A math teacher calculated to the dollar just how much she needed to bet to defeat veteran physician informatics consultant Dr. Harris Stutman on the TV game show “Jeopardy!” His three-day winning streak ended during a program that aired June 29.
Stutman, a pediatric infectious disease specialist from Huntington Beach, Calif., and the former executive director of clinical informatics at Fountain Valley, Calif.-based MemorialCare Health System, was in second place going into the game's Final Jeopardy round with $7,200 won that day to $14,000 held by Christie O'Shaughnessy, a math and science educator from Princeton, N.J.
O'Shaughnessy bet $401 and Stutman bet $7,000 in the category of U.S. state geography and on the question, “Of the contiguous states, these two coastal states have elevation changes within them of more than 14,000 feet.”
Both of them correctly answered, “What is Washington and California?” Stutman walked away with $14,200 for the day—but even if he had risked all he could have wagered, $7,200, he would have still lost to O'Shaughnessy by $1.
As it was, Stutman walked away with $77,500 for his four-day total. His four-show stats, courtesy of the Jeopardy Fan website, were 70 correct answers, 13 incorrect; first to hit the buzzer 32.58% of the time; answered two out of five Daily Double questions correctly and all four Final Jeopardy questions correctly.
O'Shaughnessy was “just a tad quicker on the buzzer on a few critical clues … C'est la vie!” Stutman said. “I'm happy with the four appearances.”
