@JoonasIlmavirta Four-person teams, from all the Unis, compete, two-at-a-time, in a quiz format. It started here in 1962, hosted by the brilliant Bamber Gascoigne (he compiled all the questions--Herculean Labour). It enjoyed high viewing figures even though most of the TV-audience couldn't answer any of the questions. (It may be that that was why people watched it?!) Qs. about 13th. Century Popes; battles fought by the advancing Ottomans; who painted this; who composed that.
@JoonasIlmavirta Only beneficiaries of a first-class (expensive) education need apply. As a young devourer of history books, the day dawned when I could actually answer some of the arcane Qs! Such a prog would be right up your street, wouldn't it?
@tony No, I don't think I'd be all that interested. I might watch the occasional episode. It sounds that the show is more about trivia than ideas.
@Adam To be fair, not all particle physicists do that. But many do. As a physics professor once told me: Trying to come up with new particles is like going to the funfair. You get a crazy idea, go for a ride, have fun, throw up, and start again.
> In the past, predictions for new particles were correct only when adding them solved a problem with the existing theories. For example, the currently accepted theory of elementary particles – the Standard Model – doesn't require new particles; it works just fine the way it is. The Higgs boson, on the other hand, was required to solve a problem. The antiparticles that Paul Dirac predicted were likewise necessary to solve a problem...
@Adam I do. I'm in a semiapplied field of math, where people take inspiration from physics but then develop things in a direction that the mathematical community finds interesting and tractable. It can quite quickly lose it's connection to the original problem.
@Adam Yeah, adding new particles to the mix became a goal. It should have remained a tool as it originally was. I think this kind of implicit reanalysis of goals is a common mechanism for shifts like this.
@JoonasIlmavirta A lack of proper scoping, measurable outcomes, problem solving, etc. People just do ad hoc work without a clear goal or metric to understand if the work was effective or not.
It's like a teacher feeling satisfied after giving a lecture, with zero thought to whether anyone learned anything. Producing learning and speaking to students are very different things.
(I gave a lecture today. I hope someone learned something. I like to imagine they did.)
@Cerberus The one after 'etc.' serving a double role?
@tony That sounds kind of fun, similar to "Twee Voor Twaalf", a quiz that has been on television for decades here.
But it has nothing to do with universities.
And each pair is allowed to consult a number of reference works, but every second of doing so costs them dearly.
Most questions are about Bildung, like the sciences, history, art.
But there will be 1 question about mass-commercial music of recent decades, which sucks. It is unknowable for me.
And sometimes there is one about sport, same thing.
Oh, we also have Per Seconde(-)Wijzer, which is more hardcore.
It's just one candidate, no consulting anything, and rather hardcore questions; but she can pick the topic of the entire part of the quiz in which she takes part, e.g. "Ancient History" or "Electrical Engineering".
@JoonasIlmavirta Haha, that is naughty indeed. But the one I meant is the dot indicating there are more questions of low quality, in the review panel...not!
@Adam Well, I only explained what a graph is and what it means for two of them to be isomorphic. I could only hint at it being difficult to decide. At least some faces in the audience showed interest and even joy at times, so I may not have filled them all with despair.
@Cerberus You know, there are people who know all about football and films and pop music but can't tell whether Brunei is in Africa. I tend to agree with your color preferences, but I don't think everyone will...
I get the feeling that Trivial Pursuit was designed to be a balanced experience to people with a specific profile. You and I differ from the expectation and thus see a wildly skewed game.
@Adam In many problems computers can offer very little.
Although I do have a theoretical problem where mere computer power would be likely to give a result I would much enjoy. It's a very technical one and there's no way to tell how much it requires of a computer.
