The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: Card Shark on February 16, 2008, 10:24:11 AM
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How much influence did Standards and Practices have over the Beat The Dragon bonus game? I am sure that given it was Barry and Enright, they were being watched very closely. What kind of stop gaps were put in place to guarantee that the dollar amounts and dragon really were being placed random?
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[quote name=\'Card Shark\' post=\'177976\' date=\'Feb 16 2008, 10:24 AM\']
What kind of stop gaps were put in place to guarantee that the dollar amounts and dragon really were being placed random?
[/quote]
Well, you did see the screens flash around and hear the "beep-beep-beep-boop-beep-boop" didn't you?
Just kidding.
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[quote name=\'Neumms\' post=\'177998\' date=\'Feb 16 2008, 04:59 PM\']
[quote name=\'Card Shark\' post=\'177976\' date=\'Feb 16 2008, 10:24 AM\']
What kind of stop gaps were put in place to guarantee that the dollar amounts and dragon really were being placed random?
[/quote]
Well, you did see the screens flash around and hear the "beep-beep-beep-boop-beep-boop" didn't you?
Just kidding.
[/quote]
That matches the assurances of randomness from Press Your Luck. I'm convinced. ;)
Seriously, could computers do random (or pseudorandom) processes back then, or were squares drawn out of a hat?
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[quote name=\'dale_grass\' post=\'178002\' date=\'Feb 16 2008, 01:53 PM\']
Seriously, could computers do random (or pseudorandom) processes back then, or were squares drawn out of a hat?
[/quote]
The TTD board was a bunch of ganged-up Apple IIs. I assure you that the Apple was capable of random number generation.
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[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'178005\' date=\'Feb 16 2008, 05:29 PM\']
[quote name=\'dale_grass\' post=\'178002\' date=\'Feb 16 2008, 01:53 PM\']
Seriously, could computers do random (or pseudorandom) processes back then, or were squares drawn out of a hat?
[/quote]
The TTD board was a bunch of ganged-up Apple IIs. I assure you that the Apple was capable of random number generation.
[/quote]
As long as you didn't use the built-in "random number" generator unassisted, it was. If you were to write a program that used the random number generator to print ten random numbers in a row, then turned off the Apple II, turned it back on and ran the same program, you'd get the same ten numbers.
There were ways around this, of course, and considering that we didn't see the dragon in the same place at the start of the first bonus round each day, I think we can safely assume that the programmers assigned to Tic Tac Dough were aware of said workarounds. :-)
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[quote name=\'dzinkin\' post=\'178007\' date=\'Feb 16 2008, 02:36 PM\']
As long as you didn't use the built-in "random number" generator unassisted, it was. If you were to write a program that used the random number generator to print ten random numbers in a row, then turned off the Apple II, turned it back on and ran the same program, you'd get the same ten numbers.[/quote]
If you don't seed it, sure. Which brings up two points:
a) if you're a coder in the late '70s and not seeding before your RND calls, what are you doing programming professionally, and
b) if you're shuffling the board for the very first time since system boot when you're actually rolling tape on a live game, what are you doing working in television?
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This (http://\"http://bob-bishop.awardspace.com/\") is the website of the guy that actually wrote the software used on Tic Tac Dough. An interesting read, and an interesting career.
Greg
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[quote name=\'Card Shark\' post=\'177976\' date=\'Feb 16 2008, 07:24 AM\']How much influence did Standards and Practices have over the Beat The Dragon bonus game? I am sure that given it was Barry and Enright, they were being watched very closely. What kind of stop gaps were put in place to guarantee that the dollar amounts and dragon really were being placed random?[/quote]Couldn't they have done what the Brits do with their assignations of money to boxes: ping pong balls from a bag?
/Or Bovine Bingo. Whatever.
