WWTBAM Bored

Ever since they instituted the switch-the-question lifeline, I've been tracking my personal success rate on the upper tier questions. The idea is to know whether I have a better than 50-50 chance of correctly answering a randomly chosen upper tier question.

My numbers took a substantial dip this year. My success rate at the $50k level dropped by 5%, as did my success rate at the $100k level. There weren't enough questions at higher levels to draw any meaningful conclusions.

Did anyone else get the impression that the upper-tier questions seemed harder in the season just concluded? --Bob

Bob78164 wrote:Ever since they instituted the switch-the-question lifeline, I've been tracking my personal success rate on the upper tier questions. The idea is to know whether I have a better than 50-50 chance of correctly answering a randomly chosen upper tier question.

My numbers took a substantial dip this year. My success rate at the $50k level dropped by 5%, as did my success rate at the $100k level. There weren't enough questions at higher levels to draw any meaningful conclusions.

Did anyone else get the impression that the upper-tier questions seemed harder in the season just concluded? --Bob

Now that you mention it, it felt that way to me also. However, I have no hard statistics to back that up.

Bob78164 wrote:Ever since they instituted the switch-the-question lifeline, I've been tracking my personal success rate on the upper tier questions. The idea is to know whether I have a better than 50-50 chance of correctly answering a randomly chosen upper tier question.

My numbers took a substantial dip this year. My success rate at the $50k level dropped by 5%, as did my success rate at the $100k level. There weren't enough questions at higher levels to draw any meaningful conclusions.

Did anyone else get the impression that the upper-tier questions seemed harder in the season just concluded? --Bob

Heck no. I knew them all........once I saw the answers. I think the sample is too small. But there do seem to be questions designed to stop a player dead.

Who said you could post an on-topic thread?

I think they started making the $50K questions much more obscure and oddball when they added the STQ, possibly with the intention of forcing contestants to use that right away. We just haven't seen enough of the higher level questions to say anything about those.

Upper tier questions seem too rare to form a valid opinion of how hard they are. They have taken the most interesting part of the game and made it something we see only a few times a month.

TheConfessor wrote:Upper tier questions seem too rare to form a valid opinion of how hard they are. They have taken the most interesting part of the game and made it something we see only a few times a month.

There have been more than 150 questions per season at the $50,000 level, and more than 100 questions per season at the $100,000 level. Remember, for the vast majority of contestants who reach the upper tier, we will see either a pair of $50,000 questions or a pair of $100,000 questions. I'm fairly confident that's enough questions to draw reasonable conclusions.

MarleysGh0st wrote:I think they started making the $50K questions much more obscure and oddball when they added the STQ, possibly with the intention of forcing contestants to use that right away. We just haven't seen enough of the higher level questions to say anything about those.

I've only been tracking my statistics since they instituted switch-the-question, so my point is that this year seemed harder than previous years, not that the questions got harder since they instituted switch-the-question. --Bob

Bob78164 wrote:

TheConfessor wrote:Upper tier questions seem too rare to form a valid opinion of how hard they are. They have taken the most interesting part of the game and made it something we see only a few times a month.

There have been more than 150 questions per season at the $50,000 level, and more than 100 questions per season at the $100,000 level. Remember, for the vast majority of contestants who reach the upper tier, we will see either a pair of $50,000 questions or a pair of $100,000 questions. I'm fairly confident that's enough questions to draw reasonable conclusions.

Okay, so you're really talking about Question #11, not "upper tier" in general. Questions #12 through #15 have been pretty scarce.

edit:
I just checked the stats at wwtbam.biz. There were 77 Question #12s this year, which is more than I would have guessed. For those questions, there were 10 correct answers.

My memory is a little hazy. I don't recall seeing a million dollar question this season, but Jeff's site says it happened once, so I believe him.