Final Jeopardy

The “charming and terrifying” story of IBM’s breakthrough in artificial intelligence, from the Business Week technology writer and author of The Numerati (Publishers Weekly, starred review). For centuries, people have dreamed of creating a machine that thinks like a human. Scientists have made progress: computers can now beat chess grandmasters and help prevent terrorist attacks. Yet we still await a machine that exhibits the rich complexity of human thought—one that doesn’t just crunch numbers, or take us to a relevant web page, but understands and communicates with us. With the creation of Watson, IBM’s Jeopardy!-playing computer, we are one step closer to that goal. In Final Jeopardy, Stephen Baker traces the arc of Watson’s “life,” from its birth in the IBM labs to its big night on the podium. We meet Hollywood moguls and Jeopardy! masters, genius computer programmers and ambitious scientists, including Watson’s eccentric creator, David Ferrucci. We see how Watson’s breakthroughs and the future of artificial intelligence could transform medicine, law, marketing, and even science itself, as machines process huge amounts of data at lightning speed, answer our questions, and possibly come up with new hypotheses. As fast and fun as the game itself, Final Jeopardy shows how smart machines will fit into our world—and how they’ll disrupt it. “The place to go if you’re really interested in this version of the quest for creating Artificial Intelligence.” —The Seattle Times “Like Tracy Kidder’s Soul of a New Machine, Baker’s book finds us at the dawn of a singularity. It’s an excellent case study, and does good double duty as a Philip K. Dick scenario, too.” —Kirkus Reviews “Like a cross between Born Yesterday and 2001: A Space Odyssey, Baker’s narrative is both . . . an entertaining romp through the field of artificial intelligence—and a sobering glimpse of things to come.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

Since its debut in 1964, Jeopardy has been one of America's favorite and longest-running daytime quiz shows. It turns the question-answer format of traditional quiz shows on its head and requires contestants to pose correct questions to answers in selected categories. While mining information and facts from Alchemy to Zoology, Jeopardy , is a uniquely intellectual, erudite, and challenging daytime television program. Far beyond entertaining its fans with nail-biting contests of knowledge, memory, and speed, it all but requires them to participate. Few people watch Jeopardy without pressing an invisible button and blurting out questions to their TV screen. Because of this personal and intellectual investment, most Jeopardy fans are devout. Watching the show is valued as a daily ritual in which genuine intellectual skill and encyclopedic knowledge (as opposed to thin Hollywood depictions such as those in Big Bang Theory or Rain Man) are not only respected and placed in the spotlight, but also rewarded with national prestige and prize winnings. Champion Ken Jennings (who contributes to this volume) has won over three million dollars and remained champion seventy-four times. For those who embrace Jeopardy as an intellectual oasis in the arid desert of popular culture, it is the geeks who shall inherit the earth. Jeopardy 's celebration of intellect and forward-thinking is well recognized throughout popular culture and among all age groups. Ken Jennings, Chuck Forrest, and other all-time champions are near celebrities, while the show itself regularly reaches out through special tournaments to different segments of American culture, such as actors and musicians (Celebrity Jeopardy ), high-school and college students (Teen Tournament and College Championship Jeopardy ) and senior citizens (Senior Tournament Jeopardy ). Still, despite its widespread respect and, some might complain, smug self-respect, neither the show nor its fans take themselves too seriously. Jokes about host Alex Trebek's hair and famous parodies of Jeopardy on Saturday Night Live are as familiar as Weird Al Yankovic's MTV-mainstay "I Lost on Jeopardy " (to the tune of "Our Love's in Jeopardy"): Don't know what I was thinkin' of, I guess I just wasn't too bright. Well, I sure hope I do better Next weekend on The Price Is Right.

It was the end of the 20th century and the dawn of a new millennium. America was enjoying an unprecedented period of prosperity, the stock market achieving all-time highs, no wars, and the federal government actually generating an annual surplus. But a rising tide does not lift all boats. Greg Rafferty has been fired out of one corporate nightmare and is on thin ice in another. A recent long-term relationship collapse, and ever-increasing isolation has induced a delusional belief that his only means of survival is to win a million dollars on the nation's highest rated television show. Unbelievably, he is ultimately afforded an opportunity to turn this obsessive pipe dream into reality. A cross between "Office Space" and "Sex in the City" from a male perspective,"Is That Your Final Answer?" is the hilarious and poignant account of one man's search for love and reason in a cold and irrational world.

