Who Wants To Be a Cognitive Neuroscientist Millionaire?

ThePolynomial writes "Last night Ogi Ogas, a cognitive neuroscientist and Homeland Security Fellow, became the first person to face the million-dollar question on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in three years. He now has a first-person narrative on seedmagazine.com where he describes using techniques from cognitive science to think of answers on the show." From the article: "I used priming on my $16,000 question: 'This past spring, which country first published inflammatory cartoons of the prophet Mohammed?' I did not know the answer. But I did know I had a long conversation with my friend Gena about the cartoons. So I chatted with Meredith about Gena. I tried to remember where we discussed the cartoons and the way Gena flutters his hands. As I pictured how he rolls his eyes to express disdain, Gena's remark popped into my mind: 'What else would you expect from Denmark?'"

Comments

Priming

[ciaohound]

and other techniques from brain-based learning have really helped me think about my teaching methods. (I am a high school math teacher). The NSA sponsors workshops here in the state of Maryland that focus on how the brain retains knowledge and practical ways to use that in the classroom. IMHO, every teacher should be aware of developments in this field and really think critically about what they want students to retain long-term. Ultimately, a job description for a teacher is someone who creates meaningful memories.

Seems like winning makes right

[Astarica]

Suppose he remembered NCAA wrong and thought it was National College Atheletic Advancement and then reasoned it out after 15 minutes, and was ultimately wrong, we would just never hear any of it because it'd just be some guy who thought he was right, but was wrong. I've no doubt that such techniques are useful but the justification here seems to be just because he won. I've seen plenty of times on Millionaire when the guys would go through all these anecdotes and thought he remembered correctly, but turned out to be wrong. Does this disprove such methods?

So what

[kentrel]

He won with a combination of knowing the answers and making educated and lucky guesses. The fact that he justifies it later with his field's terminology is meaningless. This is nothing special - we all think like this. The fact that he gives these names is all well and good for his research but it's nothing new.

Frankly, the people who do those memory competitions are far more impressive than this guy, but at least they don't write 4 page essays on how clever they think they were.

Re: not correct

[belg4mit]

IMHO it's somewhat excuable that people are missing the "in 3 years" bit because
that is a horribly phrased sentence. The editors should have corrected it to read:

Last night Ogi Ogas, a cognitive neuroscientist and Homeland Security Fellow, became
the first person in three years to face the million-dollar question on 'Who Wants to
Be a Millionaire?'

fsck, this is like using digg. Make with the 24 bit ints and threaded comments!

Special cognitive science techniques

[dzfoo]

Last night Ogi Ogas, a cognitive neuroscientist and Homeland Security Fellow, became the first person to face the million-dollar question on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in three years by using a special technique known in cognitive science as REMEMBERING.

          -dZ.

Re:Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that show about tabloid rumors and hollywood trivia now, without any relation to the old show that actually asked questions that were about something other than pop culture?

Judging from this question, "This past spring, which country first published inflammatory cartoons of the prophet Mohammed?", it seems they do ask questions other than pop culture, unless you count political current events as "pop culture".