Live data from Hacker News

Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

venturebeat.com

61–70 of 99 posts

Re: Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

#61
post #36

Watching Watson's avatar gave a little insight about what the software may have been doing. The results, based upon that avatar. The % is its confidence in its #1 response. Category Clue Watson#1Resp % rsult otcm ----------- ------------ ------------ -- ----- ---- Alt Meaning belief view 70 right Brad Alt Meaning horse foot shoe 68 right won Lit Chars split person Hyde 71 right won Beatles guy pain Jude 98 right won…

I also put together the full game stats: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2220667

Re: Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

#62
post #39

Spoiler not appreciated by many, I'm guessing. Next time, please don't do that.

I'm confused. Where's the spoiler? I don't remember seeing anything in the article (and I'm glad I didn't I wouldn't appreciated the spoiler).

The title of the submission is the spoiler.

Re: Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

#63
post #50

That Trebek gave Watsom credit for "Maxwell's silver hammer" when the clue was looking for the person – Maxwell – gave me a moment's pause. Jeopardy does tend to be a little more forgiving of contestants during the first round – such as giving them a reminder to phrase-as-a-question, and letting them correct an initially wrong or incomplete utterance, if done almost instantly. Still, I'm not sure if such a interpreti…

I noticed that, too; but a little later in the game, Trebek declared "leg" (instead of "he was missing a leg") wrong without hesitation. So it's definitely being held to some standard.

Apparently he actually initially declared that as correct before realizing that Watson didn't have the context to be going off of Ken's incorrect answer. Hurrah for editing.

Re: Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

#64

After not being able to find a suitable online stream of this event (I don't have cable), I gave up and built a rudimentary antenna for my TV. Basically, I just wound a bunch of copper wire around a piece of cardboard and stuck it in the window. The other end of the wire went into the cable port on the back of my TV. Surprisingly, I was able to pick up the game in crystal clear, digital 1080p!

It may have been crystal clear, but it wasn't in 1080p. It was either 1080i or 720p. 1080p over-the-air broadcasts still do not exist.

Re: Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

#65
post #13

Does anyone want to create a community site for the contest? I am looking for another Django developer who can participate in an all-night code sprint. The site would: 1. Show an online score board. 2. Track Watson's performance (like shkb is doing on Google Docs) 3. Aggregate pictures, videos, and written analysis of the event

I don't have the time to build a site at the moment (curse you schoolwork!), but if you'd like to help maintain/update the docs I'd love the help.

Re: Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

#67
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was at an event at MIT with one of Watson's designers as I watched the show. I asked him about the 20s thing, and he said they talked about it when they were designing Watson but they figured the scenario wouldn't happen where another contestant gave the wrong answer and Watson gave the same-but-different wrong answer. Edge case!

Capt. Ed Murphy was a smart man.

He was Major Ed Murphy.

Re: Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

#68
post #42

Has anyone considered building an open source Watson?

Not very many people have a state-of-the-art supercomputer in their basement, so it wouldn't be that useful.

IBM's using two racks of computers and a huge SAN. Maybe it couldn't compete with watson, but a decent setup could be cobbled together for 5,000. It wouldn't be as fast, or as comprehensive, but it could be done.

The harder part is the tens of thousands of man hours with very smart people.

Re: Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

#69
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the hopping categories was to try and buy time to calculate what sort of questions would be asked in each. But it's first move of getting into the lead (and the daily double) I would say is a combination of good strategy and PSYOP.

I thought Watson was searching for the daily double spot to jump ahead $1000 right away.

The daily double is equally likely to be under any unrevealed spot, so jumping between categories has no effect on the probability of hitting it.

Re: Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

#70
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed that, too; but a little later in the game, Trebek declared "leg" (instead of "he was missing a leg") wrong without hesitation. So it's definitely being held to some standard.

Actually, according to arstechnica, that lack of hesitation was before the segment was reshot. A human had answered "missing a hand," which created context that means "What is a leg" could be interpreted as "he was missing a leg". Initially Alex did give him credit, before realizing that Wattson couldn't have been using that context. http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2011/02/ibms-watson-tied-f...

Very interesting; thanks for the clarification. I was fooled.
Post reply on HN