2019 UPDATED EDITION – FEATURING THE JEOPARDY! ALL-STAR GAMES “This is Jeopardy!” Celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of America’s Favorite Quiz Show® with The Jeopardy! Book of Answers. In honor of this extraordinary milestone, the show’s producers have selected fifteen historic games from over seven thousand episodes that illustrate why the show is every bit as timely—and as lively—as it was the moment that Alex Trebek first took the stage in 1984. You’ll meet Ken Jennings in his first win, and you’ll be there for the stunning end of his record-breaking run. Experience again the epic battle of Man vs. Machine with IBM’s Watson computer. Follow the Celebrity Invitational Finals with $1,000,000 on the line for charity. Get the play-by-play for championship showdowns, memorable tournaments, and so much more. Each game includes the complete text of the Jeopardy!, Double Jeopardy!, and Final Jeopardy! rounds along with exclusive behind-the-scenes details and photos. Get to know the contestants, and, for the first time in print, you’ll get untold stories from the staff behind some of our most popular players, games, and competitions. Who knows? It may even inspire you to become the next Jeopardy! champion! From the very first Jeopardy! episode to the exciting come-from-behind finish of last season’s Tournament of Champions, The Jeopardy! Book of Answers is a must-have for any fan.

The Encyclopedia of Television, second edtion is the first major reference work to provide description, history, analysis, and information on more than 1100 subjects related to television in its international context. For a full list of entries, contributors, and more, visit the Encyclo pedia of Television, 2nd edition website.

The author details the classroom research cycle and provides tools and sample completed projects to help educators initiate their own research and improve literacy instruction.

The new edition of a widely used introduction to game theory and its applications, with a focus on economics, business, and politics. This widely used introduction to game theory is rigorous but accessible, unique in its balance between the theoretical and the practical, with examples and applications following almost every theory-driven chapter. In recent years, game theory has become an important methodological tool for all fields of social sciences, biology and computer science. This second edition of Strategies and Games not only takes into account new game theoretical concepts and applications such as bargaining and matching, it also provides an array of chapters on game theory applied to the political arena. New examples, case studies, and applications relevant to a wide range of behavioral disciplines are now included. The authors map out alternate pathways through the book for instructors in economics, business, and political science. The book contains four parts: strategic form games, extensive form games, asymmetric information games, and cooperative games and matching. Theoretical topics include dominance solutions, Nash equilibrium, Condorcet paradox, backward induction, subgame perfection, repeated and dynamic games, Bayes-Nash equilibrium, mechanism design, auction theory, signaling, the Shapley value, and stable matchings. Applications and case studies include OPEC, voting, poison pills, Treasury auctions, trade agreements, pork-barrel spending, climate change, bargaining and audience costs, markets for lemons, and school choice. Each chapter includes concept checks and tallies end-of-chapter problems. An appendix offers a thorough discussion of single-agent decision theory, which underpins game theory.

With big data analytics comes big insights into profitability Big data is big business. But having the data and the computational power to process it isn't nearly enough to produce meaningful results. Big Data, Data Mining, and Machine Learning: Value Creation for Business Leaders and Practitioners is a complete resource for technology and marketing executives looking to cut through the hype and produce real results that hit the bottom line. Providing an engaging, thorough overview of the current state of big data analytics and the growing trend toward high performance computing architectures, the book is a detail-driven look into how big data analytics can be leveraged to foster positive change and drive efficiency. With continued exponential growth in data and ever more competitive markets, businesses must adapt quickly to gain every competitive advantage available. Big data analytics can serve as the linchpin for initiatives that drive business, but only if the underlying technology and analysis is fully understood and appreciated by engaged stakeholders. This book provides a view into the topic that executives, managers, and practitioners require, and includes: A complete overview of big data and its notable characteristics Details on high performance computing architectures for analytics, massively parallel processing (MPP), and in-memory databases Comprehensive coverage of data mining, text analytics, and machine learning algorithms A discussion of explanatory and predictive modeling, and how they can be applied to decision-making processes Big Data, Data Mining, and Machine Learning provides technology and marketing executives with the complete resource that has been notably absent from the veritable libraries of published books on the topic. Take control of your organization's big data analytics to produce real results with a resource that is comprehensive in scope and light on hyperbole.