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>I have areas of knowledge—I know literature, sports, a few others—but one of the interesting things is that you’re always trying to write things that are acces

>I have areas of knowledge—I know literature, sports, a few others—but one of the interesting things is that you’re always trying to write things that are accessible, and if it’s a subject you know a lot about, then there’s a danger of writing things that are too esoteric. Which might happen to me with English literature. But if I’m writing physics then I can be pretty certain: If there’s something I’ve heard of, then most people have heard of it, and so it’s easier to write things that you don’t know about. I've noticed Jeopardy placed massively disproportionate emphasis on sports and the humanities compared to science, and I guess this reveals why. The writers don't know anything about that sort of thing, and so their threshold for "too esoteric" is extremely shallow for any STEM topic. Meanwhile, because they do really intimately know classical novels or football or such, they don't consider asking what team won the 1979 Superbowl or asking about a tertiary character in Crime and Punishment as being the least bit excessive. I guess there's really nothing that can be done - they even are aware of the problem but still can't seem to fix it - and it's not too big a deal regardless. I still try to catch the show every chance I can.

lopmotr 9y ago
I suppose literature and sports are understandable to everyone. People might not know the individual fact but they understand the meaning and can at least try to remember something. In STEM, you'd get "stand-and-stare" with any technical term where the entire field is completely alien to most viewers and players. The same effect happens in casual conversation. Arts majors have all kinds of accessible topics they like to talk about with anyone, but a programmer can't even begin to say something about stacks or garbage collection or whatever with a non-programmer. It's a totally walled off other-world for most people.
- kevinmchugh 9y ago
  Arts majors who talk about the details of a particular pigment, or chiseling techniques will be about as well received as programmers rambling about stacks. Technical details are rarely relevant to those outside the profession. People outside tech have lots of questions and interest in talking about tech. Product decisions are more accessible and meaningful than implementation details.
pvg 9y ago
But they don't really ask stuff like that. Here are a bunch of Crime & Punishment questions: j-archive.com/search.php?search=crime+and+punishment&submit=Search Even a $2000 American Football question has a lot more hints than 'who won the Superbowl in 1979' "THE CENTRAL POWERS $2000: The last season for the AFC's Central Division was 2001 & this team with Kordell Stewart at QB won it"
- sdrothrock 9y ago
  > Even a $2000 American Football question has a lot more hints than 'who won the Superbowl in 1979' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h33u2eeVqXo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h33u2eeVqXo If you watch this clip which I linked in another comment, this is a clear football category. I consider myself a casual watcher (enough to know about scoring, downs, players in a game, etc.) but even the $200 question stymied me, not to mention all of the other ones...
  - pvg 9y ago
    None of these questions are of the type 'who won the Superbowl in 1979', even when the category is straight up football. I couldn't answer the $200 question either - I don't watch football at all but I've heard of 'option play' so it can't be that esoteric. And the question tells you exactly what is! The GP was saying they ask things like who won the Superbowl a particular year or are about obscure Dostoyevsky characters. I don't think they do. They do ask question that easily stump people who know next to nothing about football. I'm sure they also ask questions that people who don't know who wrote 'Crime & Punishment' can't answer. But neither of these things are evidence they casually ask deep arcana about football or literature.
    - mamon 9y ago
      At least with literature you can reasonably expect that each participant had it as high school topic, so some knowledge about literature was forced down on them. With football it's more binary: you either are interested in it, or not, in which case your knowledge is zero.
baddox 9y ago
There’s another effect you didn’t mention. Jeopardy contestants qualify by answering clues with the same distribution of topics as the show’s clues, and most contestants have probably watched a lot of Jeopardy before competing.
baddox 9y ago
I watch a lot of University Challenge, a British quiz show for college students, and the effect is very noticeable for an American like myself. Questions about American history tend to be easy American high school material, while questions about British history are often very obscure to me.

lopmotr 9y ago

I suppose literature and sports are understandable to everyone. People might not know the individual fact but they understand the meaning and can at least try to remember something. In STEM, you'd get "stand-and-stare" with any technical term where the entire field is completely alien to most viewers and players. The same effect happens in casual conversation. Arts majors have all kinds of accessible topics they like to talk about with anyone, but a programmer can't even begin to say something about stacks or garbage collection or whatever with a non-programmer. It's a totally walled off other-world for most people.

kevinmchugh 9y ago
Arts majors who talk about the details of a particular pigment, or chiseling techniques will be about as well received as programmers rambling about stacks. Technical details are rarely relevant to those outside the profession. People outside tech have lots of questions and interest in talking about tech. Product decisions are more accessible and meaningful than implementation details.

pvg 9y ago

But they don't really ask stuff like that. Here are a bunch of Crime & Punishment questions: j-archive.com/search.php?search=crime+and+punishment&submit=Search Even a $2000 American Football question has a lot more hints than 'who won the Superbowl in 1979' "THE CENTRAL POWERS $2000: The last season for the AFC's Central Division was 2001 & this team with Kordell Stewart at QB won it"

sdrothrock 9y ago
> Even a $2000 American Football question has a lot more hints than 'who won the Superbowl in 1979' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h33u2eeVqXo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h33u2eeVqXo If you watch this clip which I linked in another comment, this is a clear football category. I consider myself a casual watcher (enough to know about scoring, downs, players in a game, etc.) but even the $200 question stymied me, not to mention all of the other ones...
- pvg 9y ago
  None of these questions are of the type 'who won the Superbowl in 1979', even when the category is straight up football. I couldn't answer the $200 question either - I don't watch football at all but I've heard of 'option play' so it can't be that esoteric. And the question tells you exactly what is! The GP was saying they ask things like who won the Superbowl a particular year or are about obscure Dostoyevsky characters. I don't think they do. They do ask question that easily stump people who know next to nothing about football. I'm sure they also ask questions that people who don't know who wrote 'Crime & Punishment' can't answer. But neither of these things are evidence they casually ask deep arcana about football or literature.
  - mamon 9y ago
    At least with literature you can reasonably expect that each participant had it as high school topic, so some knowledge about literature was forced down on them. With football it's more binary: you either are interested in it, or not, in which case your knowledge is zero.

baddox 9y ago

There’s another effect you didn’t mention. Jeopardy contestants qualify by answering clues with the same distribution of topics as the show’s clues, and most contestants have probably watched a lot of Jeopardy before competing.

baddox 9y ago

I watch a lot of University Challenge, a British quiz show for college students, and the effect is very noticeable for an American like myself. Questions about American history tend to be easy American high school material, while questions about British history are often very obscure to me.