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Follow-up question: Even if the positions of the dragon and dollar amounts weren't strictly random (and I'm sure they were), so what? It's still up to the contestants to pick numbers. It's sort of the Hollywood Squares S&P out: The celebrities were not assigned questions and/or correct answers at random, but it was still up to the contestants to decide whether the given answers were correct, so the game wasn't rigged. I would think the TTD situation could only redound to the contestants' benefit if the placements weren't truly random because, as with Larsen on PYL, they could figure out where things were likely to be on the board and pick those numbers.
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[quote name=\'Mike Tennant\' post=\'178049\' date=\'Feb 17 2008, 11:09 AM\']
Follow-up question: Even if the positions of the dragon and dollar amounts weren't strictly random (and I'm sure they were), so what? It's still up to the contestants to pick numbers. It's sort of the Hollywood Squares S&P out: The celebrities were not assigned questions and/or correct answers at random, but it was still up to the contestants to decide whether the given answers were correct, so the game wasn't rigged. I would think the TTD situation could only redound to the contestants' benefit if the placements weren't truly random because, as with Larsen on PYL, they could figure out where things were likely to be on the board and pick those numbers.
[/quote]
Although it'd be harder to memorize patterns on TTD to beat the game, especially because you could still pick the dragon on the first call (as has seemed to be the case quite a bit in the first 6 weeks of shows), it looks to me like there were only a certain number of bonus board configurations. I don't know if anybody noticed on the first episode B-001, the two bonus boards in that show were identical. Wink even made a comment during the 2nd bonus round of the show that the dragon was in the same place as before. I've since noticed the same exact configurations on multiple shows. I'm sure our statisticians can come up with the number of possible combinations for the 9 squares, but after seeing the first 30 shows and 45 bonus games, I've noticed several repeats which shouldn't happen this soon if there are thousands upon thousands of possibilities.
Rob
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[quote name=\'TraderRob\' post=\'178066\' date=\'Feb 17 2008, 10:52 AM\']
I'm sure our statisticians can come up with the number of possible combinations for the 9 squares,
[/quote]
Doesn't even take a statistician. 9!, which is 362,880.
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[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'178067\' date=\'Feb 17 2008, 02:10 PM\']
[quote name=\'TraderRob\' post=\'178066\' date=\'Feb 17 2008, 10:52 AM\']
I'm sure our statisticians can come up with the number of possible combinations for the 9 squares,
[/quote]
Doesn't even take a statistician. 9!, which is 362,880.
[/quote]
The math teacher is quite proud of you, Mr. Lemon. You do better with that than some of my own students. Most, thankfully, figured that lesson out quickly.
Seriously, I have noticed repeats in the patterns, too. I've found myself recently trying to predict the Tic, Tac and dragon once I've seen one of the T-keys. I'll probably try to chronicle the arrangements sometime.
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I don't know if anyone has really been hardcore enough to note stats on where the dragon has been on every bonus round, but since this was one of my favorite game shows during my childhood, I watched it enough times back then to note that the dragon seemed to --- WAY more often than not -- appear behind the number 6. Whenever someone called a 6 I would always wonder "does this guy ever watch the show?!" and then .. roaarrr... sure, it wasn't every time, but I would bet money the dragon was behind 6 more than any other number, and that it was behind 6 significantly more than 11% of the time.
/..he used to scare me.
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[quote name=\'lobster\' post=\'178115\' date=\'Feb 18 2008, 12:52 PM\']Whenever someone called a 6 I would always wonder "does this guy ever watch the show?!"[/quote]Well, if the contestants were under the assumption that it was randomly picked, they wouldn't have any reason not to pick 6, now would they?
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[quote name=\'Modor\' post=\'178127\' date=\'Feb 18 2008, 11:38 AM\']
[quote name=\'lobster\' post=\'178115\' date=\'Feb 18 2008, 12:52 PM\']Whenever someone called a 6 I would always wonder "does this guy ever watch the show?!"[/quote]Well, if the contestants were under the assumption that it was randomly picked, they wouldn't have any reason not to pick 6, now would they?
[/quote]
"The price ALWAYS ends in 7! Always always always! How stupid can they be?"
