Thursday, February 4, 2021 Game Recap and Discussion (SPOILERS)

[Bamaman]

I went with Rice on the SoS clue.

I can see someone guessing CNN. But while Tip O’Neill might be a logical person to appear on a news channel in 1979, Al Gore certainly wouldn’t have been as he was years from national prominence.

Also, the first person to speak on CNN was the news anchor on opening day. It was a man named Dave Walker who introduced himself. His co-anchor then introduced herself and went into the story about the Jordan shooting.

Jimmy Carter seems to be the first person you know today to speak on CNN, not counting Bob Hope in a commercial.

[BrigadierSolo13]

Lots of delicious, delicious trash for me today, and can proudly say my flashcards guided me to category runs in POETRY and MUSICALS BY SONG LYRICS. Ripping "Song of Myself", knowing the negbait of Leaves of Grass was the collection and not a single poem, felt really good.

And with aaaaaaall of that success, of course I picked CNN for Final

[davey]

I went with Rice on the SoS clue.

I can see someone guessing CNN. But while Tip O’Neill might be a logical person to appear on a news channel in 1979, Al Gore certainly wouldn’t have been as he was years from national prominence.

Also, the first person to speak on CNN was the news anchor on opening day. It was a man named Dave Walker who introduced himself. His co-anchor then introduced herself and went into the story about the Jordan shooting.

The clue said "first politicians" so that wouldn't have eliminated CNN...I wasn't distracted by that choice myself. C-SPAN just seemed more likely...

[John Boy]

I thought I was sunk when I saw the FJ category. Another horrible weak spot for me. I surprised myself by actually instagetting C-Span. As many finals as I have whiffed on this season, I'll take this even if it is a fluke.

[opusthepenguin]

Science $1600... that is most definitely NOT what a standard deviation is. Standard deviation is a measure of the variability of a data set, it does not apply to a single data point. I suspect "deviation" is what they were after, which is a term/concept more seldom heard by the layperson. Standard deviation should be a solid neg, but then you've got a pretty tricky clue for anyone who isn't in the small slice of the population who has had stats and retains more than the most basic terminology.

Thank you. I have only a fuzzy understanding of the standard deviation, but I knew that description didn't cut it. If nothing else, their definition would mean that the standard deviation is something that, if given the mean, I could calculate in my head. I knew that wasn't the case. Calculating the standard deviation requires a special button on your Ti-55 calculator. Everybody knows that. It would also mean that every value in the set has a different std dev, which makes no sense. They don't call it the STANDARD deviation because every deviation is different.

The one time in my life where I took more than a passing interest in the standard deviation was in a college class with some 300 students where the professor graded on a curve. We were told, if I recall, that the mean score on the final would be the lowest possible B- and every standard deviation up or down from that point would increase/decrease the score by half a letter grade. I believe I got an A-, so two st dev above the mean.

[MattKnowles]

40R. 4/4 on big clues. I did a lot better in the DJ round than the J round.

I only got Pleistocene and Song of Myself on the rebound. I did not pick up the Alfred Lord Tennyson clue. I focused on the names Charles and Frederick. There were some easy clues in Man's Plain that I didn't get. I said Avenue Q instead of 42nd Street. Musicals are not a good category for me.

I said Sound Effects Artist instead of Foley Artist. Judges?

Tough to see Nicole lose, it looked like she was ready to put together a strong run and it's already over. She played really well but Stuart played really well too. He might go on a run.

I would recommend, as a rule of thumb, always bet the maximum on the J round DD and always bet the maximum on the DJ round DD if you find it on the first 8 clues. Don't even think about wagering until the last 22 clues of the game. That leaves plenty of time to catch up in case you miss.

[Volante]

CNN here, 'first politicians' made me think it might have been interviews.

[This Is Kirk!]

I agree "standard deviation" should have been negged. On two counts, really, because it's simply wrong but it also didn't fit the category.

I think that FJ will poll as one of the highest this season.

[floridagator]

I knew standard deviation was wrong but I also knew that it was what the question was going for.

[This Is Kirk!]

I knew standard deviation was wrong but I also knew that it was what the question was going for.

Why would "standard deviation" be what a clue in the category Science "D"ictionary was going for? They even gave 'standard' in the clue as a hint. I'm very confident just "deviation" was the expected response.

[MarkBarrett]

I knew standard deviation was wrong but I also knew that it was what the question was going for.

