Are You Smarter Than a Supercomputer?

“Toured the Burj in this U.A.E. city. They say it’s the tallest tower in the world; looked over the ledge and lost my lunch.”

This is the quintessential sort of clue you hear on the TV game show “Jeopardy!” It’s witty (the clue’s category is “Postcards From the Edge”), demands a large store of trivia and requires contestants to make confident, split-second decisions. This particular clue appeared in a mock version of the game in December, held in Hawthorne, N.Y. at one of I.B.M.’s research labs. Two contestants — Dorothy Gilmartin, a health teacher with her hair tied back in a ponytail, and Alison Kolani, a copy editor — furrowed their brows in concentration. Who would be the first to answer?

Neither, as it turned out. Both were beaten to the buzzer by the third combatant: Watson, a supercomputer … read the rest of the story by clicking on this link.

Are you smarter than a supercomputer? Find out by taking IBM’s Watson Trivia Challenge!

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/06/16/magazine/watson-trivia-game.html

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ePeterso2

Who I Am ePeterso2I’m Eric Peterson, and my email address is epeterso2@puzzlehead.org. I’m a software engineer who lives in a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I’ve enjoyed solving puzzles for years, and a few years ago I began constructing puzzles of my own. If you’re ever in Broward County and would like to get together some time, please send me a note by email and let me know. I love the opportunity to meet with other puzzleheads, especially if it involves lunch. Puzzle Testing I believe that the best way to make a puzzle even better is to ask someone else to solve it. You learn so much about how people think, how people approach your puzzle, pitfalls they may encounter, and outright errors in your construction by having someone else try it before you unleash it upon the world. If you’re a puzzle constructor, I would be honored to test your puzzle for you. Send me email with your puzzle or a link to it, and I’ll try solving it, as long as I have time available to do so. I’m a busy guy, so my time is limited … but I’m always open to a challenge. My Public Profiles * My Linked In profile * My Geocaching.com profile * My FloridaCaching.com profile Puzzles I’ve Written * Geocaching puzzles Puzzles I’ve Solved * Geocaching puzzles (solved and found) What Happened to ePeterso1? ePeterso1 was a horrible experiment gone wrong that had to be hunted down and killed before he claimed the lives of any more innocent victims. Most of the bugs that caused ePeterso1 to go haywire have been corectted in ePeterso2.

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