November 14, 2006

Game show quickies for a rainy Tuesday

…in which Ken Jennings (who has a new daughter as of last night) figures prominently…

  • Jeopardy!: Ken Jennings answers 5 questions for the Salt Lake City Weekly and the Hartford Courant interviews Alex Trebek.
  • 1 vs. 100: Ken Jennings on his experiences as a member of "the mob". "[It] has a lot of potential. Saget's obviously in his element with almost no warmup; he has the makings of a great host. The Mob elimination gimmick is clever and addictive, especially if the show is edited to pick up the pace a bit."
  • Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?: Boston University neuroscience researcher Ogi Ogas uses cognitive science to win big. "The first technique I drew upon was priming. The priming of a memory occurs because of the peculiar "connectionist" neural dynamics of our cortex, where memories are distributed across many regions and neurons. If we can recall any fragment of a pattern, our brains tend to automatically fill in the rest." (Ogi also has an article on the same topic in the Boston Globe.)

Posted by rv at November 14, 2006 04:17 AM to quickies
Comments

Ron 'monkey-boy' Conley and I have been using priming and intuition for decades.....hmm... I guess that is why we are so *successful*.

How do you think we come up with some of that stuff that we come up with?

Iwan 'think around it' Axt

Posted by: iwan at November 14, 2006 01:26 PM

Advert at the Ogi Ogas link: "Is Richard Dawkins the sexiest man alive?" The Devil made me click it: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/11/sexiest_man_living.php

Posted by: poz at November 18, 2006 10:03 AM

Did you read the Salon article that the guy linked to? I loved the Alton Brown appreciation:

"For a lot of us, the sight of a spatula in a guy's hand has the same libido-loosening effect as roughly two margaritas and a Barry White album. There's just something irresistible about a man who cooks."

Also funny:

"Look, I don't care if he's a little short. I don't care if he's a little soft. And I don't care if my husband reads this: Jon Stewart can put me on his seat of heat anytime."

Posted by: rv at November 18, 2006 12:13 PM