Final Jeopardy! wagering analysis:
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
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I was going to wait until tomorrow to post tonight’s video, but… well, you know.
Let’s go right to the Final Jeopardy! category:
| STATE CAPITALS |
Hey! I’ve written about how this tends to turn to dumb wordplay! Maybe one of my hints will come in handy.
Oh, yeah – we have some wagers to calculate:
|
Rachel Zoch (1x) |
Peter Diedrich |
John Bozek |
| 16,800 | 20,600 | 8,200 |
Let’s go to the analysis.
First-order calculations
Rachel can keep John locked out…
| Rachel |
Peter |
John | |||
| 16,800 | 20,600 | 8,200 | |||
| FIRST-ORDER | SECOND-ORDER | COVER ZERO | |||
| min | max | min | max | min | max |
| 400 | 13,000 | 600 | |||
| 9,200 | |||||
| 4,200 | |||||
Second-order calculations
…but it puts her at risk to a small wager by Peter. So my recommendation is that John go for everything in case Rachel makes a middling wager, which would still force him to get it right.
| Rachel |
Peter |
John | |||
| 16,800 | 20,600 | 8,200 | |||
| FIRST-ORDER | SECOND-ORDER | COVER ZERO | |||
| min | max | min | max | min | max |
| 400 | 13,000 | 7,000* | |||
| 8,000 | 5,400 | 600 | |||
| 1,600 | 4,200 | ||||
Zero wagers
Score differences:
Peter and Rachel: 3,800
Peter and John: 12,400
Rachel and John: 8,600
| Rachel |
Peter |
John | |||
| 16,800 | 20,600 | 8,200 | |||
| FIRST-ORDER | SECOND-ORDER | COVER ZERO | |||
| min | max | min | max | min | max |
| 7,600 | 8,000 | 13,000 | 7,000* | ||
| 400 | 5,400 | 7,600 | 600 | ||
| 3,800 | 4,200 | ||||
Then we add a dollar to the minimum wagers, and subtract a dollar from the maximum wagers.
What actually happened
| Rachel | Peter | John | |||
| 16,800 | 20,600 | 8,200 | |||
| 4,000 | 13,001 | 500 | |||
| 12,800 | 7,599 | 8,700 | |||
| min | max | min | max | min | max |
| 7,601 | 7,999 | 13,001 | 8,200 | ||
| 399 | 4,199 | 599 | |||
| 3,801 | 5,401 | 7,599 | |||
That’s a bummer for John – he made a good wager, and got the only correct response, but Rachel outfoxed him.
Rachel has yet to win big, but coming back tomorrow is all that matters – that’s 2 games and $17,500.
(Somehow this fact didn’t make it into my STATE CAPITALS Fact Primer. Maybe that’s because I had no idea how obscure it was? Now I feel guilty that someone might have missed this because I didn’t put it in there!)
The Final Jeopardy! clue
| STATE CAPITALS |
| SETTLED IN THE 1780s, IT’S THE ONLY STATE CAPITAL WITHOUT A MCDONALD’S |
[spoiler]What is Montpelier, Vermont?[/spoiler]
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