Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Golf »

67% is my get rate at $30,000/61% at $50,000, and it is very rare for me to not know both answers.
This makes zero sense. Going by your numbers you had less than a 41% chance of knowing both answers.

Look, this is nowhere near the Regis version of the game where they were giving away money. After the gimme five, the questions are either decently difficult or quite simply, not trivia questions at all. More like minutia one cannot study for. You didn't get a tough stack, you misjudged the difficulty of the game at present.

So don't beat yourself up over not reaching $50k, because I'm not sure the very best players at TCONA would do so more than half the time. To do so takes a fortunate set of circumstances.
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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by IronNeck »

Golf wrote: Look, this is nowhere near the Regis version of the game where they were giving away money. After the gimme five, the questions are either decently difficult or quite simply, not trivia questions at all. More like minutia one cannot study for. You didn't get a tough stack, you misjudged the difficulty of the game at present.

So don't beat yourself up over not reaching $50k, because I'm not sure the very best players at TCONA would do so more than half the time. To do so takes a fortunate set of circumstances.
Completely agree. There are certain questions I've seen on this newer version that I call "go to hell" questions. Ones where even the best trivia minds can do no more than narrow it down.

The Manute Bol/Statue of Liberty that Josh ended his run on is one. The weapon not found in the original version of the Clue board game is another. There was one I saw a couple of weeks ago about worst advertising disasters that qualified. There is just a level of insane minutia that no one can reasonably be expected to know, no matter how well-read or well-prepared.

That's not even getting into the difficulty of having to get every single question on the questions that are actually trivia.

So yeah, methinks you were being a little overoptimistic, Wayne.

I passed their 30 question test with ease and often dominate when I watch the game from home, too, including six figure questions. However, there are also question stacks where I would have erred before even hitting $5k. As Golf correctly noted, luck plays a far greater element in Millionaire than it does even in Jeopardy. (And with DDs, wildly different opponent strengths, categories, buzzer wars, etc. we know Jeopardy can often go either way)
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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Vermonter »

Tough to see both of you end your runs early, gentlemen, but it was great to watch you up there, particularly after meeting you at TCONA! Congrats on your performances – as those of us who have been on game shows know well, it's very, very different playing under the lights.

Wayne: Great strategy with the ATA. If I knew one (let's say A) were definitely wrong, I plan to tell the audience: "Please only respond in the first 15 seconds if you are absolutely, 100% sure of the answer. After that, if you don't know, choose A."

My mom always used to make manicotti on Christmas Day. I HATED it, so eventually – after several years of me not eating – she switched over to ham.
triviawayne wrote: But I also know the higher I would go, the more useless the 50/50 would become, so I used it.
I agree for the most part, although sometimes it can be helpful on the $100k question, as those free guesses are often YEKIOYD.
Golf wrote:
67% is my get rate at $30,000/61% at $50,000, and it is very rare for me to not know both answers.
This makes zero sense. Going by your numbers you had less than a 41% chance of knowing both answers.
I think he meant "it is very rare for me to get neither answer" – that would be 13%. Still, since we're assuming statistical independence, we need to assign a 39% miss rate to the $50k question.
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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Vermonter »

IronNeck wrote:There are certain questions I've seen on this newer version that I call "go to hell" questions. Ones where even the best trivia minds can do no more than narrow it down.

The Manute Bol/Statue of Liberty that Josh ended his run on is one.
I disagree in this particular circumstance; I saw it as a pure guesstimation question. It was pretty easy to eliminate right arm and tablet, leaving eye and index finger. (50/50 would have given the same, doubtless.)

Here's how I went about it: Let's say my eye is about 1 inch in height. I'm 6'1" tall, or 73 inches, so that makes it about 1/73 of my total height.

If the eye of Lady Liberty is 7'7", then the statue's approximate height (not taking into account the raised arm) is 73 times that. Rounding both numbers for ease of use – let's say 8'0" and 70 – we get a height of 560 feet.

