On 02/17/2011 12:34 PM, Frank Wallingford wrote:
If I remember correctly, the NOVA special talks about this. Watson
does get fed the answers from the other contestants, but sometimes
knows that if he's confident in an answer and another contestant gives
a similar but not exactly the same answer, that he may just need to
give the more exact answer.
Now, I'm not sure if he was fed the "20s" answer during the show, and
if so, if it was in time for Watson to avoid buzzing in, but if he
was, he might have just been assuming that "20s" wasn't specific
enough, and "1920s" was going to be correct, so he could have just
been buzzing in to "correct" Ken's answer.
This is speculation, but I think it's unfair to say it was embarrassing.
The New Paltz 2 day event was great for providing this kind of context,
and we got lots of questions answered from Dave Shepler, the project
manager.
Watson receives the correct answer after a question is complete, it
doesn't get fed wrong answers during the question. The duplicate wrong
answer happened so infrequently during the matches (twice out of 55
games), they were willing to live with it, and focused attention else where.
I'm sure we'll be talking about this more at dinner after the next
meeting. We had a pretty good MHVLUG turnout at both NP nights, and we
got a lot of question time with Shepler, so if anyone else is interested
more, I'd suggest coming out to the meeting in March.
-Sean
--
__________________________________________________________________
Sean Dague Learn about the Universe with the
sean at dague dot net Mid-Hudson Astronomical Association
http://dague.net http://midhudsonastro.org
_______________________________________________
Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org
http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug
Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium
Mar 2 - MHVLUG 8th Anniversary - Show and Tell
Apr 6 - Introduction to IPv6
May 4 - Inkscape
