Roger Craig (Jeopardy! contestant)
Roger Alan Craig is an American game show contestant who holds the all-time record for single-day winnings on the quiz show Jeopardy! In 2011, Craig returned to Jeopardy, winning the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions.
Early life and non-game-show career
Craig, who was 33 years old at the time of his initial Jeopardy! appearance in 2010,[1][2] is a native of Pennsylvania and grew up in that state and in Virginia, where he graduated from Annandale High School.[3]
He holds an undergraduate degree in biology and biochemistry from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and a master's degree and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Delaware. He was working on his doctorate at the time of his first appearance on Jeopardy!, and completed the degree later in 2010.[2][3][4] In his scholarly career, he has published eight papers in the field of bioinformatics, specifically on topics of combinatorial protein synthesis and protein-protein prediction.[5][6] As of November 2011, he was living in Newark, Delaware, and working as a computer scientist[4] and has started his own company, Cotinga, doing data analysis and creating learning applications for smartphones.[7] Craig was a guest on KFC Radio of Barstool Sports on Thursday, August 23, 2012.[8]
Preparation
Craig prepared for Jeopardy! by studying the online archive of past questions maintained on the J! Archive website. Using data-mining and text-clustering, he identified the topics most likely to occur in game questions,[9] then used the spaced repetition program Anki for memorization and tested himself using his own program.[10][11][12][13][14]
Craig played quiz bowl as a student at both Virginia Tech and the University of Delaware.[15] Before his Jeopardy appearances, he played numerous Jeopardy scrimmage matches against his friends with quiz bowl experience.[14]
He believes that his attendance at the two universities helped the most in his success:
Let's face it, for Jeopardy!, the name of the game is breadth not depth. I think the main reason both universities helped so much is that they cover just about all spheres of learning in extraordinary depth.[16]
Appearances on Jeopardy!
Craig set his record of $77,000 on the second day of the 2010–2011 Jeopardy! season on the episode airing September 14, 2010.[17] In his record-setting appearance, he had a score of $47,000 after the game's first two rounds, then wagered and won $30,000 in the Final Jeopardy! round. Prior to Craig's mark, the single-day record of $75,000 was held by Ken Jennings.[17]
Craig lost to North Carolina sportswriter Jelisa Castrodale in his seventh appearance. He had the lead going into the Final Jeopardy round, in the category "Sports and Media." Castrodale won when she gave the correct response to the Final Jeopardy question about the winner of the 2010 Super Bowl, while Craig gave an incorrect response.[18] In his seven-day run, Craig earned $231,200,[19] $230,200 of which were from winning episodes.[20] This total is the fourth-highest amount of money won non-tournament on the show, ranking Craig behind Jennings, David Madden, and Tom Nissley.[1] As was the case with Jennings and Madden, the person who defeated Craig (Castrodale) finished in third place the subsequent day.
In 2011, Craig returned for the Tournament of Champions, which aired in November 2011. In the semi-final match, described as "a bloody, epic, inter-planetary death match... the Jeopardy! equivalent of a title-unification fight",[21] Craig beat Joon Pahk and Mark Runsvold, the sixth and tenth regular-play all-time money winners on Jeopardy!
On the first night of the two-day finals, he became the first player in the history of the show to uncover two Daily Double items in succession, wager all of his money on both, and win both times.[22] When he hit the first of his back-to-back Daily Doubles, he wagered his entire pot of $9,000, and won when he correctly identified Anne Brontë as the pseudonymous author of the 1847 book Agnes Grey. After switching categories and uncovering the second daily double, he wagered his entire pot of $18,000, winning when he correctly answered, "What is Suriname?" after being given the clue "Although Dutch is the official language, Sranan Tongo is spoken by most people in this South American country." His $18,000 win is thought be the largest single Daily Double prize in the show's history.[23]
Craig went on to win the Tournament of Champions. In the finals, he defeated Buddy Wright and Tom Nissley, the show's third highest all-time non-tournament money winner, to win the $250,000 tournament prize.[24]
Leonard Cooper, a contestant in the final round of the Jeopardy! Teen Tournament aired on Tuesday, February 12, 2013, tied Craig's Daily Double prize record with his own successful $18,000 wager. The bet was not a true Daily Double, however, as Cooper risked all but $200 of his pot. The clue was, "In Reginald Rose’s play Twelve Angry Men, the men are all members of one of these." Cooper's correct response was, "What is a jury?" He had entered the second day of the Teen Tournament's two-day final trailing his nearest competitor by $14,600 and needed a large Daily Double to get back in the tournament. The successful Daily Double came just before the end of the Double Jeopardy round, and Cooper went on to win the tournament.
