Did anyone catch Jeopardy today? The final category was: They were honored in a NYC ticker tape parade.

The final answer was:

Of the 3 men honored on Aug. 23, 1969, he was miles away from the other two on July 20th, 1969.

Two of the contestants answered: Who is Aldrin, the third said, Alan Bean.

Kinda sad that no one on Jeopardy knew the right answer.

__________________
I'm not a scientist, but I play one on the internet.
http://www.rrac.org

Not too surprising. I asked my wife, and she didn't know. She got the other two guys at least.

When I thought about it I couldn't remember some of the names of the Apollo astronauts:
I didn't remember Donn Eisele, Stuart Roosa, Al Worden, Jim Irwin, Charlie Duke, or Ron Evans.
Irwin I should have remembered, but I just couldn't come up with the name.

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak

I've got to confess that I certainly don't know the answer.

__________________

I can't name all of the Apollo astronauts - I get a little lost toward the end - but I can name most of them.

__________________
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Well I know the answer, but if I was on a game show I wouldn't be surprised if I blurted out something wrong in my rush to answer the question.

This was final jeopardy, so you would have had half a minute to think about it.

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak

This reminds me of another Final Jeopardy in which the clue asked for the state that joined the union in 1876. One lady responded with a question mark because she didn't know. Why would anyone refuse to guess? Nearly every U.S. citizen could eliminate the original 13 colonies, Alaska, and Hawaii. Why not pick one of the others and hope you're lucky? A wrong guess is no worse the no answer at all and might be correct.

__________________
Life is like a box of chocolates. All of your choices are bad for you.

Oh, I've been in a similar situation. It sounds easy to just throw out a guess, but you second-guess yourself to no end. Essentially you can't even sort through the confusion enough to write down even one answer. That's one of the reasons why teachers always tell you to check off an answer in a multiple choice test (unless you get penalized for getting it wrong as opposed to no answer), because most students, myself among them, probably wouldn't even think of just guessing, you just can't seem to make up your mind enough to do so.

__________________

I passed a multiple choice exam once when I ran out of time, could see that even if I'd answered every question I'd had time for correct it wouldn't be enough, so I filled in the last couple of questions totally randomly (random number generator in the calculator).

That exam was nasty, one of the question was set up so you could either solve it symbolically, then put in the numbers to get the correct choice or do it numerically which, depending on which calculator you used, would give one of the alternative (incorrect) choices.

__________________
And the "driving on the freeway on a scooter" analogy still holds true because the pilots are sitting in 7 to 30 ton aircraft o' doom and you are running around them in your very own Meatbody, Mark I. Beep, beep.
Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

I once took a multiple-guess test in college that was extremely difficult, graded on the curve, etc. Four answers each. I answered the ones that I knew (about half), eliminated stupid answers from the rest (about 1 per question), and guessed at the rest.

Wound up in the 88% percentile.

Guessing among three possible answers doesn't require you to figure out which one's the best. It does require you to have three answers you think might be possible and to choose any one of the three, whether by flipping a coin, looking at the second hand on the clock (odd - first one, even - second one), whatever.

__________________
I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. A human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

Supposedly there was a guy on Who Wants to be a Millionare? that was suing becasue he felt he got the right answer. The question was "what is the first sign in the Zodiac?" I don't recall what he answered or what they said was the right answer, but I did notice that Capricorn, Aquarius, and Ares were not on the list of correct answers, so I didn't see a correct answer as being possible in any case.

I'm not really surprised that no one got the Jeopardy answer...question...whatever. That's one of those things that has ended up being a footnote. "In 1969 Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon. He was accompanied by another astronaut in the lander and one more in orbit. Over the next few years, more people did it too." Is STILL more info than I think the averge person, including active sudents, would be able to come up with.

In high school (class of '88), I dont' recall ever covering the names of anyone in the program at all. I don't even really recall going over anything from the 60s/70s other than Vietnam and the energy crisis.

For taking tests, I had a system that worked very well for me. The sych teacher knew I did it and thought it was interstign to see the results. I would read the captions under the pictures in the chapter on the day of the test. The test was 30 questions. 10 true/false, 10 multiple choice (4 choices) and 10 matching (idea A was put forth by person 6).

I would answer what I knew, then look at the choices. The correct answer was usually the longest one (multiple choice). If I was sure that wasn't it, and had nothing esle to go by, I'd look to ee where the second hand was on the clock. between 12 and 3 was A, 3 and 6 was B and so on. When in doubt, pick C. I was consistently the second highest on the tests usually with a 26 or 27/30. Oddly, I did the best on the matching and the worst on the T/F. I did the same thing on a 300 qustion sociology test (all multiple choice) and got the 2nd or third highest with a 252. Of course, I don't really have any of that knowledge now.

When I look back on the tests I've taken, and some of the things that happened in the real world, I'd have to say that I'm very much opposed to guessing on tests. I'd have a right answer be worth 1 point, a wrong answer be worth -1, and no answer be 0. Guessing on a test may end up teaching people to guess on important things later as well.

One day at the grocery store, I was going through that damaged stuff and I found someone's heart medicine. It had been left in the cart and the bagger guessed on what should be done with it. Back to the pharmacy? nope. Customer service booth? Nope. Call the name and phone number on the bottle? Nope. Toss it in the box in the back with the broken mayonaise? Yes. If you don't know, don't guess. If you do guess, make it clear that it's a guess.

__________________
I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

I got the Byrds in my head, singing "Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins"

Great song. And to my knowledge, the only one from the rock era to celebrate the accomplishments of Apollo.

PM me if you'd like an mp3 of it...

__________________
Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

I've never even heard of it.

__________________
I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

So is somebody going to write out a list of Apollo astronauts by mission number or what? I come here for the education you know.

__________________
Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

Apollo 7 Schirra, Eisele, Cunningham
Apollo 8 Borman, Lovell, Anders
Apollo 9 McDivitt, Scott, Schweickart
Apollo 10 Stafford, Young, Cernan
Apollo 11 Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin
Apollo 12 Conrad, Gordon, Bean
Apollo 13 Lovell, Swigert, Haise
Apollo 14 Shepard, Roosa, Mitchell
Apollo 15 Scott, Worden, Irwin
Apollo 16 Young, Mattingly, Duke
Apollo 17 Cernan, Evans, Schmitt

Courtesy of the National Air and Space Museum

__________________
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

To my everlasting shame, there are only three missions for which I can consistently remember the crew names: 8, 11, and 13.

__________________
Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

It never got airplay. It's a quirky song from one of their less well known albums, Ballad of Easy Rider.

Only about a minute long, and half of that isn't really song at all.

__________________
Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

Thank you Toseek,

I actually expected someone to say "get off your #$@% and look". Thank you again.

__________________
Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

Oh and thanks for the link.

__________________
Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...