Last Week's contestant run: Conspiracy or Mystery?

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MTGcollegestudent
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Last Week's contestant run: Conspiracy or Mystery?

Post by MTGcollegestudent »

From what we have encountered last week, after David, Sharon and Catherine's episode, the next four days had the men finish in 3rd place while the women had won 2nd place right after that? What do you guys think? I don't think this has ever happened at all in any Jeopardy! season.

It's a mystery if you ask me.

What do you guys think?
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Re: Last Week's contestant run: Conspiracy or Mystery?

Post by xxaaaxx »

Conspiracy? Mystery?

C: none of the above.

But hey, stay on top of these outchanges. You'll figure it out someday.
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Re: Last Week's contestant run: Conspiracy or Mystery?

Post by squarekara »

Behind the scenes with Standards and Practices:
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Re: Last Week's contestant run: Conspiracy or Mystery?

Post by tiwonge »

There are 6 different orderings of contestants, so any ordering has a 1/6 chance of happening.

Over a 5 day week, the chance of that particular ordering is 1/6^5, or 1/7776.

If there are, say, 210 episodes per year, and Jeopardy! has been airing for 34 years, or approximately 7000 episodes. It would not be surprising that, over this time, any given ordering of the contestants happens for every day of the week, for some week. (Actually, I guess this would be for some 5 day stretch, and not necessarily a week. Still, it's about 20% likely, I guess, that it would happen in a five game stretch that starts on a Monday?)

Your case is actually a lot more likely. Given a contestant panel of 2 women and one man, the chance of the man finishing in 3rd place with the woman in the first two positions is 1/3. You noted that it happens 4 times in a row, so that would occur 1/3^4, or 1/81 times that we get a FFM matchup. (That matchup, assuming men and women are equally likely to appear, will occur 3/8 of the time, so we might expect to see this scenario 1/216 of the time, or about once a season?)

(Unless you're specifying that the defending champion also wins; clearly, if the man finishes 3rd, then a woman is the champion? I'm not clear if that is part of your conspiracy. It's not really clear what you're saying, or why it is unusual.)

In other words, this doesn't seem to be particularly unusual. If it has indeed never happened before, that would be unusual.
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Re: Last Week's contestant run: Conspiracy or Mystery?

Post by opusthepenguin »

tiwonge wrote: Mon Jun 18, 2018 4:53 pm There are 6 different orderings of contestants, so any ordering has a 1/6 chance of happening.
That would be true if the contestants were randomly selected from a pool that was 50% M 50% F. I'm not sure that's true for podia 2 and 3. It's definitely not true for podium 1. That said, I don't think there's any sort of conspiracy. I agree with your rebuttal for the most part. I'm just an incorrigible nitpicker.
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Re: Last Week's contestant run: Conspiracy or Mystery?

Post by cheezguyty »

MTGcollegestudent wrote: Mon Jun 18, 2018 2:21 pm From what we have encountered last week, after David, Sharon and Catherine's episode, the next four days had the men finish in 3rd place while the women had won 2nd place right after that? What do you guys think? I don't think this has ever happened at all in any Jeopardy! season.
That happened just last season, on the week of October 10, 2016.

Also, the middle contestant on last Monday's show was named Tracey, not Sharon.
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Re: Last Week's contestant run: Conspiracy or Mystery?

Post by tiwonge »

opusthepenguin wrote: Mon Jun 18, 2018 5:01 pm
tiwonge wrote: Mon Jun 18, 2018 4:53 pm There are 6 different orderings of contestants, so any ordering has a 1/6 chance of happening.
That would be true if the contestants were randomly selected from a pool that was 50% M 50% F. I'm not sure that's true for podia 2 and 3. It's definitely not true for podium 1. That said, I don't think there's any sort of conspiracy. I agree with your rebuttal for the most part. I'm just an incorrigible nitpicker.
The first podium wouldn't be equally likely to be a man or a woman, if one or the other have a higher winning percentage. (Are winners more likely to be male or female? I don't know, don't have the stats, and don't care enough to try to find them. I mean, it's not likely that the winning percentage is exactly 50%, but I don't know how far off 50% it is.)

Also, I assume (but did not check) that Jeopardy! tries to have its contestant pool about equal in terms of M and F, but again, that might not be exactly 50%. (I did notice that at my audition, there were an equal number of men and women contestant hopefuls in the room.)
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Re: Last Week's contestant run: Conspiracy or Mystery?

Post by cheezguyty »

tiwonge wrote: Mon Jun 18, 2018 6:49 pm (Are winners more likely to be male or female? I don't know, don't have the stats, and don't care enough to try to find them. I mean, it's not likely that the winning percentage is exactly 50%, but I don't know how far off 50% it is.)
Between November 24, 2014 (when the tiebreaker rule went into effect) and June 15, 2018, there were 725 regular-play games; males won 455 times (62.8%) and females won 269 times (37.1%). Of the 375 different winners, 209 (55.7%) were male and 166 (44.3%) were female.

[edited because I forgot that one of the games had no winner]
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Re: Last Week's contestant run: Conspiracy or Mystery?

Post by Anachronism »

cheezguyty wrote: Mon Jun 18, 2018 5:50 pm Also, the middle contestant on last Monday's show was named Tracey, not Sharon.
And you don't find that suspicious?
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Re: Last Week's contestant run: Conspiracy or Mystery?

Post by harrumph »

The mystery here is whether the OP will ever get laid.
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Re: Last Week's contestant run: Conspiracy or Mystery?

Post by Bamaman »

harrumph wrote: Tue Jun 19, 2018 2:09 am The mystery here is whether the OP will ever get laid.
Contains spoiler for Monday’s FJ.
Spoiler
68B7F350-0B0B-4DA7-A2D9-D878C1C4A0EB.png
68B7F350-0B0B-4DA7-A2D9-D878C1C4A0EB.png (348.64 KiB) Viewed 4118 times
Last edited by Bamaman on Tue Jun 19, 2018 9:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Last Week's contestant run: Conspiracy or Mystery?

Post by opusthepenguin »

Bamaman wrote: Tue Jun 19, 2018 9:21 pm
harrumph wrote: Tue Jun 19, 2018 2:09 am The mystery here is whether the OP will ever get laid.
Contains spoiler for Tuesday’s FJ.
Spoiler
Image
Spoiler
Was that what Dewey's Magic 8-Ball said?
Last edited by opusthepenguin on Wed Jun 20, 2018 9:54 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Last Week's contestant run: Conspiracy or Mystery?

Post by Bamaman »

I fixed my post. I lose track of days sometimes.
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Re: Last Week's contestant run: Conspiracy or Mystery?

Post by Anachronism »

Crap. Don't click on the corrected spoiler, even if you've already seen Monday's show.
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Re: Last Week's contestant run: Conspiracy or Mystery?

Post by opusthepenguin »

Anachronism wrote: Wed Jun 20, 2018 12:21 am Crap. Don't click on the corrected spoiler, even if you've already seen Monday's show.
Sorry about that. I've edited my post to make it clear that my spoiler spoils the FJ for both Monday and Tuesday.
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