Final Jeopardy! wagering analysis:
Friday, February 5, 2016 (College QF #5)

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We’ve got quite a cluster on our wild-card leaderboard – but tonight, everything will be resolved.

Two of our players can stand pat and move on, although neither of them know this; the third needs to work some magic.

Ziad Ali	Noah Cowan	Niki Peters
10,800	15,000	21,400
NC State	Brown	UC Berkeley

Tonight’s Final Jeopardy! category is:

U.S. PRESIDENTS

Here’s what my calculator says each player should do for a wild card:

		Confidence
Player	Score	20%	30%	40%	50%	60%	70%	80%
Ziad	10,800	0	8,500	8,500	8,500	9,500	9,500	9,500
Noah	15,000	0	0	0	0	0	2,700	3,400
Niki	21,400	7,200	7,200	7,200	7,200	7,200	7,200	7,200

The big numbers for Ziad surprise me a bit, but that’s math for you.

What actually happened

Ziad		Noah		Niki
10,800		15,000		21,400
10,800		2,000		3,000
21,600		13,000		24,400

Huge bummer for Noah; I liked his aggressive Daily Double wager, but things just didn’t work out for him in the end. Them’s the breaks in a tournament.

OK, here are the final standings. My predictions for semifinal match-ups are below.

Quarterfinal winners:

1. Emily Sun (Columbia)
2. Emily Bingham (Wright State)
3. Sam Deutsch (USC)
4. Gus Woythaler (Stanford)
5. Niki Peters (UC Berkeley)

Wild-card race:

1. Ziad Ali (NC State) – 21,600
2. Sarah Dubnik (Pitt) – 14,801
3. Hannah Norem (Augustana) – 14,400*
4. Kate Laubscher (Northeastern) – 14,400*
5. Michael Sieja (Mississippi State) – 14,400*
6. Kevin Brown (LSU) – 14,000
7. Amanda Rosner (Northwestern) – 13,200
8. Noah Cowan (Brown) – 13,000
9. Adam Antoszewski (UVA) – 0
10. Carissa Pekny (West Point) – 0

*The Jeopardy! website has an impressive graphic about the tiebreaker for the last two spots:

Here’s how the semifinalists were sorted by quarterfinal. (Remember that players can’t meet again in the next round.)

Adam Antoszewski	Carissa Pekny	Emily Sun
Emily Bingham	Kevin Brown	Kate Laubscher
Sam Deutsch	Amanda Rosner	Michael Sieja
Sarah Dubnik	Hannah Norem	Gus Woythaler
Ziad Ali	Noah Cowan	Niki Peters

My match-up predictions

I realize they might already be up on the Jeopardy! minisite, but here’s a stab anyway:

• Top three seeds: Niki, Gus, Emily B. (also, I doubt they’ll put Berkeley and Stanford in the same semifinal)
• Separate the three men into three different semifinals
• Don’t put Emily B. with the other player from a small college (Hannah) or the other Emily (S.)

The possibility I’ll go with is:

• Niki – Hannah – Sam
• Gus – Emily S. – Kate
• Emily B. – Ziad – Sarah

And two of my assumptions were wrong (see the end of this video):

Mon 2/8	Niki	Gus	Emily S.
	UC Berkeley	Stanford	Columbia
Tue 2/9	Emily B.	Sam	Hannah
	Wright State	USC	Augustana (SD)
Wed 2/10	Ziad	Sarah	Kate
	NC State	Pitt	Northeastern

The Final Jeopardy! clue

U.S. PRESIDENTS

HE WAS THE ONLY 20th CENTURY PRESIDENT WHO NEVER DELIVERED AN INAUGURAL ADDRESS

[spoiler]Who was Gerald Ford?[/spoiler]

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