Family Feud Survey Wrong Answers

[Jeremy Nelson]

Let's say someone is taking a survey to be used on Family Feud and they just give outright wrong information (i.e. answering Ben Frankin as a US President kids learn about in school). Is that answer "thrown out" of the poll, causing a clean sweep in a round to only be worth 84 points?

Is it the same case for answers that are matter of opinion, but outlandish (answering lemon as a fruit with an edible skin- it wouldn't be the most pleasant to digest, but it's edible, nonetheless)?

Are survey takers allowed to leave answers blank if they can't think of something? I imagine since they're surveyed on that question, they're still counted in that 100 person poll regardless of whether they give an answer or not.

Just a couple thoughts this morning.

[Jeremy Nelson]

Wow....sorry this kept posting; didn't know how work slow and frustrating work computer could be until now! Can one of the mods delete the other two threads of this? Thanks, and sorry!

[Matt Ottinger]

My understanding is that factually wrong information has turned up in surveys before, though I couldn't give you an example.  Ultimately, there's no reason such answers should be thrown out.  Feud has never been about the "right" answer, just the most popular, and there are a lot of factually wrong things that many people believe anyway.

[dale_grass]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' post=\'249822\' date=\'Oct 28 2010, 10:32 AM\']My understanding is that factually wrong information has turned up in surveys before, though I couldn't give you an example.[/quote]
I can.  I remember a survey about things with four legs, and "insects" was somewhere in the middle of the list.  I'd bet more than one entymologist was yelling at the TV.

[Ian Wallis]

There was a Dawson episode once where they asked about Goodson-Todman game shows.  One contestant said The Gong Show.  It wasn't on the survey, but I wonder if they would have included it if a bunch of people actually said it.  I'm guessing probably not.

[Jeremy Nelson]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' post=\'249822\' date=\'Oct 28 2010, 10:32 AM\']My understanding is that factually wrong information has turned up in surveys before, though I couldn't give you an example.  Ultimately, there's no reason such answers should be thrown out.  Feud has never been about the "right" answer, just the most popular, and there are a lot of factually wrong things that many people believe anyway.[/quote]
That may be true, but let's use my example; if the other family names all but one president in the Triple round, and we lose the game because Ben Franklin showed up, and he's not a US President, I'm gonna be a little peeved and would probably protest. Yeah, the survey takers are Americans, and there are a lot of dumb ones out there. But I don't care if that last answer is Franklin Pierce; if it's a US President, then I'm cool with that, because that's the "category" where my answers are supposed to come from. I know that we're looking for what the survey takers would say, and not what we would say. But I've also got to hope that the game is fair enough that they'll only post answers on the board that actually fall within the parameters of the question, regardless of of how "out there" they are.

[gameboy2000]

I believe that an answer must be included in the survey if at least 2 people provided it.

[tvrandywest]

[quote name=\'gameboy2000\' post=\'249828\' date=\'Oct 28 2010, 09:09 AM\']I believe that an answer must be included in the survey if at least 2 people provided it.[/quote]
Bingo - we have a winner.
That's why only responses given by 2 or more resspondents are on the board.

Randy
tvrandywest.com

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'gameboy2000\' post=\'249828\' date=\'Oct 28 2010, 09:09 AM\']I believe that an answer must be included in the survey if at least 2 people provided it.[/quote]
You guys realize the surveys don't go straight from the respondees to the game board, right?

I mean, I agree with Matt in that there's no reason that should invalidate the survey, but Jeremy's point about being screwed by a bunch of idiots who think Michael Jackson is on the $20 bill is totally valid, too, especially considering what horrific television such a screwing would make for. "Oh, you underestimated the stupidity of the average American! You get nothing, you lose, good day, sirs!"

I would have to think that the show's writers go through the survey results and select the questions for broadcast whose results work best with the game. If they got back a survey where Ben Franklin qualified for the board in a Presidential question, I would think they would sigh and send the question out again in a future survey with the hopes that they got smarter respondees next time, or look at the question and see if the wording was vague. Either way, I don't think it would air.

(I could also see them surveying, say, 120 people on a given question, and dropping 20 answers off to cover the bozo factor. They don't say "we surveyed 100 people, no more, no less.")

[MSTieScott]

I've been tracking "Family Feud" main game surveys for a few years now, and here's what I've learned:

While it's true that a response cannot earn points unless it was given by two of the people surveyed, that does not mean that all responses given by at least two people will be displayed on the board. They're obligated to show the top x answers, but they can choose where the cutoff for x is. So if four survey respondents said "Benjamin Franklin," the producers could choose to only display the answers that received five or more responses.

Last season, I saw a few instances where a survey from a few years ago was reused, but this time around, they included more lower-scoring responses to make the round last longer. This season, I've seen a few repeat surveys where they've cut off some of the lower-scoring responses so Steve Harvey has more time to ad-lib.

(Alternately, they can put the question with the factually-inaccurate response in Fast Money, where it's less likely they'll have to acknowledge that it was worth points.)

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'MSTieScott\' post=\'249842\' date=\'Oct 28 2010, 10:58 AM\'](Alternately, they can put the question with the factually-inaccurate response in Fast Money, where it's less likely they'll have to acknowledge that it was worth points.)[/quote]
True this too. Fast Money is a great way to use content that doesn't work well with the maingame for whatever reasons, so long as the top 2-3 answers are worth the right number of points.

[That Don Guy]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' post=\'249822\' date=\'Oct 28 2010, 08:32 AM\']My understanding is that factually wrong information has turned up in surveys before, though I couldn't give you an example.[/quote]
From a Dawson-era episodes, "Penguin" made the survey for (something along the lines of) "Name something you might find at the North Pole."

Sort of like on Match Game 7x when a Super Match audience match question had only two reasonably obvious answers (example: Werner _____ had Werner Klemperer, Werner von Braun, and Werner Brothers).

-- Don

[Chuck Sutton]

One of favorites from the O'Hurley era "Name a reason you would leave your TV on when you are not home"  One of the players said "To record a program"  it was up there with I think with 5 people.

I seem to remember a question about Presidents who are on money and Franklin being on the  Board.

[Jeremy Nelson]

[quote name=\'Chuck Sutton\' post=\'249883\' date=\'Oct 29 2010, 12:51 PM\']One of favorites from the O'Hurley era "Name a reason you would leave your TV on when you are not home"  One of the players said "To record a program"  it was up there with I think with 5 people.[/quote]
But that's the thing; there's a difference between questions that are a matter of opinion and a matter of fact. Your example is just a gauge of human behavior (not to mention that I knew people who kept their TVs on to record programs back when they had VCRs.)

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'Jeremy Nelson\' post=\'249887\' date=\'Oct 29 2010, 02:52 PM\'](not to mention that I knew people who kept their TVs on to record programs back when they had VCRs.)[/quote]
Chuck's point is that unless you have a really wacky setup, there's never a need to have the TV on in order to record a program, even with a VCR.  The TV is merely a monitor that shows you what it is that you're recording.  Still, that's something of a nuance for most people, and a little bit different than saying Benjamin Franklin was a president, or penguins are found on the north pole.