Author Topic: Top Jeopardy! winners (Read 5066 times)

clemon79 · « **Reply #15 on:** February 10, 2011, 11:45:01 PM »

[quote name=\'Bryce L.\' post=\'256806\' date=\'Feb 9 2011, 09:30 PM\']Any comments are welcome, and are encouraged[/quote]
I am thrilled you enjoyed the process of putting this together, though I find your results to be utter hogwash.

But hey, if it was fun for you to do, that's what's important. I just wouldn't expect this to be taken as any sort of canon.

Matt Ottinger · « **Reply #16 on:** February 11, 2011, 09:50:46 AM »

[quote name=\'TLEberle\' post=\'256910\' date=\'Feb 10 2011, 11:37 PM\']I also have a hard time taking seriously a list that puts Ken Jennings lower than someone he beat in a tournament. And Brad Rutter, who cleaned both their clocks over three days, eleventh.[/quote]
It's an impossible exercise to be sure. Still, I didn't see that list as necessarily a ranking but as a grouping that he now wants to compare by several different factors, including money winnings in total. Jennings , Rutter and Vered are on the list where they belong, along with some other very impressive names. No matter what formula you apply, ultimately it's as arbitrary as naming the fifteen best baseball players in history. No one's going to agree. But I have to say that this list is much more inclusive of some of the recognized top players ever than what he was planning to do originally.

clemon79 · « **Reply #17 on:** February 11, 2011, 01:01:16 PM »

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' post=\'256931\' date=\'Feb 11 2011, 06:50 AM\']No one's going to agree.[/quote]
No one's going to agree, sure, but nobody is going to look at a list where Brad Rutter ranks no higher than eleventh and think that the metric used to produce that list is any sort of indicator of overall quality.

I think I'll publish a list of the Top 15 highest rated sitcoms of all time, ranked by letter frequency.

(Again, though, if he enjoyed computing that as a pure mathematical exercise, great. But it would be delusional to write anything but "Top 15 Jeopardy! Players Ranked Solely By The Adjusted Total Of Their First Five Regular Games" at the top of that page.)

Matt Ottinger · « **Reply #18 on:** February 11, 2011, 02:39:22 PM »

[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'256941\' date=\'Feb 11 2011, 01:01 PM\'](Again, though, if he enjoyed computing that as a pure mathematical exercise, great. But it would be delusional to write anything but "Top 15 Jeopardy! Players Ranked Solely By The Adjusted Total Of Their First Five Regular Games" at the top of that page.)[/quote]
I'm defending mostly because he's doing what I suggested he do. Where I'm cutting him some slack is on the word 'ranked'. I thought all he wanted was a way to come up with a pool of the ten (now fifteen) greatest Jeopardy players of all time. I offered him a way to do that using a system that's better than his original idea of all-time money winnings. He's done something like that and he's made a list. Rutter's on the list. Jennings is on the list. Vered is on the list. Pawlowicz, Verini, Forrest and Dupee are on the list. It's a pretty good list.

The fact that it's "ranked", as far as I'm concerned, is just him showing his work. At this point in his process, he could have said "I did X, Y and Z and here are the fifteen names I came up with, listed alphabetically." My understanding is that he plans to compare them by a lot of different variables, including the one used to generate the fifteen, some of which might be interesting and some of which might not. That list is just a starting point, and I think a very good one.

clemon79 · « **Reply #19 on:** February 11, 2011, 02:50:35 PM »

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' post=\'256947\' date=\'Feb 11 2011, 11:39 AM\']The fact that it's "ranked", as far as I'm concerned, is just him showing his work. At this point in his process, he could have said "I did X, Y and Z and here are the fifteen names I came up with, listed alphabetically."[/quote]
That's fair. I was looking askance primarily at the ordinals. I agree that the right names are by and large on the list. (Though I question any metric that by rule excludes Frank Spangenberg.)

Mostly I was flashing back to members we have had around here who have said things like "Remember (emphasis mine), thus-and-so is the Nth greatest blah of all time," as if their completely arbitrary list was immediately entered into canon because they said so.

I agree that if his plans are to apply a number of different metrics to this list to see which ones might have some useful merit and which do not (for example, if Metric X puts Rutter 14th on the list where Metrics A-W (suddenly I crave root beer) put him in the top 3, that should tell you something about Metric X), I could see where for someone with an affinity for number crunching would find that to be an interesting exercise.

GrandGame1440 · « **Reply #20 on:** February 11, 2011, 02:54:19 PM »

[quote name=\'Bryce L.\' post=\'256806\' date=\'Feb 10 2011, 12:30 AM\']1) Jerome Vered $193,602
2) Bob Blake $165,002
3) Ken Jennings $156,000
4) Dan Melia $151,200
5) Leszek Pawlowicz $150,800
6) Chuck Forrest $145,600
7) Dave Abbott $137,198

Michael Dupee $132,802
9) Tom Nosek $131,280
10) Robin Carroll $128,200
11) Brad Rutter $110,204
12) Dan Pawson $109,100
13) Mark Lowenthal $99,802
14) Jim Scott $98,600
15) Bob Verini $93,604[/quote]
Pretty sure Frank Spangenberg should be on that list somewhere.

Bryce L. · « **Reply #21 on:** February 11, 2011, 08:01:12 PM »

Perhaps I made a mistake by not including non-tournament winners in there... I suppose I'll need to revise it, since I know with Spangenberg's original $102,597 (adj. $205,194), he WOULD beat out Vered by that ranking... is there someplace I could look to see overall top season winners, not necessarily ToC winners?