Originally Posted by
Skydog
You needn’t worry - I’m pretty sure Jeopardy rules won’t change due to a DBR discussion. And I agree with your premise- a calming consistency is a major part of it’s (and Trebek’s) success.
But my point is still valid - winning Jeopardy is often as much about buzzer speed as it is about general knowledge. And that “familiar feature” does inject a bias (I’m sure unintentional) in favor of younger, male contestants.
Here is what the google taught me about the gender component:
“A review of the literature on the influence of gender on RT shows that in almost every age group, males have faster RTs as compared to females, and female disadvantage is not reduced by practice.” [
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4456887/]
As far as age - many studies have shown that reaction times peak around age 24 and become a bit slower every year after that. No biggie when its a 28yo vs a 32yo, but that factor can add up over a couple decades. Obviously there are individual differences and practice helps. Many contestants have talked about creating fake buzzers and practicing at home in preparation. If you are a 55 year old female you might dominate the buzzer race, but its going to be harder for you than the young gamer you are playing against.
So the game is a “little broke” if your ideal is a level playing field for testing wits. But yes it would be difficult to “fix” without changing it into a quite different game.
The problem with this analysis is that it’s not about how quickly you can press the buzzer. As noted above, if you buzz in just a little tiny bit too soon, you are locked out, and you can’t buzz in again for a short period of time. So it is more about TIMING than it is about REACTION TIME.
If I remember correctly, way back in the old days didn’t they let people buzz in whenever they wanted? And if they did, didn’t they stop reading the clue and let them answer? Seems like sometimes they answered wrong because they didn’t know exactly where the question was going. After that he would read the rest of the clue and the other two contestants were allowed to buzz in. Maybe I’m confusing it with another game show? I definitely remember this…..that the person reading the clue would say something like “incorrect; I will now finish reading the clue,” or something like that. Does anybody else remember this?
"We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust