The 3WM's "wrong" answer (Millionaire 2/26)

[BrentW]

I didn't see this discussed anywhere, so I'll bite.   This is in refernce to the "life existed approx. how many years ago?" question on Thursday's Millionaire.

Let me preface this by saying I agree that OF THE CHOICES OFFERED, Answer B (4 billion years) is the best answer.  And no I don't think they need to bring anybody back for a second chance, nor will they.  

But I can't really fault Olmstead with his reasoning of thinking that if 4 billion years was the age of the Earth, and life didn't come into existence the moment after the crust cooled, that logically he chose the next best answer.  

My partner was convinced ABC made an error, so I did some research and found that scientists have found evidence of life about 3,850 million years ago.  Said another way, this is 3.85 billion years.  So "4 billion years" was the "approximate" answer.  

My problem with this is not in the question, but in the choices.  I know that 3.85 billion years is "close" enough to 4 billion that it makes (B) the best answer.  But jeez, we're talking a lag-time here of 150 MILLION YEARS.  I suppose as far as scientists go, you can say 4 billion years is approximate enough.  But that extra 150 million years that they just "rounded up" would be enough to fool most anybody.  

If the choices has instead been more accurate, such as:

a) 5.2 billion years,
b) 3.8 billion years,
c) 2.6 billion years, and
d) 1.4 billion years,

I think we would have ended up with a correct answer.  Kevin would have reasoned that the Earth is 4 billion years old, and chose the next best option.  Perhaps not, but based on his reasoning, I'm betting he would have.   My issue is that scientists believe that Earth is about 4 billion years old, so by asking a question where you also allow 4 billion years to be the "approx" date of life forming, it makes it sound as though the 2 occurred simultaneously.  But they didn't...one happened 150 million years after the other.  

I suppose I just have a problem with the fact that Kevin got bamboozled in his thinking by the "rounding" of the question writer who made up the choices.  Is (B) the best answer of the available choices?  Yes.  But could the answers have been written better?  Yes, IMO.  I don't like having a "right" answer that is a whole freakin' 150 million years off.

I know I'll have my detractors.  Fire away.  I'm not upset about it so much as I am just disappointed that Kevin's astute reasoning seemed to work against him.  

And please remember when posting: I do concur that (B) is indeed the "best" answer...of what they offered.  

-Brent

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'BrentW\' date=\'Feb 27 2004, 04:30 PM\'] My problem with this is not in the question, but in the choices.  I know that 3.85 billion years is "close" enough to 4 billion that it makes (B) the best answer.  But jeez, we're talking a lag-time here of 150 MILLION YEARS.  I suppose as far as scientists go, you can say 4 billion years is approximate enough.  But that extra 150 million years that they just "rounded up" would be enough to fool most anybody. [/quote]
 Except that while you're making a big deal about the 150 million years that got rounded up, the choice that Dr. Olmstead and his team made (among the four that were offered) was off by 3,350 million years.

I can't be sure, but I thought I heard them say that since the earth was FIVE billion years old, the answer couldn't be "B" because that was too recent (epochly speaking).  So it's not as though they were fooled by the choices, they just underestimated how long it took for those bacteria to get going.  

As anyone who's taken the SAT can tell you, any multiple choice question is all about picking the best answer from the four choices.  Because of the spread the writers gave between alternatives, there's no doubt that "B" is absolutely the best choice.  Naturally I can't speak for Kevin and his teammates, but I don't think that rounding it off to a whole number confused anybody.  

Was it a hard question?  Yes.  Was it a tricky question?  Probably.  It was also worth half a million dollars.

[Chelsea Thrasher]

Admittedtly, I first thought it was 4 billion myself, due to the fact that, as was mentioned, the earth only formed 4 Billion years ago.  And, obviously, rounding didn't click into my head.    Would have missed the answer had ABC's ITV game not typoed and eliminated Olmstead's choice (500 *B*illion?)

[leszekp]

From a transcript (I didn't see the show), the question and answers were:

$500,000 -- Most scientists believe that life appeared on Earth approximately how many years ago?

