Data Mining and Jeopardy!

Roger Craig won a quarter of a million dollars on the TV game show Jeopardy! this year, setting the all-time record for money won in a single game. Here's how he did it: The Computer scientist decided to focus his study on the most common topics that come up during a game. He downloaded an online database of all the past questions and then created a pattern recognition program to look for the types of questions that were most likely to come up again - and then studied accordingly. World capitals are more likely to come up than questions about fashion, so he spent more time studying capitals. And instead of trying to learn every capital, he focused on the most statistically popular. He told NPR, "You can practice haphazardly or (you can study) efficiently."

The lesson here: before throwing yourself into a project haphazardly, spend some time identifying its critical parts and organizing how you will attack them to prioritize your effort.

There is a video of Craig in action here and you can hear an NPR story here.