<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="ComicSansMS, cursive" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br></span></font></p><p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal">
<font class="Apple-style-span" face="ComicSansMS, cursive" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); ">Spike wrote:</span></span></font></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: ComicSansMS, cursive; font-size: 17px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); ">>But we don’t know what these things mean to Watson. So I would call it a draw</span> <</span></p>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: ComicSansMS, cursive; font-size: 17px; ">Point taken. It was funny. They did a bit on Watson's development during the get-to know-the-contestants portion of the show which described how he associates possible answers with the words that appear in the question using algorithms and then narrows them down and chooses the most likely. I can see how someone might say this was a parlour trick. At the same time, it occurred to me that I answer questions in the same way. For the Lord Of The Rings question, it was asked who could be found at Barad-dur and was a great eye. Watson and I got the answer at the same time. I did it by, at chemical synaptic speeds like the rest of us meat computational devices, by pulling up Lord of The Rings when I saw Barad-dur, cross-referenced with 'eye' and got the answer Sauron. Likely Watson associated Barad-dur with the Lord of The Rings also, cycled through all the characters, the author, all books by the author, and then likely cross-referenced eye and Sauron as well.</span></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: ComicSansMS, cursive; font-size: 17px; "><br></span></p><p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: ComicSansMS, cursive; font-size: 17px; ">One thing though. When he gets it wrong, he really gets it wrong. One question asked the name of the place where a train both begins and ends. It was 'terminus.' Watson said 'Venice.' I found this quite funny, and was wondering what the algorithms brought up to give him such an answer. I did a search on the 'net for trains and Venice to see if I could come up with a strong connection that he might have found in his databanks, but I didn't find one. </span></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: ComicSansMS, cursive; font-size: 17px; "><br></span></p><p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: ComicSansMS, cursive; font-size: 17px; ">Clearly though, when the words in the question have a wide-range of possible associations and subtly different meanings, he has more trouble. It makes sense that he was a whiz with the music and book questions. The Beatles would bring up a fairly small number of words as associates, and since they were looking for song titles by providing some of the lyrics, narrowing it down quickly would be fairly easy. I got the terminus question, not because I ever use the word (because here in Canada we don't) but because I once acted in The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde, where the word is used with great good humour.</span></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: ComicSansMS, cursive; font-size: 17px; "><br></span></p><p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: ComicSansMS, cursive; font-size: 17px; ">This is where Watson falls short, it seems to me. This ability not to just associate words and literal meanings, but finding them based on their connotative power which is anchored in personal experience and thereby stored in more accessible and active memory cells in the brain. Also Watson thinks only in language where I often think in images. So one word in a question might bring up an image which I simply have to provide another word for to get an answer. That doesn't diminish him anyway. After all he is winning (or is tied, as Spike pointed out.)</span></p>
<p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="ComicSansMS, cursive" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">And he certainly got me thinking. </span></font></p>
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<font class="Apple-style-span" face="ComicSansMS, cursive" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">d.</span></font></p><p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: ComicSansMS, cursive; font-size: 17px; "><br>
</span></p><p align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="ComicSansMS, cursive" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br></span></font></p>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">2011/2/14 spike <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:spike66@att.net">spike66@att.net</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size:10.0pt">On Behalf Of </span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt">Darren Greer<br><b>Subject:</b> [ExI] Watson On Jeopardy</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1F497D">…</span> Watson is an idiot savant, of course. He doesn't know what these things mean to us<span style="color:#1F497D">…</span> Darren</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1F497D">But we don’t know what these things mean to Watson. So I would call it a draw.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1F497D"> </span></p><div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D">I don’t have commercial TV, and can’t find live streaming. I understand they are showing the next episode tomorrow and Wednesday? I will make arrangements with one of the neighbors to watch it. The news sites say it is tied between Watson and one of the carbons, with the other carbon back a few thousand dollars.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D">Go Watson!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p>
<font color="#888888"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D">spike</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br clear="all"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p></font></div></div></div>
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