Why not go and see:
- Pointless‘ French pilot! Filming May 11th. Must be fluent in French.
- Red or Black‘s arena stage! I’ve applied for a ticket to this. This is just to watch, not to take part.
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Why not go and see:
Currently trying to convince @eggheadproducer that the final would be much fairer if the contestants were given the choice of question cards, to remove any allegations that one set is easier than the other, or even if the cards were marked “1st” and “2nd”.
I’m not winning. http://twitter.com/#!/search/eggheadproducer
Mmm, I’ve been following the conversation with interest.
The thing is, short of Dermot showing the questions to the camera after the game to prove it was all above board, at what point do you go “OK”?
There’s a difference between “fair beyond doubt” and “demonstrably fair”. At the moment, Eggheads is neither. What’s more, it wouldn’t take 5 minutes to do it in a way that was demonstrably fair.
I’ve lost count of the number of complaints I’ve seen about this, and I’m just surprised they don’t see it as an issue.
Is that a rewording of Weaver’s “It is not enough for a game show to be fair, it must be seen to be fair”?
Er, yes, whatever. Their reluctance to change this over the years just adds flames to the fire – just look at the length of Eggheads threads on H2G2, Digital Spy, Points of View’s forum etc.
The Voice is up 10% on last week. It is doing very well.
Incredible ratings, not just for NBC but it’d be incredible for any show on any network (apart from the beast that is Idol). To go into details:
12.4 million watched The Voice yesterday, which was a 5.6 A18-49 demo rating. That is up about a million from last week and 0.5 in the demo, despite tougher competition last night.
That is the biggest 18-49 rating for a non-live programme on NBC in years. In fact, excluding sports and awards ceremonies it’s the highest rating for any show this whole season on any network.
It is Bother’s Bar’s Susan Boyle, clearly.
I have been reliably informed that a UK broadcaster optioned the series late last year. I don’t know which one exactly. Expect it to turn up on British screens within the next 18 months.
I’d wager that if it doesn’t appear on our screens by this winter, it’ll be too late because someone will do a “me too”.
What a cracking game on DOND today, i was willing her to no deal.
That @OfficialBanker chap has said that there are even more ‘extraordinary games’ in the pipeline.
http://twitter.com/OfficialBanker/status/65813637561991168
As a regular studio audience member, I have to concur.
Does a quiz show really need soap opera style trailers like that? For me, that trailer has about 30 seconds too much of Noel talking. I understand they want the viewing figures but it’s a bit too spoilery for my liking.
Looks like I will have to keep away from the internet between 4pm and watching the show next week (or remove everyone off my Twitter friend list)
Some info on the upcoming Four Rooms, aka “Trust Bargain Divided Hunt Me”:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/may/04/channel-4-four-rooms
Good to see they’ve scoured the country far and wide for their four dealers.
So suppose you have an interesting antique. You go and see dealer number one, who offers you £x for it. By virtue of 1/4 being less than 1/e, you naturally reject the deal. You then go and see dealers number two, three and four, who offer either nothing or less than dealer number one. Now while you cannot go back and see dealer number one on the show, you are not bound to conduct a deal for your interesting antique on the show and may be able to conduct a deal with dealer number one off the show at a later date. Alternatively, there exists a world of antiques dealers outside the show, and the interesting antique will have already been valued by at least one dealer.
INCREDIBLE LACK OF JEOPARDY!
The only way to fix this would be:
1) Once you’re on the show, you must (i.e. you’re obliged to take the fourth offer)
2) The dealers don’t know if they’re the 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th dealer to be seen.
Of course, the famous “secretary problem” says that you should pick dealer 2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
http://plus.maths.org/content/kissing-frog-mathematicians-guide-mating
That was meant to say:
“1) Once you’re on the show, you must sell the item to one of the four dealers”
I don’t know if that Secretary thing confirms this, but I couldn’t help but imagine certain patterns developing.
1. Almost everyone rejects the first offer, unless if they’ve cheated and gotten it appraised elsewhere as a lower number before the show.
2a. If offer two is higher than offer one, they will accept it.
2b. If offer two is lower than offer one, they will reject it.
3a. If offer three is higher than offer two, regardless of what offer one was, they will accept it.
3b. If offer three is lower than offer two, they will reject it.
4. Unless if offer four completely shafts them over, they will take it regardless.
Unless there’s some sort of format twist we don’t know for sure yet (like the bidders not knowing what order they’re in), I’d be willing to bet that these rules would be followed pretty consistently.
Right, I’m going to attempt to do some maths here, and it’s going to go disastrously wrong. I think that the Secretary Problem suggests that you take offer two if and only if it was higher than offer one.
The “You have to sell the item” clause would make the game work, but a very wild guess is it means that the logical price to offer for a dealer, not knowing what position they are, becomes 2p.