A. 10 billion years
B. 4 billion years
C. 500 million years
D. 6 million years


Since the question included the words "life appeared", "believe" and "approximately", 4 billion is the correct answer. The question did NOT ask for the age of the oldest fossil, but when life appeared. If they've found fossil bacteria that are 3.85 billion years old (doubted by some), or algae at 3.5 billion (more solid, but still questioned by some), life itself must have appeared at some earlier point as a more primitive form. Scientists can only make an educated guess as to how long that might be, and that guess will have pretty large error bars on it, hence the need to use the words "believe" and "approximately". The only solid upper bound on when life appeared on earth is the age of the earth, reasonably well dated at about 4.4-4.6 billion years or so. Of the four answers given, 4 billion is the only one that falls within that approximate range (3.5 - 4.6 billion years), and is the one and only correct response.

Olmstead may have tried to reason out the correct answer, but his initial premise that the earth was only 4 billion years old was wrong, so any reasoning based on that premise and the choices given would have been wrong as well.

[MikeK]

10 billion years is obviously wrong since Earth isn't that old.  A few weeks ago in a biology course I'm taking, the professor mentioned that the oldest fossils found are 3.5 billion years old (confirmed by double-checking the course's text minutes ago).  Unless there's concrete evidence placing a more exact date to when the first forms of life appeared, 4 billion years is the best approximation.

It wasn't a tricky question if you knew the age of Earth and knew some biology.  It's easy for me to say that since I'm taking Biology 100 right now, with the head of CSU's biology department teaching the course.

[starcade]

Unless you really believe in a God coming in billions of years afterward and putting life on a lifeless planet, there's no other even reasonable answer listed there.

That should've been a no-lifeline Next Dimension correct answer...

[BrentW]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Feb 27 2004, 04:11 PM\']Was it a hard question?  Yes.  Was it a tricky question?  Probably.  It was also worth half a million dollars.[/quote]
Point taken.

[DrJWJustice]

I remember when Dan Blonsky became the first regular series' millionaire, it was on a question regarding the Earth's approximate distance from the sun.  The right answer was 92 million miles.  I remember shouting "93 million" at the set before the answers appeared.  As I see it, that difference amounted to about a buck a mile for Blonsky.  

The other answers, BTW, weren't even close.

[tvmitch]

I think a lot of the questions for this run of Millionaire were much, much harder than some of the million dollar questions in the traditional run. But I'm glad it was that way, especially since the show is coming back in May. It leaves a lot of intrigue. While playing along at home with the final episode of the run tonight, I would never have made $100,000 sitting there, and I usually do better even on Meredith's shows.

And the same thoughts occurred to me: how did these people pass the phone test?! I don't care about "Well, you've never been in the hot seat" reasoning: contestants made fundamentally dumb decisions and potentially had forever to make them - there's no time pressure there. Anyway, great series and I'll be practicing for May...

[Craig Karlberg]

I know for a fact the Earh's distance from the sun varies from 91 milllion to 94 million miles depending on where the Earh is in relation to the seasons & the tilting of the axis thus 93 million was the best possible answer there.

As far as the life appearing on Earth 4 billion years(3.85 billion if you "believe" most scientists), that question could've been even more tricky if the choices were'nt as spread out as it was.  I would've done it this way for $500K:

A 2.5 Billion
B 3.5 Billion
C 1.5 Billion
D 5 Billion

In that case B was the best answer here since 3.5 is closer to 3.85 than the other choices.

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'Craig Karlberg\' date=\'Feb 28 2004, 07:24 AM\'] I know for a fact the Earh's distance from the sun varies from 91 milllion to 94 million miles [/quote]
 You've measured?

[BrentW]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Feb 28 2004, 10:07 AM\'] [quote name=\'Craig Karlberg\' date=\'Feb 28 2004, 07:24 AM\'] I know for a fact the Earh's distance from the sun varies from 91 milllion to 94 million miles [/quote]
You've measured? [/quote]
 I thought all guys measure...  

(*ducks for cover*)

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'BrentW\' date=\'Feb 28 2004, 10:34 AM\'] I thought all guys measure...  

(*ducks for cover*) [/quote]
 Some of us don't NEED to...

("damn, that's teeny...")