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[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'178128\' date=\'Feb 18 2008, 11:52 AM\']
[quote name=\'Modor\' post=\'178127\' date=\'Feb 18 2008, 11:38 AM\']
[quote name=\'lobster\' post=\'178115\' date=\'Feb 18 2008, 12:52 PM\']Whenever someone called a 6 I would always wonder "does this guy ever watch the show?!"[/quote]Well, if the contestants were under the assumption that it was randomly picked, they wouldn't have any reason not to pick 6, now would they?
[/quote]
"The price ALWAYS ends in 7! Always always always! How stupid can they be?"
[/quote]
The dragon has been behind 6 alot lately. Before that it seemed to only come up behind 2, 5 or 9. So far this season it has only been behind #1 once, #7 three times (consecutively I might add) and #4 three times if memory serves me right. #3 has also been pretty safe. I only remember the dragon coming up behind 3 once or twice since TTD came back to GSN.
Bottom line is I would never pick 2,5,6 or 9 if I was on TTD back then.
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[quote name=\'ttdrules\' post=\'178136\' date=\'Feb 18 2008, 12:58 PM\']
The dragon has been behind 6 alot lately. Before that it seemed to only come up behind 2, 5 or 9. So far this season it has only been behind #1 once, #7 three times (consecutively I might add) and #4 three times if memory serves me right. #3 has also been pretty safe. I only remember the dragon coming up behind 3 once or twice since TTD came back to GSN.
Bottom line is I would never pick 2,5,6 or 9 if I was on TTD back then.
[/quote]
http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/9759/picardbv6rw9.jpg (http://\"http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/9759/picardbv6rw9.jpg\")
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[quote name=\'lobster\' post=\'178115\' date=\'Feb 18 2008, 12:52 PM\']
Whenever someone called a 6 I would always wonder "does this guy ever watch the show?!"[/quote]
Then include me among the dense because I watched nearly every night for the three years it was on TV-5
in Cleveland (1978-81; weeknights at 7:30) and never made that connection.
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y'alls is so funny :D
I guess I should have thrown in the fact that I was eight years old.. so, of course, mindless number-picking games were a fascination... but as for the 6, perhaps one day a hardcore TTD fan will reveal the stats and prove I wasn't taking one too many flintstone vitamin..
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On a somewhat related note of patterns and questionable random actions, it seems as if the main game categories failed to shuffle on several occasions. Weeks ago, when Tom Parrish (I seem to recall he was on TJW, as well) was in the challenger's position, the board went several turns without moving the categories. During one of Wink's "take a look at those 3 boxes, currently with X, Y, and Z, as we shuffle them around..." deals, Tom even commented after the "shuffle" that they were "very much the same".
Tom's incident was the first that I had noticed this, but it has since happened a few more times, often just for one turn. I dismiss the possibility that the categories were just randomly placed back into their original boxes - it's highly unlikely to happen that many times in a row. I don't want to say it's "unfair" that the categories didn't shuffle for the players, but if one person gets a shuffled board, doesn't it seem right that the other player get the same benefit?
-Rob
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[quote name=\'RobRosko\' post=\'178198\' date=\'Feb 19 2008, 10:04 AM\']
On a somewhat related note of patterns and questionable random actions, it seems as if the main game categories failed to shuffle on several occasions. Weeks ago, when Tom Parrish (I seem to recall he was on TJW, as well) was in the challenger's position, the board went several turns without moving the categories. During one of Wink's "take a look at those 3 boxes, currently with X, Y, and Z, as we shuffle them around..." deals, Tom even commented after the "shuffle" that they were "very much the same".
[/quote]
With three boxes left, there's going to be a 1-in-8 chance that they will shuffle back to their original positions, if they stuck with a contrivance that the three visible categories will remain the three visible categories post-shuffle.
At the Congress that had the live Tic-Tac-Dough, we had a fun little incident where "The Beatles" were the same category four times in a row, basically because that category ended up in the next logical spot to be played. And I can assure you..the placement was meant to be random.
I'm not that familiar with the randomness of Apple ][ generated random numbers, but if they were anything like their 8-bit cousins, it was a rather finite set. I'm just amazed that they stuck with a tape drive to load the software all those years.
