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Day 1: IBM Watson Ties for first on Jeopardy

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

#91

Post by T-hawk »

thangalin wrote: post #89
T-hawk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He hops from category to category, while most humans pick a category and stick with it. Ken Jennings himself did that for the express reason of throwing off his opponents. As the category selector he would have an extra couple seconds to start thinking in that direction. Totally fair game for Watson to do too. I agree that Watson started with a higher value clue in order to look for the Daily Double. Statistically…

A while back, before the game, I wrote to Ken about one of the videos IBM made about Watson. In it, someone said that Watson "learns" the category. The best strategy for humans, then, is to start at the highest value questions. When Ken jumped into a category, notice that he started at the highest values.

> The best strategy for humans, then, is to start at the highest value questions.

Also because doing that searches for Daily Doubles, which are concentrated at the higher value clues.

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

#93

Post by alanfalcon »

shalmanese wrote: post #87
Benjo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

OK, so I have a question about this, how was it legitimate for Brad to answer at this point? Brad would have seen Alex initially credit Watson with the right answer and then reverse the judgement, rendering the answer incorrect. Brad would have been able to infer the correct answer at this point.

In fact, Brad didn't answer the question... I was wondering about that since the answer was obvious just from Ken's guess and Watson's response.

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

#94

Post by alanfalcon »

umjames wrote: post #47

If Watson wins, it should have to keep coming back as defending champion until someone else beats it. It should also qualify to return in the Tournament of Champions if it gets that far. Now that would be a true test.

It would be quite entertaining, but that would mean either more permanently moving Jeopardy! filming to IBM's campus (cost prohibitive) or rebuilding Watson on Jeopardy!'s set (also cost prohibitive) and you see why this is just a three day exhibition match.

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

#95

Post by T-hawk »

=====MILD SPOILERS FOR DAY 2 BELOW=====

(I posted this in another thread, but this one seems to have most of the action.)

I think it's become apparent that most of Watson's advantage is in signaling speed. Figure that a top human player like Jennings knows about 80% of the answers and Watson about 90%. Watson should be winning, but not by nearly that much.

Jeopardy signaling 101 for those that don't know: An offscreen operator presses a button to enable the buzzers when Alex is done speaking. If you buzz too early, there's a 300 ms lockout until you can buzz again. A light near the board lights up when the buzzers are open. Watson monitors that light (whether by electrical connection or optical sensor, they haven't said) and physically presses the signaling buzzer. Its reaction speed must be faster than the humans' and it will never miss and buzz too early.

Also, Watson's clue selection pattern shows that it definitely starts by searching for Daily Doubles. It picks the bottom 3 clues of each category before anything in the top 2 rows, where the DDs are statistically concentrated.

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

#96

Post by coffeedrinker »

coffeedrinker wrote: post #53
chaosmachine wrote: post #2

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!

I grabbed it out of youtube not long after it played on the East coast. youtube search: jeopardy watson search options: upload today edit: I think I may have included the date in the search

For anyone searching for it, including today's show:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Rashad8821

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

#97

Post by madcaptenor »

gojomo wrote: 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…

This sort of overanswering seems to be usually accepted, as long as the correct answer is contained in the wrong one.

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

#98

Post by umjames »

alanfalcon wrote: post #94
umjames wrote: post #47

If Watson wins, it should have to keep coming back as defending champion until someone else beats it. It should also qualify to return in the Tournament of Champions if it gets that far. Now that would be a true test.

It would be quite entertaining, but that would mean either more permanently moving Jeopardy! filming to IBM's campus (cost prohibitive) or rebuilding Watson on Jeopardy!'s set (also cost prohibitive) and you see why this is just a three day exhibition match.

Understood.

Does anyone know what these IBM supercomputers ultimately are used for after they're done winning Jeopardy or beating Gary Kasparov? I'd imagine something top-secret for the US government, but it would be nice to know exactly what Deep Blue is doing now.

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

#99

Post by orangecat »

orangecat wrote: post #69
joezydeco wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok, this is wrong. Ken Jennings said in an interview that the DDs are more likely to be in the bottom rows, so you actually can hunt for it.
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