Monday, September 2, 2013
The Waiting Is The Hardest Part - The Million Second Quiz
It's Labor Day. No word yet from The Million Second Quiz. I'm still hopeful about getting a call. I haven't heard of anyone else getting called yet, so this is probably going to be a mad scramble in the next few days. It's now seven days until the first live broadcast on NBC TV at 8:00 EDT 9/9/2013. I think the first matches will happen next Sunday morning, to be streamed live on NBC.com.
I've always wanted to spend a million seconds in a 50-foot hourglass. This is probably my best chance to cross that off my bucket list. Since there's no real news to report, I'll refresh my countdown clock with some new colors.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Celebrating Two Million Seconds - And Still Counting Down
At exactly 4:26:40 p.m. on Saturday 8/17/2013 New York time, how many of you celebrated the moment when there were 2,000,000 seconds until Million Second Quiz hits the airwaves? I was on a plane from San Francisco to Austin, so I had to hoot and holler very quietly under my breath to avoid detention by Federal authorities. That would have been a very unfortunate way to be disqualified from the show.
When I got home, I discovered that there is now a way to play the Million Second Quiz on my laptop, so I signed up and played 27 games. I won 26 and tied 1, while earning 10,260 points. This qualified me to be a "Line Jumper," so my name is now in the system as a candidate to play in prime time.
It's a fun game and I'll be playing it a lot more in the days to come. You should, too. Sign up and see if you ever get assigned to play against EdT in Austin, Texas. That would be me, so be prepared to lose!
Remember, Million Second Quiz starts 8 p.m. EDT on NBC. I think it's a good omen that EDT (Eastern Daylight Time) is the same three letters as my player name. Sorry, but everyone else is playing for second place!
When I got home, I discovered that there is now a way to play the Million Second Quiz on my laptop, so I signed up and played 27 games. I won 26 and tied 1, while earning 10,260 points. This qualified me to be a "Line Jumper," so my name is now in the system as a candidate to play in prime time.
It's a fun game and I'll be playing it a lot more in the days to come. You should, too. Sign up and see if you ever get assigned to play against EdT in Austin, Texas. That would be me, so be prepared to lose!
Remember, Million Second Quiz starts 8 p.m. EDT on NBC. I think it's a good omen that EDT (Eastern Daylight Time) is the same three letters as my player name. Sorry, but everyone else is playing for second place!
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Counting Down The Seconds
Big news for game show fans! On 9/9/13, NBC TV is bringing live trivia to prime time with its twelve day special event, "Million Second Quiz." This weekend, I'll be headed to the Trivia Championships Of North America in Las Vegas, for lots of competition and a chance to interview for "Million Second Quiz." I'm psyched! Can't wait to show what I can do on national television one more time. If the casting people are smart and give the people what they really want to watch, I'll be appearing on TV screens across America in about 2.8 million seconds. But that might change by the time you read this, so I've created a countdown clock so you'll know exactly how long you must wait to see me on Million Second Quiz on NBC.
I shall do my best to make America proud!
I shall do my best to make America proud!
Thursday, October 6, 2011
William Thomas Toutant, My Dad, 1922 - 2011
William T. Toutant Ph.D.
TOUTANT, WILLIAM T. PH.D., of Louisville passed away on Monday, September 5, 2011 at Baptist Hospital East. He was born November 15, 1922 in Auburn, NY. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served during World War II and the Korean War. He was an officer on the battleship USS Missouri and the submarine USS Blenny. After leaving active duty, he continued to serve in the U.S. Naval Reserve and retired with the rank of Commander.
William "Bill" earned a master's degree in mechanical engineering from Syracuse University and returned to the Naval Academy, where he taught Marine Engineering for two years. He then accepted a position with the Dravo Corporation in Pittsburgh, PA, where he began a successful career designing towboats and barges for the inland waterways. He continued in the field during his 27 years with Jeffboat in Jeffersonville, IN, where he became vice president and Director of Engineering.