--Mike
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Because I know y'all wanted to know. I am missing one bonus round from Episode B-015.
Through the 2/18 show, the bonus round has been played 46 times. Below is the frequency of the dragon:
#1 - 1
#2 - 9
#3 - 1
#4 - 5
#5 - 9
#6 - 7
#7 - 4
#8 - 1
#9 - 8
unknown - 1
One thing I will mention, for the first 23 playings, the dragon was confined to either 2, 4, 5, 7 or 9 (unless there was an exception in that episode I missed). Admittedly, it has come up in #6 somewhat frequently in recent days, but I'm sure the distribution will all balance out at some point.
It's also been kinda fun watching the way the categories are put together. Aquatic Biology only seems to first appear in the upper left, Potluck Pix comes up way more than any other category, and "Evil People?" "The Odd One?" And what really is the difference between "Mixed Words" and "Jumbled Words?" :-)
Rob
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[quote name=\'TraderRob\' post=\'178223\' date=\'Feb 19 2008, 01:32 PM\']
Through the 2/18 show, the bonus round has been played 46 times. Below is the frequency of the dragon:
#1 - 1
#2 - 9
#3 - 1
#4 - 5
#5 - 9
#6 - 7
#7 - 4
#8 - 1
#9 - 8
unknown - 1
[/quote]
That's an interesting spread. I would be really interested to see how it compares to the same spread after 100 plays. If it's still heavy towards #2, #5 #6, and #9 at that point I'd say we definitely have something here. :)
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It's also been kinda fun watching the way the categories are put together. Aquatic Biology only seems to first appear in the upper left, Potluck Pix comes up way more than any other category, and "Evil People?" "The Odd One?" And what really is the difference between "Mixed Words" and "Jumbled Words?" :-)
There is none, AFAIK. There have also been other largely equivalent Tic-Tac-Dough categories:
"Good Guys" = "Heroes"
"Bad Guys" = "Evil People" = "Villains"
"Clothes Styles" = "Fashion(s)"
"One Word Names" = "One Word Titles"
"Odd Names" = "Strange Names"
"Strange Facts" = "Oddities"
"Animals" = "Zoology"
Another bit of evidence as to the limitations of the Apple II is that Wink's podium (which you can see when he reads off the categories on the board at the start of each game) has nine stacks of blue cards (for the ordinary questions) but only eight stacks of pink ones (for the two-parters). That means one of the categories won't appear in the center box.
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[quote name=\'Marc412\' post=\'178233\' date=\'Feb 19 2008, 02:38 PM\']
Another bit of evidence as to the limitations of the Apple II is that Wink's podium (which you can see when he reads off the categories on the board at the start of each game) has nine stacks of blue cards (for the ordinary questions) but only eight stacks of pink ones (for the two-parters). That means one of the categories won't appear in the center box.
[/quote]
Except that has nothing to do with any limitations of the computer(s) itself, and I have no idea at all why the software wouldn't be able to do that. I don't know why that decision was made, but I have to think it was a conscious one.
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Could it be that one category had questions which were adaptable as one- or two-parters? I've noticed a fair number of questions where Wink will go in the direction of two potential answers, and then add "name one" at the end. I've also seen questions that point to things like both an actor and a film, and Wink then proceeds to ask the contestant to name only one or the other.
Also, it's interesting to read that I'm not the only elementary school kid who thought the dragon spent a good portion of his time behind box 6.
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Random thought (I don't get GSN, so I haven't seen any of these episodes) -- has a visual aid category been in the center box? Maybe they didn't want to worry about activating the correct slide projector based on which type of question was about to be read?
--
Scott Robinson
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[quote name=\'MSTieScott\' post=\'178265\' date=\'Feb 19 2008, 10:43 PM\']
Random thought (I don't get GSN, so I haven't seen any of these episodes) -- has a visual aid category been in the center box? Maybe they didn't want to worry about activating the correct slide projector based on which type of question was about to be read?
