Man breaks Jeopardy! records with the help of a web application
Roger Craig built a web application that helped him win big at Jeopardy!
When Roger Craig joined Jeopardy! in 2010, he didn't think he'd break several records on the show. His seven-day run netted him $231,200, placing his winnings behind David Madden and Ken Jennings, who’s also in the news as of late for competing against the Watson supercomputer. What helped him win that much money, you ask? His brain's capacity to retain tidbits of information aside, Craig credits his victory to a web application he built that randomly samples questions from the Jeopardy! archive.
The Jeopardy! archive stores hundreds of thousands of questions asked on the show in its long history. What Craig's web application does is group these questions into subject clusters, and then ask a user trivia questions from across a variety of fields. If you choose to do so, you can concentrate on subjects most likely to come up for Double Jeopardy questions instead of those that don't, like fashion and food. The web application also tracks the number of correct and incorrect answers, so you'd know if you need to study a particular area more than others.
While Craig built the web application for Jeopardy!, he has plans to retool it for other purposes in the future. In fact, he's releasing a smartphone quiz app based on the technology in the next few weeks, although it won't be using questions from the show. "I'm glad that most people are realizing that's it's not really WHAT I did that's interesting, but instead HOW I did it. I believe these methods and technology are the future of learning," he told Tecca.
We think the application has great potential to be of use in the education sector, with students using it as a fun way to review for tests. After all, if it helped Craig win the largest daily double bet worth $18,000 during the recent Tournament of the Champions, it could surely help students ace a few exams.
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