Three-Way
There was a three-way tie on Jeopardy!. All the contestants ended up with $16,000. That's pretty neat, but in the news story, a "mathemetician" calculates the odds of a three-way tie are one in 25 million.
This is nonsense. The numbers won on Jeopardy! are not random. They are determined, above all else, by contestants picking how much they wager in the final round. It may be unlikely that all three will bet so that they'll end up with equal amounts, but it's not that outrageous.
The mathematician probably just threw up his hands, squared 16,000, and figured that was close enough.
posted by LAGuy @ 3:06 AM
3 Comments:
Actually, 16,000 squared is 256,000,000, so that's off by a factor of ten.
And Jeopardy awards are always divisible by 100, except for the daily double and the final prize.
(None of this alters your main point, which is of course correct.)
The odds are 1 in 25 million? Slight nonsequitur-Just how many jeopardy shows have there been? Something fewer than 30,000 I would imagine.
Maybe the "expert" figured out the odds of scoring exactly "$16,000" (though with daily doubles and final jeopardy options, that would be fairly difficult) and cubed it. That would make the chance of scoring $16000 to be around 1 in 291 (which sounds a little rich)according to my $2.99 calculator from Rite Aid. Or maybe exactly 0.34% (1/291) of participants have scored 16000 since they upped the prize amounts. More fun with numbers
Back from the dead
Here's another possibility. The mathemetician found out how often there was a two-way tie, and squared it. Still, this would mean a regular tie happens about one in 5000, which sounds way too high. Perhaps the mathematician then figured in how often the third player wasn't even within reach of tying, and added in other complicating factors.
In any case, it's still pseudo-math.
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