Watson and Jeopardy

[Yanni Chiu]

On 16/02/11 11:07 AM, John Myshrall wrote:
>
> I wonder if Watson was joking or being merciful if that is even remotely
> possible or that someone on IBM intervened.

I had the same feeling - that some person put the brakes on. With so 
many right answers prior, it seems impossible that its best guess would 
be Toronto. Any U.S. city with two airports would have been a better guess.

There weren't many opportunities to observe the response when the 
machine is actually stumped. Maybe this is the fail safe response - try 
and be funny.

> Toronto was so far out in left field it fails on the first litmus test.
> The answer was followed by many question marks and it only wager
> <$1000.00 yet it had a $25000.00 lead.

I thought the final wager was way too low. The previous "double 
jeopardy" wagers seemed too low, as well. I don't think any human player 
would have bet so low, knowing how the game has been going, and their 
own abilities.

I didn't see the first show, so I can't figure out how the humans could 
have been so close in score from the previous day. It seemed to me that 
some fine tuning had gone on between the first day and the second day, 
to maximize the response time. It seemed to me that the computer had 
super-human ability to hit the buzzer as soon as it had it's response ready.
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