tar6-3

while I’m geeking up (don’t read if you haven’t watched yet) Okay, there were 20 clues to start, and about 260 bales. I’m blanking on the number and I just deleted it off my TiVo without thinking, but that’s pretty close. 8 clues went to teams that actually found clues. Phil guessed 100 bales of … Continue reading “tar6-3”

while I’m geeking up

(don’t read if you haven’t watched yet)


Okay, there were 20 clues to start, and about 260 bales. I’m blanking on the number and I just deleted it off my TiVo without thinking, but that’s pretty close. 8 clues went to teams that actually found clues. Phil guessed 100 bales of hay were rolled out in Lena/Kristy failed quest to find a clue.

Even though it was obviously not the case, let’s pretend the other 8 clues were found on the first try. Given that situation, what are the odds of someone finding 100 bales without hay before a stop given 252 bales left hanging around?

Assuming I’m doing the math right, it’s a 0.1845901517296400000% chance of occurring.

The other extreme: let’s say they just got to the last bale without a clue when they stopped (and I think they had to stop because of the light), and there were just 12 bales left, all with clues. In that case, they’d done something that only has a 0.0000000000000202360% of occurring.

By comparison, you have a 0.0000007399409467929% chance of winning the multi-state Mega Millions lottery game, which is 36 million times more likely than the worst case scenario, but a lot less likely than the best case scenario. There’s a lot of room around longshots.

What probably happened is
a) she rolled out a clue and didn’t see it – but then it must’ve been pretty hidden, because we didn’t see it either.
b) other teams rolled out clues, and didn’t see them either.

The odds of something like this happening go way up when the number of clues go down, of course.

They earn MAJOR points for going seven hours. I think it’s safe to say 90% of the teams which have been on this show would’ve given up.

3 thoughts on “tar6-3”

  1. Personally I really think with a mission like that it should have been a non-elimination leg.

    I’m going miss Lena and Kristy because they were one of the more down to earth teams.

  2. Early on, they really can’t do the non-elimination legs, because they need to whittle down the field to the point where teams don’t disappear for long stretches of editing because there’s so many of them.

    I think they figured it wouldn’t be such a problem to find the clues, but they really should’ve put at least twice as many clues out there. The theme of the leg was slow, careful work and rolling out many bales to find one clue fit that, but they made the chances too harsh to begin with. 1 clue per 10 bales are tough odds, and kinda says they were expecting/hoping for someone to be really unlucky, though I don’t think even they expected this bad of luck.

  3. The idea that the bales being barren making for compelling TV is probably what they were going for.

    And ADAM AND REBECCA ARE STILL ALIVE. I’m telling you, the dumber they are, the harder they are to knock out.

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