--
Scott Robinson
[/quote]
No, there have been visual categories in the center box. One I remember was a picture of two actors and the contestant was asked to name them both. Same with Symbols. The screen displayed two symbols.
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I would think that after they'd introduced the "red categories", that they'd keep them from appearing in the center box. That could get messy having one of those a two-parter.
I was knee-high to a piss-ant when the show was on, but I don't remeber the red cats showing up in center.
Perhaps they did the same thing PYL did, and have a list of predetermined configurations they chose from, and just picked one at random. Gotta remeber, back then networking was not like it is today. Getting two computers to talk to each other was a chore-and-a-half, let alone 10.
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[quote name=\'TraderRob\' post=\'178268\' date=\'Feb 19 2008, 10:25 PM\']The screen displayed two symbols.[/quote]
(screen opens)
$ %
Wink: We're going to give you some extra time to think about this. (Cue think music).
Contestant: @!%!^!^%$$!$###%!!!
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[quote name=\'TraderRob\' post=\'178223\' date=\'Feb 19 2008, 03:32 PM\']
Admittedly, it has come up in #6 somewhat frequently in recent days, but I'm sure the distribution will all balance out at some point.
[/quote]
Muahaha, you just watch :D
thanks for collectin the stats
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[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'178230\' date=\'Feb 19 2008, 04:28 PM\']
[quote name=\'TraderRob\' post=\'178223\' date=\'Feb 19 2008, 01:32 PM\']
Through the 2/18 show, the bonus round has been played 46 times. Below is the frequency of the dragon:
#1 - 1 #2 - 9 #3 - 1 #4 - 5 #5 - 9
#6 - 7 #7 - 4 #8 - 1 #9 - 8 unknown - 1
[/quote]
That's an interesting spread. I would be really interested to see how it compares to the same spread after 100 plays. If it's still heavy towards #2, #5 #6, and #9 at that point I'd say we definitely have something here. :)
[/quote]
I'd like $20 on #6 straight to win, and I'll do a $1 box trifecta on 2, 6, and 9 please :[]
/jai alai > horseracing
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[quote name=\'Sodboy13\' post=\'178245\' date=\'Feb 19 2008, 05:40 PM\']
Also, it's interesting to read that I'm not the only elementary school kid who thought the dragon spent a good portion of his time behind box 6.
[/quote]
Hah, thank you -- now I don't feel like SO much of a dope for suggesting it .. but really, for a long time throughout my childhood I disliked the number 6 because of that :p ... It really happened often enough to be memorable to me.. we'll see what the stats say!
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[quote name=\'lobster\' post=\'178281\' date=\'Feb 20 2008, 12:44 AM\']
ah, thank you -- now I don't feel like SO much of a dope for suggesting it .. but really, for a long time throughout my childhood I disliked the number 6 because of that :p ... It really happened often enough to be memorable to me.. we'll see what the stats say!
[/quote]
I watched Tuesday's show on DVR when I got home last night and I cracked up when the dragon ended up behind #6.
I will report again when we get up to 100 bonus games.
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[quote name=\'TraderRob\' post=\'178323\' date=\'Feb 20 2008, 10:54 AM\']
I watched Tuesday's show on DVR when I got home last night and I cracked up when the dragon ended up behind #6.
I will report again when we get up to 100 bonus games.
[/quote]
My wife watches this show with me every night after I TiVo it, and last night, when we were watching, and the dragon was behind #6, I told her, "SEE? I told you so. The dragon is always behind number 6."
Cue the arguing back and forth, but I know I'm right from watching endless reruns of the show from the USA days and when I was a wee tot.
Other things I remember thinking about the show when I was 7 years old, watching shows that are further in the run than where we are now:
-There was never a red category in the middle box. I'd be willing to bet a fair sum of money on this.
-I remember that the shows without red categories were waaaay boring, and wondering why the contestants wouldn't choose a red category just for fun. (Twenty years later, this is obviously a silly thought, and I appreciate now that the categories themselves have a lot to do with the game play.)