While working at Jeffboat and raising a family of eight children, Bill earned an MBA degree from the University of Louisville. He then continued his education at U of L, earning a Ph.D. in systems science in 1985. For 10 years, Bill taught classes in engineering technology and business as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Louisville. In recent years he was an independent consultant to the marine engineering industry and served as an expert witness in several cases. He was active in Our Lady of Lourdes Church, volunteered as a math tutor at Trinity High School and served for many years as a precinct captain for the election board.
Bill was a devoted husband and father, much loved for his generosity, courage, intellect and sense of humor. He was committed to the value of education and its power to change lives. He was especially proud of the academic achievements of his wife, Eileen Toutant, Ph.D., and those of his children and grandchildren.
Bill was preceded in death by his parents, Loretta McGovern Toutant and Amile Joseph Toutant; sister, Rosemary Brady; and brother, Donald Toutant.
He is survived by his wife of 65 years, the former Eileen Cuddy; sons, William G. Toutant, Edward Toutant and Roy Toutant (Susan); daughters, Dr. Claire Toutant, Anne O'Connell (Kevin), Amy Binford (Edwin), Lucie Mohr (Ron) and Sally Campbell (David); sister, Nancy Williams (Bob); and 17 grandchildren, Sara, Joe, Greg, Matt, Andrew, Daniel, John, Laura, Elaine, Allison, Patrick, Valerie, Anthony, Emily, Brian, Colleen and Jane.
His funeral service will be at noon Friday, September 9, 2011 at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, 508 Breckenridge Lane with burial in Calvary Cemetery. Visitation will be from 4-8 p.m. Thursday at Highlands Family-Owned Funeral Home, 3331 Taylorsville Road.
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As I compose this blog entry, my father has been gone for exactly a month. It's a strange, empty feeling to know that I'll never see him again. Having a parent die is something that most people have to go through, but it's not easy for anyone involved. In addition to all the emotional aspects, there are hundreds of details that have to be handled. One of those details is the obituary, which must be written on a tight schedule by someone who knows all the important biographical facts and cares enough to write something the family can be proud of. So I wrote most of Dad's obituary in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, then my wonderful siblings improved it and submitted it to the funeral home just before the newspaper deadline. This version ran in the Louisville Courier-Journal on September 8 - 10, 2011.
I am posting Dad's obituary here because it will be gone from the Courier-Journal website in a few days and I'd like for it to remain available on the web for anyone who may be interested in the future. Another option is to pay legacy.com $29.99 to keep the guest book online for another year, or $79.99 to keep it online "forever." It is not clear whether the obituary would also be kept online along with the guest book, but I would hope so. I considered paying the extra amount to keep Dad online, which seemed like the least I could do, but then I figured he'd be more proud of me if I saved 80 bucks and posted the obit on my own blog for free. So here I am, updating my blog. All because I asked myself, "What Would Dad Do?"
As for the aforementioned guest book, I should probably also preserve the comments that people left in it, before those disappear. They are posted below:
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Saturday, July 23, 2011
QRANKs For The Memory
I received an unexpected honor today. I was one of the multiple choice responses on the daily QRANK online trivia quiz. QRANK is a popular game for Facebook, iPhone and iPad. It usually asks a broad range of general knowledge questions, but today was a Jeopardy! theme quiz, in honor of Alex Trebek's 71st birthday.
Okay, so my name wasn't the correct answer, but at least they spelled it right. I wonder why the other three people are referred to as "Who," but I got the special phrasing, "What is Ed Toutant?" Maybe QRANK is confusing me with Watson. I get that a lot.
Thanks to Judy for telling me about this and to Myron for sending me this screen capture. If you haven't tried QRANK yet, check it out at
http://www.qrankthegame.com/
Okay, so my name wasn't the correct answer, but at least they spelled it right. I wonder why the other three people are referred to as "Who," but I got the special phrasing, "What is Ed Toutant?" Maybe QRANK is confusing me with Watson. I get that a lot.
