Trivia Done Right

04/25/2018

Our presidential trivia group seems to be quite busy these days, creating questions like this:

Who was the last US President that was elected as neither a Republican or a Democrat?

04/13/2018

We had our interns search through huge stacks of transcripts in order to write today’s question. Tasked to discover current or recent world leaders who hold PhDs, they came up with an impressive list that includes

• Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, PhD (Oxford ‘62, Economics)
• German Chancellor Angela Merkel, PhD (Physical Chemistry, Leipzig University ‘78)
• Belgian Prime Minister Elio di Rupo, PhD (University of Mons ‘78, Chemistry)
..which leads us to today’s question.

List the U.S. Presidents who held (or perhaps hold) a PhD. For this question, we’re excluding honorary degrees, so only consider earned PhDs when answering.

03/30/2018

What do all of the following have in common?
Pittsburg Landing
Sharpsburg
Elkhorn Tavern
Chickahominy

03/20/2018

Here at TDR, we have a general rule about trivia questions whose answer is a number. The rule: don’t use those questions.

We’re wantonly breaking that rule today (because we love you).

With all random picks, what are the chances that someone will complete a correct NCAA bracket?

03/19/2018

When actor Chris Robinson (of General Hospital fame) did a 1984 advert for Vicks Formula 44 Cough Syrup, what pre-Internet viral meme did he create?

03/18/2018

In this actor’s most successful series, he was only 12 years older than the actor who played his son, yet the woman who played his wife was more than twenty years his senior. He made his television debut in 1971 and his final TV appearance in 2006 playing the same character. In fact, he played this character in FIVE different TV series, including All in the Family, E/R, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and The House Of Payne.

Can you name the actor and the character?

03/16/2018

The Statistical Graphics department has been working overtime to produce this chart. Someone should tell them that we don't pay for overtime.

Can you tell what this chart represents?

03/15/2018

We all made and played with these in elementary school. You can earn playground bragging rights if you can tell me:

What is the name of this thing? (There is a genuine name for them, but even if you don’t know that, post what you called them. Bonus points for interesting names!)

03/14/2018

Since it’s π day, and March Madness Time, let’s look at some math from three historical points of view

The NCAA tournament has 68 teams in it. How many games are required to determine the champion?

The Greeks would have looked at the problem from a geometrical point of view. They probably would have drawn a bracket, just like the one you may be filling out, and counted the games. The end. No analysis, no work to let them solve the problem for a different number of teams.

We know a lot of Egyptian mathematics, based on archeological findings like the Rhind Papyrus and The Egyptian Mathematics Leather Roll (I didn’t make that up). Much of their mathematics used numbers in tables, and they’d probably do something like making a table of games needed for various sizes tournaments:
# teams Games needed
2 1
3 2
4 3
5 4
⋮ ⋮
68 67
This, 67 Games this time. Note this would give them the answer for any number of games, but would require repeatedly building this for any other number of games, and this approach gives no insight as to why the math works out this way.

A modern mathematician would approach the problem in a third way.
Assume there are n teams in the tournament.
1. Each game produces two things: one winner, and one loser. There is no other outcome.
2. The tournament ends when one and only one team has the value winner.
3. Since only one team has the value winner, there must be n – 1 teams with the value loser.
4. Since each game produces one loser, n – 1 games are required. Written as a relation with T(n) representing a tournament with n competing teams, T(n)=n – 1.
So, 68 teams require 67 games. ∎
This solution results in a formula derived from known principals. Therefore this formula can be used for any number of games AND can be used in future proofs because of its logical foundation.

03/14/2018

Samantha Bee’s book, I Know I Am, But What Are You?,is on sale at Audible.com for $3.95. I’m pretty sure she read it herself. https://goo.gl/Fb8Lr9

Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Candid, outspoken, laugh-out-loud funny essays from the much-loved Samantha Bee, the Most Senior Correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Critics have called her “sweet, adorable, and vicious.” But there is so much more to be said a...

03/11/2018

Today (March 11, ‘08) the US switches to Daylight Saving Time. Europe will do the same in two weeks.

Think about movies with the word “Saving” in the title. Name any one of the top five based on lifetime gross $.

03/10/2018

We here at Trivia Done Right headquarters take a break to play HQ. The Washington Post has something to tell us.

The live mobile game show’s popularity has soared since launching in August. But what makes winners and losers? Data collected from the game reveals some intriguing bits of human behavior exhibited by the millions now playing.