At one level, the “you have to sell the item” rule means that there is a one-quarter chance (…on the grounds that you don’t know which number dealer you are…) that whatever price you offer must be accepted, and so it becomes logical to offer as little as possible.
At a second level, you know that if the contestant is applying the Secretary Problem strategy, then you stand no chance of winning whatever you offer if you are the first dealer, which happens with probability 1/4, certainty of winning if you are the last dealer, which happens with probability 1/4, and certainty of winning if you offer more than the first dealer if you are the second or third dealer, which happens with probability 1/2.
Thus if you value the item at v, where v is so much more than 1p that we can make the approximation that v – 1p ~= v, your expected return from offering 1p is v/4, your expected return from offering 2p is (v/4) + (v/2) * P (first offer was 1p), your expected return from offering 3p is (v/4) + (v/2) * P (first offer was 1p or 2p) and so on. I have a suspicion that you end up with a mixed strategy where half the time you offer 1p, because your offer is essentially irrelevant if you are dealer 1 or 4, and half the time you offer 2p, to beat the previous offer if you are dealer 2 or 3.
But I’ve forgotten how you do this properly.
Decision trees are useful, as is the strategy that someone may wish to push the boat out and bid three new pence on occasion – perhaps 3 occasions in 16.
Just look at our assumptions, though. This only applies if the vendor is forced to sell, *and* if the dealers don’t care how they look on national television, *and* if all participants are economists or psychopaths (the only groups of people for whom game theory is a decently accurate model of their behaviour).
These conditions make for rubbish telly.
I thought for some game theory games it was a reasonable predictor for autistics as well (Ultimatum Game is the one I’ve been informed as such)
Bothers Bar punters start posting equations = show is doomed.
…Our performing statistical analysis on DoND live, coming up with equations to do so, etc, doesn’t seem to have done it much harm…
Looks like Minute To Win It is coming to the UK:
http://www.starnow.co.uk/Casting-Calls/Reality-TV/teams_wanted_for_new_itv_celebrity_game_show.htm
Oh wow, looks like it’s being reworked a bit… and for ITV2?
It’s *so* reworked I’m surprised they didn’t try to pass it off as a new format. They’re just paying for the name.
Great show. They should put it on ITV1 though.
it is endemol though, you would say that.
It’s not Endemol. It’s a Friday TV/Metronome/Shine production.
Mmm, I think it became a decent show once it found its own voice, although it was a bit rubbish to begin with. And it’s pretty much dead in the water these days, even if it does cost $1.50 to make.
Perhaps the Bother’s Bar punter’s collective can use their physics skillz to answer a question for me, a game called Bridge the Gap appeared in a MTWI games booklet and is detailed here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Minute_to_Win_It_challenges#Other_challenges
Basically use a pack of cards to create a bridge a foot long. This isn’t possible, surely?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1tXsu8m_3c
People have even done supercoin (and you thought the 250k games on the cube we’re hard)
Oh that’s very good, I see now thanks.
One foot really isn’t very long. It’s about five next to each other, and it only has the be a single-story bridge that can hold the box containing the cards on top (which is so lightweight it’s basically like putting another card on there). Not a card pyramid.
First they came for Playstation Network, next they’ve gone for… THE X FACTOR.
http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2011/05/hackers-steal-x-factor-info-from-simon-cowell.html
After seeing how it did last year here, and how it’s been doing in Germany (as “Die perfekte Minute”), I’m not surprised that “Minute to Win It” is coming to the UK. I am a little surprised that it’s ITV2 that is getting it, rather than one of the BBC channels.
Over here, game show fans have a tendency to hate “Minute to Win It” because it is not “The Cube”, and because we don’t have a USA version of “The Cube”. The general attitude is that CBS was scared off after having a pilot made, by fears that they would be accused of copying “Minute to Win It” with “The Cube”.
At one time in 2009, both shows were being shopped to Fox, which could have had them both (when “MTWI” was still being called “The Perfect Ten”). But Fox went with another producer who had a proven track record–and who immediately found himself having to eat eight completed episodes when something that looked like hanky-panky was discovered.
NBC got “Minute To Win It”, and was satisfied with mediocre ratings–as that was better than anything they had other than NFL (American) Football.
When “Minute To Win It” premiered, it looked like a sincere flattery of “The Cube”. Within a few months, there were changes in the sets, re-editing of completed episodes to remove features that bloggers found distracting or distasteful, and a much lighter spirit.
That being said, I still prefer “The Cube”. I do watch “Minute to Win It”, as it has evolved into an enhanced version of “Beat The Clock”.
Let’s hope that UK audiences don’t wind up acting like football hooligans–which is not far from how American or Australian audiences on this show act!