1) Serge Brin did well on the UMCP HS competition and went on to be a Stanford Math Grad Student Drop Out. Oh well. (I originally had Standard instead of Stanford. That sentence will makes sense.)
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 Millionaire?, see here. That show has the advantage that even if you don't win $1,000,000 it's not so unusual 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 as a question the answer is with one caveat: I define Millionaire as someone who has AROUND $1,000,000.
a) Billionaires. Actually, anyone who has much more than $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.
Standard should be Stanford. And how about Perelman for who does not want to be a millionaire?
ReplyDeleteThanks for correction and observation about Perelman.
DeleteOption a) seems to imply that only people having exactly $1,000,000 are millionaires. I don't think that is the case, in general, anyone having at least $1,000,000 is considered a millionaire. Incrementing your wealth by another $1,000,000 doesn't rob you of the title millionaire.
ReplyDeleteI have changed the passage since you are correct.
ReplyDeleteChuck Woolery, the first host (before Pat Sajak), was good at spinning the wheel. He could hit a high value pretty consistently. Pat and most contestants seem to just spin it without any attempt to aim. E.g., you will see them repeatedly come very close to the bankrupt until they finally hit it. This seems crazy. (I haven't watched Wheel of Fortune much in recent years, so maybe things are different.) The million dollar wedge is narrower. I wonder if the winners were aiming for it or just lucky. Aiming for it is dangerous because of the two bankrupt wedges next to it.
ReplyDeleteI'm always annoyed when a contestant solves the puzzle when there are still consonants left. This is the time to collect more money. If you aim for an area of the wheel without bankrupts, this is quite safe.
I would like to know how this guy learned to aim https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at_LSDhgi0I
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