Comment by zach | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zach | Hacker News Reader

Kind of disappointing to hear that Watson basically ignores the FJ! category, if true. Especially when being far in the lead on a first-day tournament. That is a great chance to rack up some serious points depending on the confidence in the category.

Also, the "gee, it could be wordplay" aspect is a convenient excuse. First off, Final Jeopardy rarely has cutesy categories.

Plus, we know they mined the J-Archive. (Aside: has anyone else? Got a zipfile? I would love it.) I mean, look at this, it's not like "U.S. Cities" is an obscure category, even counting only Final Jeopardy! appearances:

http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=1680 http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=695 http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=132 http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=2040 http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=2034 http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=3107 http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=287 http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=691

There are probably more but you get the idea. Any category that comes up that often is going to be pretty indicative of the subject, and Watson can see that the responses in this category pretty strongly fit the subject.

“Kind of disappointing to hear that Watson basically ignores the FJ! category, if true.”

How are you getting that idea? It didn’t bet much because it wasn’t at all confident, we don’t know what it would have done if it had been more confident.

Watson likes to play it safe, though, as can be seen in this demo game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgYSv2KSyWg&t=20m26s (I skipped ahead to Final Jeopardy.)

He was $16,000 ahead but one of the contestants could get within $1,600 by betting all of his money. So, naturally, Watson bet only $1,599 even though it was very confident (and ultimately got the answer right). That secured Watson’s win, no matter what the others did. (This is really not impressive or anything like that, if all you want to do is win the game, that’s what you do. Basic game theory.)

Wagers are made after the category is shown but before the the clue is revealed. It can only use the confidence in its knowledge of the category, not of the question itself, in the calculation of the bet.

Ah, didn’t know this. Sorry, there has been no Jeopardy on German TV since I have been 12, it was not really clear when the wagers are placed. Well, makes sense. I guess they are very nervous about FJ! and know that it’s not one of Watson’s strengths.

I wonder if they altered that logic for the two-game tournament though, so that it would only play more conservatively on the second FJ.

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