Conversely, my index finger is a little over 3 inches long (I measured it using my opposite thumb, which I know is about 3/4 of an inch wide). If the statue's index finger is 7'7", that'd make her total height (again, without torch arm) less than 200 feet – one-third the height of the eye estimate.

Now it's just a matter of picking the right number. Is the statue ~200 feet tall, or ~600 feet tall? Having lived in New York for a decade, I probably have an advantage on this portion; the Statue is big, but not 60-story-building big. (I did not know the exact numbers, but the statue is 151'1" tall, and 305'1" from base to top of torch.)
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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by triviawayne »

Vermonter wrote:
IronNeck wrote:There are certain questions I've seen on this newer version that I call "go to hell" questions. Ones where even the best trivia minds can do no more than narrow it down.

The Manute Bol/Statue of Liberty that Josh ended his run on is one.
I disagree in this particular circumstance; I saw it as a pure guesstimation question. It was pretty easy to eliminate right arm and tablet, leaving eye and index finger. (50/50 would have given the same, doubtless.)

Here's how I went about it: Let's say my eye is about 1 inch in height. I'm 6'1" tall, or 73 inches, so that makes it about 1/73 of my total height.

If the eye of Lady Liberty is 7'7", then the statue's approximate height (not taking into account the raised arm) is 73 times that. Rounding both numbers for ease of use – let's say 8'0" and 70 – we get a height of 560 feet.

Conversely, my index finger is a little over 3 inches long (I measured it using my opposite thumb, which I know is about 3/4 of an inch wide). If the statue's index finger is 7'7", that'd make her total height (again, without torch arm) less than 200 feet – one-third the height of the eye estimate.

Now it's just a matter of picking the right number. Is the statue ~200 feet tall, or ~600 feet tall? Having lived in New York for a decade, I probably have an advantage on this portion; the Statue is big, but not 60-story-building big. (I did not know the exact numbers, but the statue is 151'1" tall, and 305'1" from base to top of torch.)
Exactly. I ssw this purely as a math question.

Liberty is 150 feet tall, or about 25 times the size of a late 1800s woman. A finger is around 3.5 inches long, times 25, That makes the finger around 8 feet.
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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by triviawayne »

Golf wrote:
67% is my get rate at $30,000/61% at $50,000, and it is very rare for me to not know both answers.

This makes zero sense. Going by your numbers you had less than a 41% chance of knowing both answers.

I think he meant "it is very rare for me to get neither answer" – that would be 13%. Still, since we're assuming statistical independence, we need to assign a 39% miss rate to the $50k question.


What I was trying to say is, since I didn't know the $30,000 question, it would be likely that I will know the $50,000 question.


From the couch it would be easy for me to have said composer, use the 50/50 on pasta, plan on my plus one for the tattoo, and be staring at $50k with ATA left.

This was real money, a slightly unusual line of questions, and with a bad financial situation at home, some knowledge I had just wasn't coming through.
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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by RichmondJ »

Vermonter wrote:
triviawayne wrote: But I also know the higher I would go, the more useless the 50/50 would become, so I used it.
I agree for the most part, although sometimes it can be helpful on the $100k question, as those free guesses are often YEKIOYD.
The 50/50 can also make guessing a more attractive proposition at higher levels where guesses are not free, by making the game a coin flip in which the upside is bigger than the downside. The best example is that at the $250k level, that coin flip becomes "heads I win $150k and the chance to go on; tails I lose only $50k."
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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by RichmondJ »

By the way, the above was an abstract observation. I am definitely not saying Wayne should have saved the 50/50 in this case. The #1 rule of lifelines is that you use them when you need them to stay in the game. And the #1 lifeline-related regret that people express is that they didn't use them when they should have.
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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by opusthepenguin »

RichmondJ wrote:By the way, the above was an abstract observation. I am definitely not saying Wayne should have saved the 50/50 in this case. The #1 rule of lifelines is that you use them when you need them to stay in the game. And the #1 lifeline-related regret that people express is that they didn't use them when they should have.
Yeah, but the #2 lifeline-related regret is using one up when you were 80% sure you knew the right answer.
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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Rafferty Barnes »

On your gofundme page you said you were 90% sure you would win enough so all the money raised would eventually be donated to the dogs, which you said in your latest update was at 50k https://www.gofundme.com/2ftntks, but in this thread you said you were at 61% at that level. What made your suredness (is that a word?) drop?
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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by cf1140 »

IronNeck wrote:Nice write-up, but shit, you should have told us this was at Bally's.