Thanks to Judy for telling me about this and to Myron for sending me this screen capture. If you haven't tried QRANK yet, check it out at
http://www.qrankthegame.com/
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| This was a 400 point QRANK question on July 22, 2011. I wonder how many people got it wrong. |
Thursday, July 7, 2011
My Jeopardy! Strategy Advice To IBM - Part 9
Ed Toutant Report on Watson Jeopardy! Visit – September 17, 2010
I think it would be helpful if Watson had more of an instantly recognizable image, which could become an important brand or trademark for the IBM company. I’m sorry if this hurts anyone’s feelings, but the hologram that was used to represent Watson did nothing at all for me. I didn’t hate it, but it didn’t leave any lasting impression. It didn’t attract the eye or grab much attention. I don’t remember it and I don’t think I’d recognize it if I saw it again today. Technical nerds and the general public relate more to a fun logo than to an abstract shape. Since the goal is to show that Watson can think like a human, I think Watson’s icon or avatar should incorporate some human qualities. With the right image, it’s not far-fetched to think that Watson could become a cult hero, symbolizing a new era in which computers work collaboratively with their human colleagues on everyday tasks. He needs a friendly, likeable image that matches that role, an image that techies will want to wear on t-shirts along with their Google doodles, Linux penguins, and Apple logos. It’s all about perception. If a great iconic image for Watson catches on with the public, it would make all of IBM seem like a much cooler company to work for and to buy products and services from.
IBM IMAGE, OBJECTIVES, AND PUBLIC RELATIONS
It will be important to manage public perceptions and expectations. If Watson wins, many people will think, “So what?” They don’t realize how complicated it is to play Jeopardy! They probably think it’s harder to play chess, and IBM already solved that challenge years ago. Most people can watch Jeopardy! at home and answer some of the questions, so it seems pretty easy. Far fewer people think they can play chess well, so they may assume that chess is a harder task. The presentation that David Ferrucci gave before the matches opened a lot of eyes and minds. It clearly explained the many processes that must be mastered in order to play a good game of Jeopardy!, and how those abilities can be extended in the future to solve more critical problems in the real world. IBM will need to widely publicize those points before the Jeopardy! Challenge broadcast, to help the public appreciate Watson’s accomplishments and have a positive view of the benefits that his technology can bring to their lives.
Based on what I saw, the outcome of the Jeopardy! Challenge is hard to predict. Watson plays a strong game, but he has shown that he can be beaten, at his current level of performance. IBM needs to be prepared for a range of possible outcomes. What is the message (or PR spin) if Watson loses badly, as he did against Alan Bailey? (Yes, I know that it was really a close match, but to the public, a final score of $60,800 to $1,000 sounds like a rout.) What is the message if Watson loses a close match, or ties, or wins a close match? And what if Watson totally humiliates his human opponents? Is that the best possible outcome, or would it make Watson seem too much like a villain?
The general public will be rooting against Watson. It’s inevitable that humans will cheer for their own kind. People naturally like an underdog, or someone who has to overcome difficult obstacles, or who has a pleasant personality. It may be possible for Watson to attract a lot of supporters if he can be somewhat anthropomorphized, imbued with some of those same human characteristics. There are many ways to set the stage in the weeks leading up to the Jeopardy! broadcast, and even during the show itself. I loved it when Watson expressed himself the way a real contestant would, saying things like “please,” “let’s finish the category,” and “let’s make it a true Daily Double.” I think the public will appreciate that, and I believe there are opportunities to expand his repertoire of human-like phrases. Watson would be even more impressive if he appeared to have a personality and a sense of humor. I think it would be hilarious if he ever had a chance to say, “I’ve always wanted to say this, Alex, let’s make it a true Daily Double.” If the show follows the usual format, there will be a break during the first round in which Alex chats with the contestants. I’m not sure if that would work for Watson, but maybe he could use the opportunity to show a short video of how he became so smart and all of the obstacles he had to overcome along the way. I don’t know who Watson’s opponents will be, but I assume that one of them will be Ken Jennings. Ken is a good guy, but he is not universally loved by the general public. If Ken can be portrayed as an unbeatable superhuman Juggernaut, Watson may pick up a lot of the underdog support. Some people would just like to see Ken lose, regardless of the opponent.
