone a friend. Here you go.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
[spoiler]
Ken wins until July 23rd, the last episode of this season. When the next season airs, he wins the first 10 shows, amassing somewhere in the tune of $1.5 million.
This season stopped taping in February and he can't legally comment on anything related to the show until his reign is over.
[/spoiler]
That said, I don't think this guy is all that special. Who knows how many prior 5 day champs could have done what Ken has.
And don't ask me how I know. Let's just say a little birdie told me.
Ah - you missed out the moutain stage - stage 15 - where he effectively won the race. He was going up this HC climb (really steep and long) with Jan Ullrich and Tyler Hamilton in his group - the leader of the stage being about a minute a head.
Lance attacked and was starting to pull away when his handlebar got caught on a spectator's bag and he crashed to the ground most spectacularly. Jan's and Tyler's group went by him and slowed to wait - tradition demands you beat the yellow jersey, not take advantage of misfortune.
Lance climbed back on his bike and immediately the chain slipped and he went groin first into the top-bar - eyewatering stuff. He got his rhythm again, caught up with the group. And kept going - straight through them. Tyler and Jan just could not respond and Lance went on to win the stage by 40 seconds. This gave him enough margin to eliminate any possible challenge in the last time trial.
Tyler Hamilton, incidently, broke his collar-bone on stage one. He still went on to win a stage and finish overall fourth last year. True "Clash of the Titans" stuff. And people think a quiz-show compares?
Ken is doing a good job. He has techniques like answering with the fewest details and always phrases his answers as a question.
However, the only reason he has won 25 days in a row is because they changed the rules of the game.
I forget his last name, but supercontestant Chuck from the 80's would clean KenJen's clock. Chuck gave very complete answers, including one reference in Hebrew that the judges missed the first time and gave him points after researching the answer.
Anyone remember Chuck's last name? He didn't win the overall on one of the Champion match-ups, but he was a very impressive contestant.
Assuming that he doesn't just quit first....
The guy is so good, you know that he'll never do anything stupid enough to lose. There have likely been many like him on this show, but they never had this chance (the limit on 5 wins cut them off).
It will take another super-duper geek to beat him. Is this the future of Jeopardy? "Unbeatable" champions that just win for months at a time? Personally, that'll get boring quick. Having a heroic run once in a while is thrilling: having it happen all the time is just dull. Michael Schumacher's dominance has similarly turned me off of F1 racing.
Methinks another rule change may be in the making for next season: a cap on earnings. Maybe $1,000,000 is the right amount.
BTW, I'm REALLY looking forward to a "Tournament of Champions" where he can square off against some of the others that got cut off at 5 wins. I think he'd do well (likely very well), but he'd certainly not be a lock to beat some of the others we've seen on this show in the past.
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
"I feel like 'Cactus Gavvy' Cravath. Do you know who that is? Right. Nobody does. He's the guy who had the home run record before Babe Ruth came along." Tom Walsh, of Washington, D.C., who held the record for "Jeopardy" winnings until Ken Jennings of Salt Lake City broke it recently
- Newsweek 7/12/04 issue
In a previous life, I worked at a company that wrote software for sports computers - heart rate, mph, what have you. They hired a guy to come and test the software - ride the bike, treadmill, etc. who had this same condition.
He was amazing - he could ride/run at full speed nearly without limit. So long as he kept refueling - getting oxygen and nutrients, he said mentally he could go nearly forever since he never experienced fatigue pain. The danger was that his body gave him no clues before failure. He could ride until his heart failed or his muscles tore. To him, the computers were necessary because he could make sure his heart rate stayed below critical levels and he could stop himself before he did any real damage.
Any one fact by itself is "useless trivia". But assorted "useless trivia" questions are just a way of gathering a random sampling of the entire body of knowledge that someone has.
I remember when I was having my head shrinked. The psychiatrist gave me a battery of tests. He asked me about 10 'useless trivia' questions, e.g. "Who wrote 'Faust'" (I replied "Goeth", pronounced it just like that, not the German pronunciation.) Another question: "Where is Egypt?" (Africa, of course). I forget the rest.
The shrink was using the questions to gauge my general body of knowledge. Combined with other metrics, a general picture of a person's state of mind and persona develops. Certainly, someone who knows who wrote 'Faust' and where Egypt, and the other questions, is a very different person from someone who knows none of the answers. Plus, the fact that I pronounced "Goethe" the way it is would be pronounced if it were an American name, is telling, as it showed that I obtained that knowledge by reading, rather than through a lecture or a TV show. It also showed I was not German, and had not studied the language to any real degree.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
And who monitors them? Seriously, these days with all sorts of corruption coming to light in business and government, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that some of these "Standards and Practices guys" have ties to the network execs or show owners.
Perhaps this is a test run, to see what the audience will eat up... a quick search on google turned up nothing on these "standards" guys.