I'm a long time fan of quiz shows. Jeopardy has been a favourite since my residency in NA although I mourn its obvious dumbing down. The longest running (I think) quiz show in the UK is called University Challenge. I was never able to answer a single question when I lived in the U.K.
I will now post an answer from University Challenge:
pi squared over 6
What is the question?
Sadly, I think they are also dumbing down UC as I was able to answer a whole two questions from this episode:
They have a category called: Liturgical music, who does that?
ReplyDeletePlus the contestant Charlie Rowlands is studying "Genetics and Chinese"
ReplyDeleteWhat?
Whew, glad to see this. Such is the state of my hearing that I'd thought he said "genetics IN Chinese" and I thought "Boy, you really DO like a challenge, don't you?""
DeleteLOL Dances. Aren't genetics Chinese to most of us mortal beings?
DeleteWeird. People have so little idea how close we are to such magic... a genetics research paper being written in Chinese and read by an English speaker, or vice versa, will be such a low barrier, really, with translation tools and more...
Deletehow soon? Feels like two years, so give it ten...
And that "research paper" itself will be heavy on visuals, and interactive graphics, and be checkable online against a number of independent third party standards with respect to data provenance and result reproducibility.
I got at least two as well. It does help if you have half a clue as to what the questions -- or even the categories -- even mean.
ReplyDeleteAnd there is always one, although normally more than one, eccentric character amongst the contestants.
ReplyDeleteWhat's not to love???
My head hurts. What a great show! Gawd how I love smart people!
ReplyDeleteI'm disheartened to hear that Jeopardy! has been dumbed-down. I thought I was becoming more brilliant with age. :))
When I went back to school for my RN, many of my young classmates could not: (1) conjugate English verbs, (2) write a complete paragraph, (3) diagram a sentence, (4) do long division or factor any number, (4) name even one component of the periodic table. Etc, etc.
They are now teachers. They still can't conjugate or factor, or read at a 12th grade level. Generally speaking, a BA in America, awarded in the last 20 years, isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
The summation of the reciprocals of the squares of the natural numbers... totally had that.
ReplyDeleteNot.
Parole, that one I got.
Hmm, had this been done in the US, today, I am sure crayons, stuffed unicorns and blankies would have been handed out at the end, or possibly earlier.
ReplyDeleteI got two correct - Parole and Bernoulli principle, simply because I knew that is how airplane wings work
I hear you Dances. Jeremy Paxman (the Alex Trebek of University Challenge) is far from a congenial host. He is, in fact, loathed by many in Britain. He is rude and condescending. Which is probably a good deterrent for any aspiring snowflakes.
DeleteFay, that came thru for me. "Total sh*tbag" is the phrase that came to my mind.
DeleteIn an *awesome* kinda way. 👹 😍 (troll love!)