Why would "standard deviation" be what a clue in the category Science "D"ictionary was going for? They even gave 'standard' in the clue as a hint. I'm very confident just "deviation" was the expected response.

Would a better way to archive it be:

(Stuart: What is the standard [*]?)

That way only "deviation" shows as the correct response?

[davey]

I knew standard deviation was wrong but I also knew that it was what the question was going for.

Why would "standard deviation" be what a clue in the category Science "D"ictionary was going for? They even gave 'standard' in the clue as a hint. I'm very confident just "deviation" was the expected response.

Yes, no question. There was even a pause, as if Ken was getting a judges' ruling. Maybe somebody forgot or misconstrued why "standard" was in the clue.

[BrigadierSolo13]

I must also say, future contestants really should prioritize learning the first 5 Roman Emperors just as much as the 7 Wonders, English Royal Houses, etc.

"Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero" isn't too obtuse to remember. The only mnemonic I was able to find with a quick lookup was "Another Tom Cat, Caught Napping", but with just 5 names, you can make one of your own.

The challenge is going beyond the 5 names and learning more about each one, like their years in power and facts about their reign, even past the common "Augustus has a month named after him, Caligula was nuts, Nero fiddled".

[trainman]

...but nonstop coverage of Congress is kind of CSPAN's thing. My only qualm was whether to add a "2" to the end or not, but I just shaved it off with Occam's Razor.

C-SPAN was created after the House of Representatives voted to allow their proceedings to be televised. It took another seven years for the Senate to allow regular live TV coverage, and C-SPAN2 was created to be "their" channel, in 1986.

[Robert K S]

I knew standard deviation was wrong but I also knew that it was what the question was going for.

Why would "standard deviation" be what a clue in the category Science "D"ictionary was going for? They even gave 'standard' in the clue as a hint. I'm very confident just "deviation" was the expected response.

Would a better way to archive it be:

(Stuart: What is the standard [*]?)

That way only "deviation" shows as the correct response?

You could do that, but then note also that it was accepted after a pause. Otherwise it looks like there is an error in the response toggle crediting Stuart.

[BigDaddyMatty]

Coryat: $39,600
49 R/1 W
DD: 3/3
FJ:
LT: Jersey Boys, Stone Age, Roman Empire, Pleistocene Epoch, Shakespeare's sonnets

As Kirk noted, I'm shocked "standard deviation" was accepted given that it explicitly did not fit the category.

Talk about your WECIB FJ!'s.

[SBurrus]

Archive playthrough:

Science $1600... that is most definitely NOT what a standard deviation is. Standard deviation is a measure of the variability of a data set, it does not apply to a single data point. I suspect "deviation" is what they were after, which is a term/concept more seldom heard by the layperson. Standard deviation should be a solid neg, but then you've got a pretty tricky clue for anyone who isn't in the small slice of the population who has had stats and retains more than the most basic terminology.

I have to agree with you here. I teach probability and statistics and was really surprised a reversal wasn't called on the answer of standard deviation. But I said loudly "That is NOT correct!" when standard deviation was allowed as an acceptable answer to that clue.

A deviation in statistics is the difference between any data value and the mean; since the mean is based on the makeup of all values in the data set, the sum of the positive deviations are cancelled out by the sum of the negative deviations, so the sum of the deviations is always zero.

That's why the deviations are squared in calculating the variance...then, the average of the squared deviations is used for the variance (with squared units)...or the square root of the variance is taken to come up with the standard deviation, returning the units to their original power. ( I won't get into the different divisor used for samples...but the sum of the squared deviations is divided by (n-1) for samples).

I teach my students that one way to interpret the standard deviation is a numeric quantifier of the degree of spread contained in a set of data. It allows you to make comparisons between two data sets that have the same mean but different standard deviations and decide which one seems to have more consistent data values (leading, of course, to the Z-score).

[Picked Off]

Bounceback day at home in all three rounds; the boards were to my liking, although I matched the 50-50 Whitman neg to end it. For FJ, I got to the solve almost immediately, then spent 28 seconds convincing myself that CNN didn't come on until the early 1980s (which is true, but barely).

[Woof]

Working as I do at an institution that has a Brian Lamb School of Communications, it would have been bad had I missed FJ... fortunately i didn’t.

[alietr]

Working as I do at an institution that has a Brian Lamb School of Communications, it would have been bad had I missed FJ... fortunately i didn’t.

Yeah, that would have been bad.