I used to be a very serious tournament chess player and through attending a number of major national opens in Las Vegas, got to stay at a number of different hotels.

The absolute worst to sleep in, and one that I felt a borderline fever every time I woke up was Bally's. I would have warned you to stay somewhere else.
Bally's is nicer than the Tropicana which is where TCONA is held.
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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by alietr »

Sorry, Wayne, I had to do it ...

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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by WooWho? »

triviawayne wrote:
Vermonter wrote:
IronNeck wrote:There are certain questions I've seen on this newer version that I call "go to hell" questions. Ones where even the best trivia minds can do no more than narrow it down.

The Manute Bol/Statue of Liberty that Josh ended his run on is one.
I disagree in this particular circumstance; I saw it as a pure guesstimation question. It was pretty easy to eliminate right arm and tablet, leaving eye and index finger. (50/50 would have given the same, doubtless.)

Here's how I went about it: Let's say my eye is about 1 inch in height. I'm 6'1" tall, or 73 inches, so that makes it about 1/73 of my total height.

If the eye of Lady Liberty is 7'7", then the statue's approximate height (not taking into account the raised arm) is 73 times that. Rounding both numbers for ease of use – let's say 8'0" and 70 – we get a height of 560 feet.

Conversely, my index finger is a little over 3 inches long (I measured it using my opposite thumb, which I know is about 3/4 of an inch wide). If the statue's index finger is 7'7", that'd make her total height (again, without torch arm) less than 200 feet – one-third the height of the eye estimate.

Now it's just a matter of picking the right number. Is the statue ~200 feet tall, or ~600 feet tall? Having lived in New York for a decade, I probably have an advantage on this portion; the Statue is big, but not 60-story-building big. (I did not know the exact numbers, but the statue is 151'1" tall, and 305'1" from base to top of torch.)
Exactly. I ssw this purely as a math question.

Liberty is 150 feet tall, or about 25 times the size of a late 1800s woman. A finger is around 3.5 inches long, times 25, That makes the finger around 8 feet.
As I said earlier...my sense of scale was completely out of whack after seeing the replica of said statue in Odaiba exactly a month prior to taping the show...which is WAY smaller than the genuine article (which I haven't seen up close in years). So this is an instance where the "Slumdog Millionaire" moment actually hurt me!
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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by RichmondJ »

cf1140 wrote:
IronNeck wrote:Nice write-up, but shit, you should have told us this was at Bally's.

I used to be a very serious tournament chess player and through attending a number of major national opens in Las Vegas, got to stay at a number of different hotels.

The absolute worst to sleep in, and one that I felt a borderline fever every time I woke up was Bally's. I would have warned you to stay somewhere else.
Bally's is nicer than the Tropicana which is where TCONA is held.
Oh, I don't agree at all. I'm with triviawayne and IronNeck on this. I stayed at the two hotels on consecutive weekends in August - first weekend at Bally's to tape Millionaire, second weekend at the Tropicana for TCONA. I preferred the Trop hands down. The beds at Bally's are uncomfortable and the pillows are weird. The lobby/casino area at Bally's is dark, chaotic, and not at all what a contestant needs on the eve/morning of taping.

