Tuesday, March 17, 2015 Game Recap & Discussion [SPOILERS]

[OSXpert]

It doesn't matter if 1 is a prime number or not; 11 can't be a right answer. The clue specified that "both themselves prime numbers" meaning it couldn't be the same digit.

Not sure about that.... what would you say is the right response to this FJ:

"This 2-digit number is the smallest odd number whose digits are both themselves odd numbers." ?

[evanakm]

Instaget, but they've overturned responses before after finding an old reference book that agrees with a player. Mathematicians disagreed on the primeness of 1 until relatively recently, and you can find math reference books from the 70s that call 1 prime.

If you can find one, I'd be interested in seeing it. I agree that Colin should be invited back if this is the case.

It would have been easier 7 years ago when I was an undergraduate who practically lived at the math library, but I've definitely seen them. Also, Wolfram (a slightly more reliable online source than Wikipedia) cites a few references from as recent as the 90s that call 1 prime.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PrimeNumber.html

[opusthepenguin]

HAPPY SAINT PATRICK'S DAY!!!!!

[MarkBarrett]

[Must not do Survivor hijack.]

No offense to Kristin, but I'll admit to saying "familiar" out loud more than once during Colin's second DD. If Colin gets it right then that is a runaway victory. All of the other what ifs do not seem to matter as Kristin would have bet more on her FJ! wager as necessary.

Colin did not lose because his DD wager on the miss was too big, the board was not completed or because Kristin got clue 29 in the DJ! round.

Kristin knew the correct response of 23 and Colin did not. That is the deciding point of the match.

Sure, I can put 11 on the poll. First I wrote 11. I had a strong whisper in my head from ghosts of high school math that 1 was not a prime number. Brilliant me instead of being orderly and going to the 20s decided that whole group was out. I jumped to the 30s and continuing my genius had 37 come to me as two prime number digits.

Wait, dummy, what about 35? Oh! I switched. I would need a replay to see if I beat the buzzer as I made 33 the last thing I wrote although it may have been milliseconds late. 3 as a prime and 3 as prime had me attempt a response even worse than 35 (7x5 ugh just as bad) as the 11x3 did not hit me in time.

Thirty seconds should have been about 20 seconds more than enough to have eliminated 11-19, wiped out 20-22 and locked in 23. The kind of fail I'm good at and always grateful to have done at home than like Colin to have happen on the stage.

Congrats Kristin for accomplishing the terrific feat of winning five games on Jeopardy!. We'll get that baseball Pavlov bumped in plenty of time for the TOC.

It was my intention for it to have been and one and long gone after last night with the veiled "Sully" wardrobe top comment, but then you went and did Rango tonight.

[goforthetie]

Instaget, but they've overturned responses before after finding an old reference book that agrees with a player. Mathematicians disagreed on the primeness of 1 until relatively recently, and you can find math reference books from the 70s that call 1 prime.

If you can find one, I'd be interested in seeing it. I agree that Colin should be invited back if this is the case.

It would have been easier 7 years ago when I was an undergraduate who practically lived at the math library, but I've definitely seen them. Also, Wolfram (a slightly more reliable online source than Wikipedia) cites a few references from as recent as the 90s that call 1 prime.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PrimeNumber.html

One of those references from the 90's is a reprint of much older work (GH Hardy), and the other I would bet is cited not because the authors themselves believe 1 ought to be called prime, but because they mention that earlier mathematicians thought so.

[Bob78164]

This game is a win for the Weak Form of Shore's Conjecture. The second-place player bet "small." --Bob

[The Talking Mime]

Congrats on win #5 and booking a spot in the ToC, Kristin! I missed tonight's game, but I looked it over in the Archive (kudos to whoever got it up so quickly). It sure did seem like it was exciting.

Gave myself 30 seconds for FJ. I thought 11 at first, but managed to change it...to 22. I focused too much on the "digits themselves" part and forgot that the entire number had to be prime as well. Damn.

[Vanya]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiKcd7yPLdU

[Kid Charlemagne]

This game is a win for the Weak Form of Shore's Conjecture. The second-place player bet "small." --Bob

Kristin played it right. She'd have won with an incorrect response. What two-thirds buys you is that is forces the leader to choose between guaranteeing a win with a correct response (which is what most of them are going to do) or a win on a triple stumper. (Well, a double stumper in this case; poor Irene just didn't have enough scratch to be a factor in this game.)

It's be interesting to see what the percentages of leaders in non-lock games, in order of least to most ridicule :
* Make a lockout bet or an amount functionally equivalent to a lockout bet;
* Bet a low amount designed to give them a win on a triple stumper;
* Overbet and leave themselves unnecessarily exposed to a worse outcome than necessary;
* Bet an amount that guarantees them neither a win with a get nor a win with an opposing miss;

[lieph82]

Instaget, but they've overturned responses before after finding an old reference book that agrees with a player. Mathematicians disagreed on the primeness of 1 until relatively recently, and you can find math reference books from the 70s that call 1 prime.

If you can find one, I'd be interested in seeing it. I agree that Colin should be invited back if this is the case.

It would have been easier 7 years ago when I was an undergraduate who practically lived at the math library, but I've definitely seen them. Also, Wolfram (a slightly more reliable online source than Wikipedia) cites a few references from as recent as the 90s that call 1 prime.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PrimeNumber.html

One of those references from the 90's is a reprint of much older work (GH Hardy), and the other I would bet is cited not because the authors themselves believe 1 ought to be called prime, but because they mention that earlier mathematicians thought so.

Where would the judges draw the line of a source being "too old"?

