Timeshifted from early June.
Now it’s Friday night, and as I’m thinking about the proposal vector for my modified MCMC, and eating a sandwich, I thought I’d do some more TiVo blogging. So far, I’ve blogged The Price is Right and the Spelling Bee above, and in the past Dancing with the Stars, a presidential debate, and Bid Whist. Here come the comments about National Bingo Night.
- The giant bingo cage would be cool art for campus. People would stare, like seemingly all college art. But this would also be useful for demonstrations in statistics class.
- I don’t like hosts that wear a sports jacket without a tie. It’s not as bad as wearing a referee’s shirt with B for national Bingo night over a shirt and tie, as the sanctioning commissioner is forced to exhibit. Bingo girl Yesenia is stunning, at least partially because she’s wearing something normal, a blue dress.
- There are 200 people trying for Bingo in the audience. It’s the Kmart Red card game. Sadly I did not think to print out cards at the office today, so I can’t play.
- The firefighter is playing red or black with the bingo numbers. He goes red four times in a row, and gets four blacks. The display says 1 in 16 chance, which is not quite correct; there’s no independence here. What, did you think I’d avoid probability? I need ideas for class. He needs ten correct to win Chicken Cross and $5,000, which should take about 20 trials. Unfortunately for him, with 200 people the odds of holding on that long are very poor. There’s this wonderful site, The Wizard of Odds, who computed the probability of winning for a 200 card room. The median number of numbers is 14, which puts him in really bad shape.
- Of course, on the fifth trial he goes Black, which is now stupid. Assuming a 38-37 original split, after seeing four Black, Black is under 48%. The sixth trial he calls Red, which is again wrong. The seventh is finally Red. Then there’s a clear overdub. Then there’s another error in a display. It doesn’t matter, as a fifth I number arrives on ball 10, and someone has Bingo. It’s over. Our firefighter got 3 correct.
- The commercials were for Nexium, Kmart, and Lipton Tea.
- The second player is Rebecca. She’s cute, and just broke up with a boy, but moved to Colorado. Sigh. And her red dress is just a bit too bright for the studio. Fashion sense is important; after all, physical gifts fade but the virtue of elegance can remain lifelong. Rebecca needs five fives on them, of which there are 18 in the Cage, 16 singles and the 55. The edit indicating the White Cards I notice again. The producers really need to watch the tones on audio dubbing. Also, Yesenia has a new dress. Brown is a better color for her, given her Latin heritage. She earlier appeared on Dancing with the Stars as a professional salsa dancer. It doesn’t look like the host has changed his clothes, though.
- Rebecca gets three fives in the first four balls. I wonder how the cage works. I never get a clean look. It looks more random than the 1970 Vietnam draft lottery, at least. (The link is to a statistics education article I might use to discuss the consequences of pseudo randomness.) Rebecca wins on ball 8, before a Bingo is possible, getting $55,555 “plus a Royal Caribbean cruise, for 2, to the Caribbean”. This host is no author. Rebecca cries in joy. The mathematicians point out that winning before a Bingo is possible has probability less than 2 percent. Hmm, another simulation problem?
- Why do the contestants run out? And why does the host say “what do we do for a living?” Does he not know he’s a game show host?
- This game is Bingo 9 ball. First there’s an odd or even choice, then Ewa Mataya Laurance plays a trick shot with the balls from a 9 ball table that match the bingo ball. This is complicated. Plus, Yesenia has another dress, this one black.
- My gay-dar is working for this last guy, Cyrus, a shoe salesman. Interestingly, they cut to the “family” reaction shot, where there’s another male, but don’t mention any relationship. I wonder if they will. He goes odd (correct, 53), even (correct, 22), odd (correct, 19). The trick shots are cool. Another guy shot, suggesting even, but still no mention of relationship. Our player goes even (correct, 70). Now he should say even, since the remaining numbers are 4, 6, and 8, which he does. He gets 34, on a rush. Now 68 wins. Ooh, One number away!
- Back from break, Cyrus goes Even and picks up 38. He next picks even, which is smart. There are 12 evens in the hopper with a 6, but only 5 odds. The number is 3, making Bingo possible, and one player in the studio is one away. Even again, getting 50, and now four are waiting. Or as the host says, “four people hold your fate in their bingo cards.” Cyrus chooses Even again. It’s 25. Seven people are now standing. The ball is N 36. Ewa plays a three-rail bank. But the studio Bingo wins over the game. It’s tense. The commissioner moves. It’s a four! India wins! Oh, sorry. His sign looks a lot the cricket signal for a boundary. No Bingo! Cyrus wins! (And the other man was never mentioned by name, though he appeared at least once more.)
- The closing credits confirm that there were some edits. Eerily, the following appears: “Some Bingo balls drawn, but not affecting the outcome of the studio game, have been removed from the program for time. Only numbers broadcast count toward the at-home sweepstakes.” How does a ball not affect any of the 200 cards? And above all else, “Be Lucky, America.”
What did we learn? Not much, really. I kept my promise to mix some lighter elements into the Musings. I also got some good ideas for problems in probability, so it was worth my time. You wasted a couple minutes and got a glimpse into the lunacy of my mind.
It’s now 11, and I popped out of TiVo into local news. Here are the leading stories on Live Local Late Breaking News, in order: triple shooting, assault in courtroom, stalker, murder investigation, bank robbery, apartment fire, drivers license suspensions for people behind in child support, the local connection to the TB flyer. This is disgusting. I don’t mean the acts, though I strongly oppose crime. I mean the choice of stories. Did I learn anything from those ten minutes of “News”? Well, maybe the apartment fire, as it’s a place near Bellarmine. The repaired rooms might not open until August, and I might be able to swing by and get a discount. But for most people in Louisville, all they got was scared. That’s a much bigger problem than my blogging game shows.
