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?
ReplyDeleteOption 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.
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