Matt Jackson won his 12th game last night. Our #JeopardyLivePanel discussions the past few episodes have centered around “how long will his streak last?” Let’s look at the numbers.
I went to J! Archive and added up the number of correct responses of the five contestants who played in at least 12 regular games (that being, Ken Jennings, Julia Collins, David Madden, Arthur Chu, and Matt Jackson). Here are the numbers:
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| Number of Correct Responses over first 12 games Data source: j-archive.com |
Over Matt’s first five games, he was only an average of just under three correct responses a game behind Ken (Ken’s total 154, Matt 141), and ahead of Julia (110), David (136), and Arthur (120).
Looking at Ken’s sixth through twelfth games, though, Ken seemed to find another gear, breaking 38 correct responses five times (Matt has only broken 30 twice). I would posit that this would be due to the extra buzzer familiarity that Ken had over his opposition at this point; since Ken’s streak, the show has given new players significantly more buzzer rehearsal time. Matt has still had the second-best correct response count over Games 6 through 12. It would not surprise me in the least to see Matt surpass Julia’s streak. I’m not sure how much he’ll threaten Ken, though.
Part 2 of this comparison will look at the five players on Daily Doubles.