-I remember wondering why the contestants would hope for a TIC TAC win in the bonus because they have the potential to win MORE than $1,000 when they pick a combo like 500-400-150-300, or something. (Again, a silly thought.)
-I remember being excited once those big red lockins were added to the contestant podia.
-And, most importantly, the dragon is always behind #6 and very rarely behind #5.
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[quote name=\'mitchgroff\' post=\'178346\' date=\'Feb 20 2008, 01:17 PM\']
-And, most importantly, the dragon is always behind #6 and very rarely behind #5.
[/quote]
I knew I wasn't crazy :D
I'm going to venture to say that after 100 games are compiled by traderrob, at least 20 of them will be #6.. that's right, you heard it here first, one fifth! now accepting wagers :D
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[quote name=\'mitchgroff\' post=\'178346\' date=\'Feb 20 2008, 02:17 PM\']-There was never a red category in the middle box. I'd be willing to bet a fair sum of money on this.[/quote]
Definitely. It would be very confusing to play, say, Top This with a two-part question.
--
Scott Robinson
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[quote name=\'mitchgroff\' post=\'178346\' date=\'Feb 20 2008, 03:17 PM\']
Other things I remember thinking about the show when I was 7 years old, watching shows that are further in the run than where we are now:
-There was never a red category in the middle box. I'd be willing to bet a fair sum of money on this.
[/quote]
You bet right. Lets put it this way:
If a red box ever appeared in the center square on a Caldwell TTD, Jim would've short-circuited and his head would have exploded, just like a Fem-Bot!
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As with all game show sets, the original TTD board was built with CBS money. I doubt it was cheap having hired an outside consultant from Apple. When it was cancelled and B&E took it to syndication, either it had been amortized over its short run and B&E owned it, or CBS owned it and B&E bought it outright or leased it back from CBS. Either way, as the years went by I doubt B&E cared to put money into upgrading the technology with state-of-the-art 5 1/4" floppy drives.
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I don't suppose anyone collecting all these stats can confirm or deny my memory, from watching Game Show Network in the late '90s, that there were early episodes of Wink TTD where the nine categories always took the same path through the 9 boxes? I don't want to think I'm going crazy (too late), but I would've thought someone else would have corroborated my memory by now.
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[quote name=\'Robert Hutchinson\' post=\'178486\' date=\'Feb 21 2008, 10:22 PM\']
I don't suppose anyone collecting all these stats can confirm or deny my memory, from watching Game Show Network in the late '90s, that there were early episodes of Wink TTD where the nine categories always took the same path through the 9 boxes? I don't want to think I'm going crazy (too late), but I would've thought someone else would have corroborated my memory by now.
[/quote]
No proof here (I no longer have GSN,) but I seem to remember that it was predictable, too. Mostly, I noticed that the red boxes would always align along one of the edges of the board after the first shuffle, since they always started in the same three spots.
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[quote name=\'Unrealtor\' post=\'178493\' date=\'Feb 21 2008, 08:58 PM\']
No proof here (I no longer have GSN,) but I seem to remember that it was predictable, too. Mostly, I noticed that the red boxes would always align along one of the edges of the board after the first shuffle, since they always started in the same three spots.
[/quote]
As we have said many times before, truly random patterns look BAD on TV. It would surprised me not at all to find that there was some sort of predetermined rotation(s) in place, especially considering you NEVER saw a box pop up in the same box it left when they shuffled. (or did you? I sure don't remember that happening.)
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To clarify: this was the pre-red-box era, and you would probably have to be looking for a pattern to notice it, but it was terribly un-random.
The pattern that I saw (or thought I saw) was something like 5-1-4-3-2-9-7-6-8-5; whichever of those boxes a category was in, it would be in the next one down the line after a shuffle. This applied to all the categories--imagine someone doing a weird Connect the Dots to the boxes, and all the categories were "stuck" on that line. I remember being confident enough of what I had found that I could predict with certainty where categories would be after each shuffle.
But, again, the disclaimer--anything I remember from 10 years ago is doubtful on its face.
