If you do well in the UMCP HS Math Competition you may win $1,000,000

The Univ of  MD at College Park holds a HS Math Competition every year. At the reception for the winners Professor Larry Washington points to many past people who did well on the exam. Two stand out for different reasons:

1) Serge Brin did well on the UMCP HS competition and went on to be a Standard Math Grad Student Drop Out. Oh well.

2) Sarah Manchester did well on the UMCP HS competition  and went on to win $1,000,000 on Wheel of Fortune. 

Is there a connection between doing well on the UMCP Math Competition and winning $1,000,000 on Wheel of  Fortune? 

Only 4 people have won the $1,000,000. Worse, if you don't win the $1,000,000 you will probably win less than $50,000. An article about those 4 is here. This is so few that while I am sure Sarah is good at Wheel of Fortune (a) she had to also be very lucky, and (b) I doubt being good at Math had much affect on her winning. 

While we are here, lets look at two other game shows.

14 people have won $1,000,000 or more on Who wants to be a Millionare?, see here. That show has the advantage that even if you don't win $1,000,000 its not so unuual to get over $100,000.

(What kind of people do not want to be millionaires? I give two answers later.) 

Deal or No Deal has different versions in different countries so it gets more complicated:

UK: 9 big winners, Turkey: 1 big winner, Australia: 4 big winners, America: 2 big winners. 

ANYWAY back to Sarah and Wheel of Fortune: The statement

Sarah did well on the UMCP HS Math Competition and went on to win $1,000,000 on Wheel of Fortune

is technically true but conveys a causality that is not true. 

Who does not want to be a millionaire? 

Would be a terrible name for a quiz show. However, taking it a a question the answer is

a) Billionaires. Actually, anyone who has over $1,000,000 would not want to come down to only $1,000,000.

b) People who think it would change their life in ways they don't want.