My Jeopardy! Strategy Advice To IBM - Part 8
Ed Toutant Report on Watson Jeopardy! Visit – September 17, 2010
MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS
It appears to me that Watson’s biggest disadvantage is his lack of any speech recognition or audio sensing. There are many occasions in a typical Jeopardy! match when it is essential to know what is being said. The most common example is during a rebound opportunity. Since Watson doesn’t know what his opponent’s answer was, he might buzz in and give the same wrong answer. Occasionally there are clues or categories that are multiple choice, usually with three different choices. If the category is Executive, Legislative, or Judicial and they ask which branch a particular government official serves in, Watson will look stupid if he can’t pick up the free money after his opponents both answer incorrectly. There are also many times when Alex Trebek pauses to think or to get a ruling on an answer that might be acceptable. That’s a huge hint to the other players that the answer is something close to what the contestant said, but Watson won’t be able to capitalize on those opportunities with his current design.
I observed one match in which Watson had a big lead going into Final Jeopardy! and didn’t even attempt to answer the question. I thought that was poor form and not very sporting, even though it didn’t change the outcome of the match. The whole point of the Jeopardy! Challenge is to see how well Watson can play, so the public is going to want to see his best effort, even when his confidence is low.
In two of the six matches I saw, Watson led going into FJ, but did not have a lock game. Alan Bailey was in second place both times. In both cases, Watson’s FJ wager would have conceded a tie to Alan if he was right and went all in on his bet. This is a very unorthodox strategy that seems ill-advised. Alan learned from experience and bet it all in the last match when he saw that Watson is programmed to play for a tie in non-lock games. The IBM strategists apparently think that a tie is as good as a win. I don’t think the public will see it that way. A tie will be seen as a moral victory for the human. Someone on the IBM team told me that playing to allow a tie slightly improves Watson’s chances of not losing outright, but I have not seen a plausible hypothetical case where that would be true. In fact, if the word leaks out (which seems likely) that Watson offers ties, contestants will make unconventional FJ wagers to take advantage of that weakness and Watson will win less often than he would with a more traditional wager.
I assume the IBM team must be familiar with the J! Archive. It includes a FJ wagering calculator for the conventional strategy that most good contestants agree with and try to follow.
The site also has a glossary of unofficial terms and strategies, summarizing the consensus thinking of a lot of past contestants and serious analysts of the game.
I believe the most important of these is the Two-thirds Rule, which explains how to bet FJ when you are within two-thirds of the leader’s total. Almost every week, contestants lose games they should have won, simply because they did not know this betting tip. It happened again today (10/07/10), when the second place contestant should have won on a triple stumper, but she lost by betting too much. There are also some worthwhile post-game discussions every day on the official Jeopardy! message board. Very little escapes the attention of those devoted and generally knowledgeable fans, and any unusual incidents or strategic errors are usually thoroughly analyzed.
It occurred to me that Watson could test the value of different strategy variations by partitioning himself into three separate Watsons, each running a different strategy and then playing many simulated Jeopardy matches against different versions of himself. Reset his memory each time so he doesn’t remember seeing the clues before. If one version significantly outperforms the others after hundreds of simulations, that would tend to prove which approach works best.
Many of the tips I have described here could be used not only by Watson, but also by human contestants. But for a human, the game progresses so fast that it seems like a blur. Any plan to use a wide array of incremental tactics would become impossible for a human to implement without distracting from the main game. One of Watson’s strengths is that he can be programmed to take advantage of many small cumulative factors that may add up to a meaningful edge. Unlike humans, Watson doesn’t get distracted. Of course, any changes should be thoroughly tested prior to the Jeopardy! Challenge, to assure that no new bugs have been introduced.
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