You may not think its so impressive - but, I beg to differ. The BIG deal is the formatting of the questions, and the Strange phrasing that is VERY Typical in Jeopardy. So - its all about understanding natural language.
I recorded the shows on my Tivo - and will also be getting the show tonite. I watched the 1st show, and finished up to about 1/2 of the 2nd show. Its pretty AMAZING indeed! And, my son - who is 9 - is ALSO Really enjoying watching it with me. We also found it VERY Fascinating - that the 1st 1/3 of the show each night is giving the audience all the background about Watson - including spec's on the computing power HW - and showing us the actual computers & rooms, the footage of earlier test Jeopardy games (not done w/Alex Trebeck), and also interviews with many of the developers. Its really pretty wild stuff - and definitely a HUGE Leap in computing technology. I also read a whole NY Times Mag article about it - so I knew in advance a lot of details about the project - even way before the show was aired! Stephen - in regards to your question. Yes - then actually have a Mechanical setup that allows Watson to ACTUALLY push the Buzzer - to Buzz in and say he is ready to answer. Jerry - as for the timing when Watson gets the question - I am not sure about that. It was mentioned in the magazine article. I think Watson gets the question at the moment its presented to the audience & the other players. But, like the other players - he is NOT allowed to answer until the question has been read completely! For those who haven't watched it yet - here's a little more about what we get to see. There is a Graphical "Avatar" that represents Watson. The colors & graphics changed depending on what Watson is doing - as he's analyzing a question - and even when he has an answer and how "Confident" he is about the answers. Also, what is displayed at the bottom of the screen for us to see on TV is a kind of horizontal bar chart with numbers. Watson comes up with various possible answers. The TOP 3 are displayed - along with a "confidence" level percentage. There is a vertical line that is displayed - and Watson will ONLY give an answer if his Top answer actually goes beyond that vertical line. The exception being Double-Jeopardy, which he MUST give an answer. And, since his top answer did NOT reach that vertical line during the one Double-Jeopardy question I saw - he actually said something like "I Think" or "I will Guess that the answer is"! I forget the exact wording - but, I thought it was pretty cool - since he was NOT sure of his answer. But, in the end - he still had the right answer! Also - at one point - for the Double Jeopardy - he gave this very exact wager $ amount - like $3675 - and the whole audience Erupted with Laughter. Because - a human Never on the show gives such an Exact wager like that! Anyway - I guess that's it for now. I TOO look forwards to seeing the rest of the shows w/Watson! -K- -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Vincent Teachout Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2011 9:21 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [NF] Jeopardy and Watson Stephen Russell wrote: > On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 7:30 AM, Jerry Foote <[email protected]> wrote: >> As I understand Watson is passed a question in the form of a text string. A >> number of questions come to my mind. I didn't know that. I thought it was a very impressive display of speech recognition. As a parse and query exercise, not nearly as imporessive. _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/289ea162f5642645b5cf64d624c66a1409df1...@us-ny-mail-002.waitex.net ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
