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IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

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Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

#4

Post by umjames »

Much of success on Jeopardy is not just deciphering clues in the answers, but your timing on ringing in to give the question. I'd imagine a machine could get really good at getting the timing down. Does Jeopardy have a way of varying who rings in first to keep things more fair?

Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

#6

Post by cj »

umjames wrote: post #4

Much of success on Jeopardy is not just deciphering clues in the answers, but your timing on ringing in to give the question. I'd imagine a machine could get really good at getting the timing down. Does Jeopardy have a way of varying who rings in first to keep things more fair?

Watson won't ring in until it determines it has enough confidence in its answer that it is favorable to ring in.

If it rings in every time there's no way it will win.

Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

#7

Post by cryptoz »

umjames wrote: post #4

Much of success on Jeopardy is not just deciphering clues in the answers, but your timing on ringing in to give the question. I'd imagine a machine could get really good at getting the timing down. Does Jeopardy have a way of varying who rings in first to keep things more fair?

The timing of when players are allowed to click in is controlled by a human. Someone backstage decides at what moment Alex is finished speaking and then opens the clickers. If you click too early, you get ~ 300ms delay penalty which gives the other players a chance to click in.

Click timing is indeed very important but I do not think Watson has any special advantage there.

Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

#8

Post by andrewce »

chaosmachine wrote: post #2

Is there somewhere to watch this online?

If you're okay with waiting a few hours/days, The Pirate Bay seems to have a good selection of torrents of recent Jeopardy! episodes, though I've not yet tried it.

You'll also be able to see a full transcript of the board, as well as all questions provided by contestants, at www.j-archive.com.

Re: IBM's Watson starts on Jeopardy Tonight

#9

Post by kenjackson »

umjames wrote: post #4

Much of success on Jeopardy is not just deciphering clues in the answers, but your timing on ringing in to give the question. I'd imagine a machine could get really good at getting the timing down. Does Jeopardy have a way of varying who rings in first to keep things more fair?

Something I wrote from a previous thread. The one piece of info that wasn't in this comment is that Watson can NOT anticipate when Trebek is about to finish the question. Watson must wait until it gets a signal that the buzzer is now available, and only then can it begin the process to physically depress the button.

Remember that Watson also has to depress a physical button (the same buzzer everyone else uses). The eye to finger path for humans is about 200ms. It probably takes about 100ms for Watson to physically press the button. So Watson is about 100ms faster. But that also gives humans about a 100ms window in which to beat Watson. This means that you need to start your press 100-200ms before Trebek finishes his last word.

That's pretty good sized window for most people given you are reading the question along with Trebek. If the person who turns the light on is very consistent, I think a human who is good at this could consistently beat Watson.

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