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Only because I just saw it happen, at the top of the show yesterday, they showed all 9 categories, then placed the boxes that were already claimed on the board. The first shuffle after that mixed them up a bit, but the second shuffle had everything back where they were at the beginning.
Also - in the eps we are seeing so far, if they resume a game in progress on a show, the categories don't shuffle when they place the X's and O's on the board until after the first question is asked - meaning the categories aren't in the same place they were at the end of the previous show. Would there have been any S&P concerns about that? Or would they just have called that a "shuffle" back to the original layout ?
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[quote name=\'TraderRob\' post=\'178223\' date=\'Feb 19 2008, 04:32 PM\']
Through the 2/18 show, the bonus round has been played 46 times. Below is the frequency of the dragon:
#1 - 1
#2 - 9
#3 - 1
#4 - 5
#5 - 9
#6 - 7
#7 - 4
#8 - 1
#9 - 8
unknown - 1
[/quote]
Ok, all, as promised, I'm back now that we've played 100 bonus games. As of the Friday, 4/25 show (B-082), the bonus game has now been played 102 times. That unknown game from B-015 still exists plus there were two shows skipped by GSN from the Over 80 Tourney, but I think this will still give us a decent representation.
#1 - 4
#2 - 22
#3 - 3
#4 - 7
#5 - 14
#6 - 24
#7 - 7
#8 - 9
#9 - 11
unknown - 1
So 2, 5, 6 and 9 remain the 4 numbers that have had the dragon appear the most number of times.
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I'd say that is well into the range of statistical significance. Wow.
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Imagine, if a Michael Larson had caught this then, he'd have OWNED Club Universe.
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[quote name=\'TraderRob\' post=\'185091\' date=\'Apr 29 2008, 11:27 PM\']
#1 - 4
#2 - 22
#3 - 3
#4 - 7
#5 - 14
#6 - 24
#7 - 7
#8 - 9
#9 - 11
unknown - 1
So 2, 5, 6 and 9 remain the 4 numbers that have had the dragon appear the most number of times.
[/quote]
And a quick check on my TI-89 gives a Chi-squared value of 39.08, and a p-value of less than 1x10^-5. So it's definitely not due to pure chance. Something was up.
/I wonder if any other shows had a similar problem
//but I don't think it would be rigging, as the contestant is playing against the house after all
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[quote name=\'rjaguar3\' post=\'185138\' date=\'Apr 30 2008, 06:27 PM\']
/I wonder if any other shows had a similar problem
//but I don't think it would be rigging, as the contestant is playing against the house after all[/quote]
Exactly. It becomes fascinating to imagine what the reason for it is, though. Did they leave it up to the computer to "randomly" assign spaces, and some limitation in early programming created something less than random that never got noticed? Or did a producer (Ronnie Greenberg, perhaps!) just pick a number and end up picking the same one(s) too often in a perfectly innocent manner?
[quote name=\'Neumms\' post=\'185111\' date=\'Apr 30 2008, 11:52 AM\']Imagine, if a Michael Larson had caught this then, he'd have OWNED Club Universe.[/quote]
I get that you're joking, but let's remember the differences. It's not like the Dragon never appeared behind certain numbers, and as far as I know, no one's come up with a pattern yet. So a Thom McKee who was armed with this information might rack up a few more trips than he would randomly, but the average guy's single-chance odds would only improve slightly.
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[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' post=\'185141\' date=\'Apr 30 2008, 07:28 PM\']
Did they leave it up to the computer to "randomly" assign spaces, and some limitation in early programming created something less than random that never got noticed? Or did a producer (Ronnie Greenberg, perhaps!) just pick a number and end up picking the same one(s) too often in a perfectly innocent manner?
[/quote]
To me, it looks like there were a certain number of bonus boards, and those boards happened to favor the dragon behind certain numbers. My next task is to take the 101 bonus boards and find out how many unique bonus boards there were. There have been several occasions where the configuration was exactly the same when two bonus rounds were played on the same show. Stay tuned...