Records
During his Jeopardy! appearances, Craig set the following records:
| Description | Current record |
|---|---|
| Highest 5-game total on Jeopardy!, first 5 games (unadjusted) | $195,801 |
| Highest single-game total on Jeopardy! | $77,000 (September 14, 2010) |
| Largest true daily double bet (unadjusted) | $18,000 (November 14, 2011) |
References
- ^ a b Pricey day at 'Pardy', New York Post, September 22, 2010
- ^ a b Graduate Student Roger Craig Surpasses Ken Jennings as Highest One-Day 'Jeopardy' Winner, CBS press release, September 14, 2010
- ^ a b Local native winning big on ‘Jeopardy!’, The Tribune-Democrat (Johnstown, Pa.), September 15, 2010
- ^ a b UD alumnus Roger Craig returns to 'Jeopardy!' for tournament, Newark (Delaware) Post, November 2, 2011
- ^ Roger Craig and Li Liao, Phylogenetic Tree Information Aids Supervised Learning for Predicting Protein-Protein Interaction Based on Distance Matrices. BMC Bioinformatics 2007, 8:6.
- ^ Roger A. Craig, Jin Lu, Jinquan Luo, Lei Shi and Li Liao, Optimizing nucleotide sequence ensembles for combinatorial protein libraries using a genetic algorithm, Nucleic Acids Research, 2010, Vol. 38, No. 2 e10
- ^ Jeopardy! champ uses computer skills, Delaware News Journal, November 30, 2011, by Wade Malcolm
- ^ "KFC Radio Episode 11 – Jeopardy Champs And Bon Jovi In A Cage Match". Retrieved 24 August 2012..
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ How One Man Played 'Moneyball' With 'Jeopardy!', National Public Radio, November 20, 2011
- ^ Baker, Stephen (February 17, 2011). Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pp. 212–224. ISBN 978-0-547-48316-0.
- ^ Potter, Ned (November 17, 2011). "'Jeopardy!' Champ Wins Jackpot With Web App". ABC News.
...he didn't just use his smarts to memorize a lot of trivia. He's a computer scientist who was finishing his Ph.D. at the University of Delaware when he first went on the game in 2010 — and before playing he developed a computer app to help figure out the patterns of questions (er, answers for which you have to come up with questions) on the show. In a talk at New York University, he said he went to a website called J! Archive, where fans have diligently recorded the clues on the show, game after game. He said the questions really aren't random when you put them through a computer.
- ^ "Taking Down 'Jeopardy': Computer scientist Roger Craig comes clean on duping the popular game show" (video). ABC News. November 19, 2011.
- ^ Tate, Ryan (November 16, 2011). "How a Geek Cracked the Jeopardy! Code".
In the talk above, delivered to the New York 'Quantified Self Show & Tell,' he explains how he developed a web tool and various supporting programs to analyze and effectively train himself on a database of past questions. Among his findings: high value questions are culled from academic fields like art, science, biology, and architecture, while low value questions tend to come from more popular topics like food, 'firsts,' and inventions. Based on these types of weightings and his performance on random questions selected by his app, Craig was able to deduce topics he needed to study, like fashion. Three other contestants used the web app to good effect on the show, at least according to the anonymous quotes collected by Craig. His next venture: an iPhone app that will let anyone study in a similar fashion.
- ^ a b Alexandra Carmichael, Roger Craig Wins Jeopardy Championship with Knowledge Tracking, Quantified Self, November 17, 2011
- ^ Andrew Reilly, Tech alumnus Roger Craig becomes third-most successful contestant in 'Jeopardy', Collegiate Times, September 30, 2010
- ^ "UD alum Roger Craig wins 'Jeopardy!' Tournament of Champions". UDaily. November 15, 2011. Retrieved November 21, 2011.
- ^ a b Itzkoff, Dave (September 15, 2010). "Record Set On 'Jeopardy!'". The New York Times. Retrieved September 20, 2010.
- ^ Jelisa Castrodale, Castrodale: Fear & loathing in the form of a question ... my brief reign as Jeopardy! champion, Off the Bench, NBC Sports, September 24, 2010
- ^ Clodfelter, Tim (September 22, 2010). "Racking up $$: Winner on Jeopardy is local woman". Winston-Salem Journal. Retrieved September 22, 2010.
- ^ Roger Craig Game 7
- ^ Chris Jones. The End of Delusion. Esquire Magazine, November 12, 2011
- ^ "Roger Craig's Unbelievable Double Daily Doubles On 'Jeopardy!'". Huffington Post. November 16, 2011. Retrieved November 21, 2011.
- ^ Chris Jones, Your Own Conversation with Alex Trebek. Esquire Magazine, November 15, 2011
- ^ Aubrey Cohen, Seattle’s Tom Nissley wins $100,000 on ‘Jeopardy’, Seattle's Big Blog, SeattlePI.com, November 15, 2011
External links