I would definitely advise future contestants either to spring for the Bellagio or to stay at the Westin, which is also right across the street and where you know you'll get a comfortable bed.
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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by triviawayne »

Rafferty Barnes wrote:On your gofundme page you said you were 90% sure you would win enough so all the money raised would eventually be donated to the dogs, which you said in your latest update was at 50k https://www.gofundme.com/2ftntks, but in this thread you said you were at 61% at that level. What made your suredness (is that a word?) drop?
My get rates for the first 10 questions are:

100
100
98
98
97
90
85
84
66
61

This is at home without lifelines. About 40% of the time that someone actually gets to the $50,000 question (71 times last season); I was able to do it without getting any wrong. I figured with three liflines, the odds were really good for me getting through the first ten questions. I also knew about 10% of the time, there just seems to be that killer stack of questions where I wouldn't make it through ten questions even with lifelines. While there are often times I don't get the $30,000 and there are often times I don't get the $50,000, almost never do I miss both in a single stack. Having this one down to two choices without really having any knowledge of what the answer was, I felt good about taking this risk as I was likely to know the $50,000 answer.

Of the questions above $50,000, last season my get rate was:

57%
44%
50%

In the standup era of the show, we have seen three $1 million questions, I had all three correct. One of these questions was an audience member (that used to be the next question in the stack, this unlucky person had to face a $1m question as the contestant walked with $250,000), another was in a celebrity week (yeah, I'm counting that, the show doesn't make the questions any easier anymore), and a woman who went for it and lost after saying "I only walked in here with my bus pass."
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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by IronNeck »

Vermonter wrote:
IronNeck wrote:There are certain questions I've seen on this newer version that I call "go to hell" questions. Ones where even the best trivia minds can do no more than narrow it down.

The Manute Bol/Statue of Liberty that Josh ended his run on is one.
I disagree in this particular circumstance; I saw it as a pure guesstimation question. It was pretty easy to eliminate right arm and tablet, leaving eye and index finger. (50/50 would have given the same, doubtless.)

Here's how I went about it: Let's say my eye is about 1 inch in height. I'm 6'1" tall, or 73 inches, so that makes it about 1/73 of my total height.

If the eye of Lady Liberty is 7'7", then the statue's approximate height (not taking into account the raised arm) is 73 times that. Rounding both numbers for ease of use – let's say 8'0" and 70 – we get a height of 560 feet.

Conversely, my index finger is a little over 3 inches long (I measured it using my opposite thumb, which I know is about 3/4 of an inch wide). If the statue's index finger is 7'7", that'd make her total height (again, without torch arm) less than 200 feet – one-third the height of the eye estimate.

Now it's just a matter of picking the right number. Is the statue ~200 feet tall, or ~600 feet tall? Having lived in New York for a decade, I probably have an advantage on this portion; the Statue is big, but not 60-story-building big. (I did not know the exact numbers, but the statue is 151'1" tall, and 305'1" from base to top of torch.)
Interesting method, hadn't considered it! I would admittedly have a hard time guesstimating the length of my own eye or index finger, but even accounting for some error/uncertainty, this would be a useful calculation.
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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by FireAntsDefense »

Vermonter wrote:
IronNeck wrote:There are certain questions I've seen on this newer version that I call "go to hell" questions. Ones where even the best trivia minds can do no more than narrow it down.

The Manute Bol/Statue of Liberty that Josh ended his run on is one.
I disagree in this particular circumstance; I saw it as a pure guesstimation question. It was pretty easy to eliminate right arm and tablet, leaving eye and index finger. (50/50 would have given the same, doubtless.)

Here's how I went about it: Let's say my eye is about 1 inch in height. I'm 6'1" tall, or 73 inches, so that makes it about 1/73 of my total height.

If the eye of Lady Liberty is 7'7", then the statue's approximate height (not taking into account the raised arm) is 73 times that. Rounding both numbers for ease of use – let's say 8'0" and 70 – we get a height of 560 feet.

Conversely, my index finger is a little over 3 inches long (I measured it using my opposite thumb, which I know is about 3/4 of an inch wide). If the statue's index finger is 7'7", that'd make her total height (again, without torch arm) less than 200 feet – one-third the height of the eye estimate.

