Jeopardy! Survival Analysis

June 67, 2016

Long streaks are rare in Jeopardy. Most winners only win one game, and slightly less than 40% win two games in a row. In fact, only 6 contestants have won more than ten games in a row.

This Kaplan-Meier survival plot visualizes the survival function of Jeopardy winners:

Kaplain-Meier survival plot of Jeopardy! winning streaks

The data includes seasons 1-33 (aired 1984-2016), and does not include any championship or tournament games. The point on the extreme right is due, of course, to Ken Jennings and his 74 game winning streak.

Here’s the R code for the figure.