I
have been watching Jeopardy on and off for a number of years. Just
recently, the show has been my most anticipated show every day Monday to
Friday, because of the contestant- Matt Amodio. In case you have not
been watching the show, here's the latest write-up on Amodio from
Wikipedia.
Matt Amodio 38-Day winning streak ended last
night. It was the first time he was in 3rd place before the final
Jeopardy question. It was also the first time he did not answer the
Final Question correctly. Amodio showed he was human after all and to
err is human. The new Champion won it by a $1 margin.
Matthew Amodio is an American game show contestant. A PhD student in computer science at Yale University, he has won $1,518,601 in 38 appearances on Jeopardy! (as of October 8, 2021), making him the third millionaire contestant (based on regular-season play) after Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer. Across all American game shows, he is the tenth highest-earning contestant of all time.
Born on December 4, 1990, Amodio is a native of Medina County, Ohio. He graduated from the Department of Mathematics in 2012 with a Bachelor of Science with Honors in Actuarial Science, while also earning a master's degree in Statistics, both at The Ohio State University. He is currently pursuing a PhD from Yale University.
Amodio was a contestant on the quiz show Academic Challenge on WEWS-TV Channel 5 in Cleveland, Ohio while studying at Medina High School in 2009. Participating with two fellow students against two competing high schools, his Medina team finished in second place.
Amodio is the third-highest earner of all time in regular-season play, second-most successful in consecutive games won and fourth-biggest all-time winner. During season 37, Amodio qualified as the first seed in the next Tournament of Champions.
Amodio's winning streak came during an interregnum in the show's hosting position after longtime host Alex Trebek died in November 2020, during which the show has been helmed by guest hosts. Amodio's streak has spanned episodes hosted by Robin Roberts, LeVar Burton, David Faber, Joe Buck, Mike Richards and Mayim Bialik.
Amodio is noted for his strategy of consistently prefacing his responses with "What's" instead of adjusting the interrogative pronoun to fit the response. He chose this method because Jeopardy! rules allow any question containing the correct response to be used; by not having to adjust the pronoun, he has one less thing to think about when formulating a response, potentially speeding response time. He has credited Wikipedia's format for allowing him to meander through various topics in a random but logical progression and learn content quickly.
Here's his answer on the Question-How he became so knowledgeable about so many different topics ( https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2021/08/13/jeopardy-champion-matt-amodio-shares-his-tricks-no-3-winner/8129648002/
I like to read. I think that you can't do it without reading. So on a regular basis, I just fall into a rabbit hole of Wikipedia links, (and) every article opens up 20 more things that I have questions about it. This is just how how I spend my day, or my nights when I'm done working. I did change one thing for preparation for the show, though, because I don't necessarily find culture to be super-interesting. I'm a historian at heart and I like learning about culture maybe 40 years, 50 years later. I like looking at it in the rear view mirror.
Q: Any specific categories that give you pause?
I feel like it's a bit like "Slumdog Millionaire," where every question that comes up, the guy has a a personal connection about how he knows the answer. I'm not necessarily the biggest opera fan in the world, but my grandpa lives and breathes opera, so just through talking with him I found I absorbed a lot. And there are other things like that as well. I'm a really big baseball fan, less interested in other sports, but my friends have always been very big basketball, football, hockey fans. I found I had a pretty good vocabulary for that just through collateral exposure.
Good Bye Matt and Enjoy your over $1.5 Million of winnings! I am still awed by your encyclopedic knowledge and 38-day winning streak. I was hoping you might be able to catch up with Ken Jennings 74-day run with over $2.5 Million winnings.
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