So Moneyball, you know? Baseball has only partly moved on to incorporate the statistical stuff that Michael Lewis documented the A’s were engaged in using. There’s still a ton of resistance, because the folks involved in finding and grooming players want to believe it’s all magic, when, in fact, you can make some reasonable predictions based on observed performance about specific traits. (In short, the post-Moneyball approach involves often recruiting players for highly specific talents when they aren’t superstars overall or even maybe recognized for that fielding or whatever talent.)
I think Jeopardy! viewers, if not players, still want to engage in the Brainiac thinking, that it’s all about knowledge, so you should play the game “right,” and then you’ll win if you’re “smart enough.” In fact, it’s always been about a mix of traits, and Arthur accentuates several that seem to bug people because it highlights the issues with the game that don’t conform.
It’s changed now (see my BB article from 2012) in two regards, but you’re right. First, they started doing regional auditions several years ago, because they had exhausted the L.A. area and the number of people willing to fly in for a cattle-call audition process.
Second, they switched to pre-screening 100,000 people a year by the online test when, before, they could only screen several thousand a year. So the winnowing is now 100,000 -> 2,000-3,000 in-person auditions -> 400 people on screen a year (vacations and championships change that).
So the prescreening lets them take the top 97% of potential applicants who can answer tests quickly and follow instructions well. (The online test has some barriers about taking it live, response time, etc.)
The in-person auditions are trying to find people who can play the meta-game. At my audition with, I think, 29 other people, a good 1/2 to 2/3 were not dressed if they had come to play Jeopardy. I don’t mean they dressed like slobs, but they didn’t dress more or less like they would or should to be on air. Huge mistake, although not fatal.
Others were way to shy and retiring about themselves. You come with stories ready to tell. When you get on the show, your first job in the green room is to take some of the stories you submitted in advance for the contestant questionnaire and refine them so that Alex can ask you one of three stories he has in his hand about you. When you start winning, you have to provide more anecdotes!
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I hope some day a contestant “ruins” Who Wants to be a Millionaire? by just knowing the answers to the questions and stating them immediately.
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Exactly. I don’t get the criticism.
He’s playing the game and winning.
Seems to me that what most people are complaining about isn’t that he chooses categories from all over the board… Ken Jennings did that, too, and he was popular… it’s that Arthur tends to interrupt Alex, talk over him, and generally act humorless, graceless, and utterly uninterested in anything but answering questions and winning money. Unlike Ken Jennings, he isn’t good TV; he isn’t fun to watch.
It is totally reasonable to say, I don’t like the way he plays. I feel it ruins the game. That is arguable and a personal opinion, and many players have played his way, but, you know, that’s fine.
It’s another to say, I don’t like how this guy is unemotional and I hate him and I don’t want to see him on my screen because he’s a dumpy nerd and one of those know-it-alls who everybody hates. (Which is a moderate version of some comments.) That’s unpleasant and may have some implicit racism.
But you may have missed the part in my article where I note that people are actually insulting him for his ethnic background. Calling out his Asian heritage and using that as the basis of physical insults. So that’s actual, explicit racism.
See How David Beats Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker a couple years back. Summary: Innovative tactics turn low-skilled competitor (pre-teen girls’ basketball team coached by Asian-American) into winners; cue whining and racism.
I could retell the story, but Merv Griffin’s own account is pretty darned good, quoted on Wikipedia.
I think it gives a little tension: it’s like, we’re giving you the answer! And it imposes an extra burden on the already stressed-out player to phrase the response correctly.