Now it's just a matter of picking the right number. Is the statue ~200 feet tall, or ~600 feet tall? Having lived in New York for a decade, I probably have an advantage on this portion; the Statue is big, but not 60-story-building big. (I did not know the exact numbers, but the statue is 151'1" tall, and 305'1" from base to top of torch.)
Someone told me a Saturn V is twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty, and a Saturn V is about 360 feet. My problem was I didn't know if that included the pedestal.
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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by Golf »

triviawayne wrote:
Rafferty Barnes wrote:On your gofundme page you said you were 90% sure you would win enough so all the money raised would eventually be donated to the dogs, which you said in your latest update was at 50k https://www.gofundme.com/2ftntks, but in this thread you said you were at 61% at that level. What made your suredness (is that a word?) drop?
My get rates for the first 10 questions are:

100
100
98
98
97
90
85
84
66
61

This is at home without lifelines. About 40% of the time that someone actually gets to the $50,000 question (71 times last season); I was able to do it without getting any wrong. I figured with three liflines, the odds were really good for me getting through the first ten questions. I also knew about 10% of the time, there just seems to be that killer stack of questions where I wouldn't make it through ten questions even with lifelines. While there are often times I don't get the $30,000 and there are often times I don't get the $50,000, almost never do I miss both in a single stack. Having this one down to two choices without really having any knowledge of what the answer was, I felt good about taking this risk as I was likely to know the $50,000 answer.

Of the questions above $50,000, last season my get rate was:

57%
44%
50%

In the standup era of the show, we have seen three $1 million questions, I had all three correct. One of these questions was an audience member (that used to be the next question in the stack, this unlucky person had to face a $1m question as the contestant walked with $250,000), another was in a celebrity week (yeah, I'm counting that, the show doesn't make the questions any easier anymore), and a woman who went for it and lost after saying "I only walked in here with my bus pass."
You state those are your "get rates", but there's a huge difference between your get rates and questions you are actually sure about. Because you have a 25% chance of guessing correctly in addition to knowing the answer. So on the $50k Q since your get rate is 61%, that means you actually know the answer only 48% of the time.

Extrapolating that through the first 10 questions in the stack and your rate of actually knowing all 10 is probably in the single digits. And these days the LL's don't usually help that much.

Again, I think you did just fine. It wasn't your knowledge or a bad stack that got you. It's just a much tougher game than you realize.
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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by triviawayne »

So with this math, how many of the $500 and $1000 questions am I "sure" about? How “huge” is the difference between my “get rate and questions I am actually sure about”? Math will not tell you the knowledge inside somebody's head.

With multiple choice questions, a guess from a trivia player is not the same as a guess from a mathematical standpoint. Math does not and cannot take into account every individual's personal history or subconscious thinking.

A trivia player can often eliminate answers in multiple choice and still be sure of the correct answer because of what they know the correct answer to NOT be. Look at my $20,000 question. I didn't KNOW FOR SURE the NHL would turn 100 in 2017; yet I did know FOR SURE the years of the Olympics (even though I apparently had a slip of the tongue and said 1886 instead of 1896) and first World Series, and was reasonably sure Wimbledon began in the 1800s.

A few years ago, I tracked my answers at Trivia HOF on the daily twelve to see what rate I would get a correct answer when I had no idea at all on a question. It was more than 30% of the time because I obviously have some knowledge lurking about somewhere that I may not realize at the time I look at the question. Even testing the 50/50/90 rule, my results were at 58%.
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Re: Millionaire 2016-17 Season Discussion [SPOILERS]

Post by jeff6286 »

triviawayne wrote: A trivia player can often eliminate answers in multiple choice and still be sure of the correct answer because of what they know the correct answer to NOT be. Look at my $20,000 question. I didn't KNOW FOR SURE the NHL would turn 100 in 2017; yet I did know FOR SURE the years of the Olympics (even though I apparently had a slip of the tongue and said 1886 instead of 1896) and first World Series, and was reasonably sure Wimbledon began in the 1800s.
Didn't you say above that you would have used the 50/50 lifeline on this question if you still had it?
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