[Woof]

Yes, this was an exciting game to watch, featuring two very formidable players in Colin and Kristin. I was very impressed by several of Colin's gets but then bemused by his misses on the "familiar" DJ and FJ. My subjective reaction to seeing the clue was "This is Kids' Week material," reinforced when my 10 year old son blurted out "23" halfway through Think Music, but after reading this thread I'm revising my valuation of the question. Nice game, Kristin!

[cf1140]

Speaking about wagering....Colin was asked right after the game what he would have done differently.

And obviously he said the wager. He said he figured Kristin would bet the way she did but he couldn't live with himself if he got it right and didn't advance if she bet it all.

I guess it sums up why the leader bets to cover 98% of the time.

[alan tiger]

one of the questions in my so-called "white tiger" quiz written-up by paucle was:
what was the name of gillian's familiar in "bell book and candle"? ans: pyewacket
i just found out that 1) in the book, pyewacket was an alley cat, and 2) in the movie, the seal-point siamese was really named: "Cy A. Meese"!!!

[skullturf]

I confess that I almost said 37. That would have been really silly.

I'm going to spoiler the next paragraph for graphic mathematical content.

Spoiler

While the prime factorization argument is compelling and doesn't require specialized knowledge, the best reason not to consider 1 to be prime is that it has a multiplicative inverse in the set. In the integers, it's useful to categorize elements as (1) zero, which always is special; (2) invertible elements, 1 and -1 in the integers; (3) prime, such as 3 or -5, which means that it's not in category (1) or (2) and the only factorizations are into 1 times the number or -1 times the negative of the number; and (4) composite numbers, for which there are other factorizations, such as -6 = 2 times -3. There are more general algebraic structures in which the elements can be categorized analogously. The elements in category (3) are building blocks, while the elements in category (2) lack any building blocks.

Back to grading Calc III tests. Go Kristin!

Good explanation. If anyone wants a different attempt at an intuitive explanation, the words "building blocks" are key.

The reason prime numbers are singled out and given a special name is not just that they can't be "decomposed", but also that they contribute in a meaningful way to the factorization of a number.

60 = 2 x 2 x 3 x 5 is a true statement. Also, 60 = 1 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 2 x 2 x 3 x 5 is a true statement. Yes, the 1's are "unbreakable", but they don't really "contribute". Intuitively, they are not part of the "building blocks".

I realize that may all sound a little hand-wavy. Informally, "prime" doesn't just mean "can't be broken down further"; rather, "prime" refers to those numbers that contribute to the factorization but can't be broken down further. Those that make the smallest "genuine" contribution, as it were.

[united]

As a close relation of Colin's I'd like to thank y'all for commiserating, on account of he won't sign up to do so. Best of luck to Kristin going forward!

[dhkendall]

Also wanted to chime in originally (and forgot) that the only way I got Renzo Piano today is that it came up on a QuizUp question I played just the other day (had to choose the famous architect name from Renzo Piano, Renzo Trumpet, Renzo Flute and Renzo Guitar - since that was the first time I've heard of him, my WAG (of Guitar) came up wrong. But since that QuizUp question was very recent, easy money!

Instaget, but they've overturned responses before after finding an old reference book that agrees with a player. Mathematicians disagreed on the primeness of 1 until relatively recently, and you can find math reference books from the 70s that call 1 prime.

If you can find one, I'd be interested in seeing it. I agree that Colin should be invited back if this is the case.

You'd also find science books from the same era unequivocably stating that Pluto is a planet. Science changes (at least, scientific theories change, given new evidence, the science itself doesn't). Same with math(ematical theorems). It seems to be clear that mathematicians used to believe 1 is prime, but now they don't. The clue was (implicitly?) asking for what is a prime now, not then.

I somehow knew that $600 was Ventura but had no idea what party

I always remember Ventura as a successful independent politician (which he was), so my answer was Independent. (not a party)

[seaborgium]

I have NHO "buttonhole" in either of those contexts.

Have you never worn clothes with buttons (or have all your buttons been purely decorative)?

[BigDaddyMatty]

Coryat: $25,200
39 R/0 W
DD: 3/3
FJ: As soon as I saw the clue, I knew there would be fireworks over the status of 1.
LT: familiar (DD)
C: Melbourne, Loch Lomond, Mather, fungus

Congrats to Kristin on a gutty win. TOC-bound! J! was preempted in Dallas due to a Rangers spring training game, so thank you to whoever got the Archive up to speed so quickly. As soon as I got done scoring DJ!, I looked at the scores and thought, "it's not a crush!" Glad to see Kristin nail the wager, and glad to see it didn't matter.

Ten straight FJ gets for me in a row. I'm sure others have much longer streaks, but I don't think I've ever hit double digits since I started keeping track a few years ago.

Me too! Congrats!

What led to American Express on Brands for $600?

Their cards say "Member Since...", their commercials always show this (every one that has a celebrity displays that celebrity's card prominently at the end of the ad), and their former ad slogan was "membership has its privileges."

Also, is there any reason I should know who Eric Cantor is? He seems really low on the political totem pole unless you're from Richmond, VA.

He was the House Majority Leader for 3 1/2 years until getting unexpectedly defeated in a primary last June and subsequently resigning from Congress. He was quite high on the political totem pole.

[dhkendall]

Also, is there any reason I should know who Eric Cantor is? He seems really low on the political totem pole unless you're from Richmond, VA.

He was the House Majority Leader for 3 1/2 years until getting unexpectedly defeated in a primary last June and subsequently resigning from Congress. He was quite high on the political totem pole.

Even I've heard of him.

[TenPoundHammer]

I have NHO "buttonhole" in either of those contexts.

Have you never worn clothes with buttons (or have all your buttons been purely decorative)?

I didn't know it was specifically called a "buttonhole" though. I thought it was just a "hole". (That, and about 90% of the time, I just wear casual t-shirts or, if I need to be formal, a sweater.)