[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'256941\' date=\'Feb 11 2011, 01:01 PM\'](Again, though, if he enjoyed computing that as a pure mathematical exercise, great. But it would be delusional to write anything but "Top 15 Jeopardy! Players Ranked Solely By The Adjusted Total Of Their First Five Regular Games" at the top of that page.)[/quote]
I'm defending mostly because he's doing what I suggested he do. Where I'm cutting him some slack is on the word 'ranked'. I thought all he wanted was a way to come up with a pool of the ten (now fifteen) greatest Jeopardy players of all time. I offered him a way to do that using a system that's better than his original idea of all-time money winnings. He's done something like that and he's made a list. Rutter's on the list. Jennings is on the list. Vered is on the list. Pawlowicz, Verini, Forrest and Dupee are on the list. It's a pretty good list.
The fact that it's "ranked", as far as I'm concerned, is just him showing his work. At this point in his process, he could have said "I did X, Y and Z and here are the fifteen names I came up with, listed alphabetically." My understanding is that he plans to compare them by a lot of different variables, including the one used to generate the fifteen, some of which might be interesting and some of which might not. That list is just a starting point, and I think a very good one.