HMC student on Jeopardy
In case anyone hasn't been following the Jeopardy! College Championship in the last week, here's a few notes/updates.
- Andrew Chung of Harvey Mudd advances in the top wild card spot with a score around 19k. In his place I probably would have shot for a similar score. Several people knocked themselves out of contention by playing for victories instead of the "uncertainty" of a wild card. Oddly enough, the doubling of the question values in the last few years hasn't led to anything close to the expected doubling of the wild card qualifying scores. I'm not sure why that is, conservative Daily Double behavior, perhaps?
- Never bet on the Ivy League. Seriously, something like 20 Ivy Leaguers have appeared in the College Tourney over the years, and their record is only slightly better than the Ivys record in NCAA basketball tournament play. As always, 3/5 of the quarterfinalists advance, but this year Yale and Harvard are both gone before the second week.
- Geographic bias. In keeping with tradition and the Madison, Wisconsin taping location, the Upper Midwest is overrepresented this year. I may have been the beneficiary of a similar bias (assuming the contestant folks in '98 actually knew Mudd is in California!), but I still don't see why a nationally syndicated show chooses to do this.
- I would be remiss if I didn't point out that former HHS secretary Donna Shalala used to be president of U.Wisc. at Madison, I wonder if that little fact will come up again this year?
- Andrew Chung of Harvey Mudd advances in the top wild card spot with a score around 19k. In his place I probably would have shot for a similar score. Several people knocked themselves out of contention by playing for victories instead of the "uncertainty" of a wild card. Oddly enough, the doubling of the question values in the last few years hasn't led to anything close to the expected doubling of the wild card qualifying scores. I'm not sure why that is, conservative Daily Double behavior, perhaps?
- Never bet on the Ivy League. Seriously, something like 20 Ivy Leaguers have appeared in the College Tourney over the years, and their record is only slightly better than the Ivys record in NCAA basketball tournament play. As always, 3/5 of the quarterfinalists advance, but this year Yale and Harvard are both gone before the second week.
- Geographic bias. In keeping with tradition and the Madison, Wisconsin taping location, the Upper Midwest is overrepresented this year. I may have been the beneficiary of a similar bias (assuming the contestant folks in '98 actually knew Mudd is in California!), but I still don't see why a nationally syndicated show chooses to do this.
- I would be remiss if I didn't point out that former HHS secretary Donna Shalala used to be president of U.Wisc. at Madison, I wonder if that little fact will come up again this year?