Monday, February 23, 2015

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Last Monday, we had a fun situation. This Monday, we’ve got even more excitement on tap.

Dava-Leigh is looking to add to her $1,500 in winnings, which she took home to cap off a particularly bad week. It wasn’t the worst ever, though – that’s the subject of the latest By the Numbers.

Dava-Leigh Brush	Gemma Kaneko	Britt Harter
5,800	4,200	10,000

Raise your hand if you recognized what’s happening.

Good! You all get gold stars.

We’ll gamble on this Final Jeopardy! category:

2014 EVENTS

Not sure what you should be looking for here? Don’t worry – we’ll break it down, as always.

First-order calculations

Second doubles up

If Dava-Leigh doubles her score, she’ll have 11,600.

To cover this all-in wager, Britt will need to wager 1,600.

Dava-Leigh	Gemma	Britt
5,800	4,200	10,000
5,800		1,600
11,600		11,600

An incorrect response with that wager will leave Britt with 8,400. Both Dava-Leigh and Gemma need to get it right to have a chance, so they should wager everything.

Dava-Leigh	Gemma	Britt
5,800	4,200	10,000
2,600	4,200	1,600
8,400	8,400	8,400

But notice that if Gemma, in third, does indeed double up, she’ll tie Britt’s total on a miss. That means that Britt is in…

A wager-to-tie conundrum

The reason he’s in this position is because of one of the two scenarios I discuss in Part Two of my original tutorial: first = second + third. (You might see this rendered as A = B + C.)

Should Britt add the extra dollar or not? I discuss this in a special video.

Here, as with most situations, I would add the extra dollar. The category is too vague to assess any player’s strength or weakness.

Since there is a correlation between correct answers, it’s likely that if Dava-Leigh gets it right, Britt will, too, so he’ll win by a dollar; and if Britt misses, Gemma will, too, so the extra dollar will be moot.

What actually happened

Britt did tack on that extra dollar. Notice that no matter whether he was right or wrong, one of the two correlations listed above would have been true. *wink*

I have to give a shout-out to Bill Tolany, who was the first in the Final Wager era to recognize this situation.

Dava-Leigh gets pink instead of yellow because there’s a possibility Britt will offer the tie. In any event, she left $1,599 in Sony’s pocket.

The Final Jeopardy! clue

2014 EVENTS

TO PREPARE VENUES HOSTING THIS EVENT, 12 BILLION PERENNIAL RYEGRASS SEEDS WERE IMPORTED FROM MANITOBA, 5,000 MILES AWAY

[spoiler]What is the World Cup? (Brazilian officials knew their native Bermuda grass would turn brown, which doesn’t look great on TV.)[/spoiler]

 

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