Tune in the evening of Sept. 28th to see Sam Wang, assistant professor of statistics and data science, put his trivia knowledge to the test on the quiz show “Jeopardy!”

“I grew up watching ‘Jeopardy!’ and had always really enjoyed it,” Wang said. “The game is fun because it's very different from my day-to-day job. You have to be quick with buzzing in and answering, whereas in research I have problems that I think about slowly for a long time.”

Wang joined the Department of Statistics and Data Science, which sits within the ILR School, the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science and the Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, in Fall 2021. He has wide-ranging research interests that span statistics, machine learning and data science.

While Wang can’t reveal how he placed, he said that the whole experience gave him an inside understanding of just how challenging it is to compete on the show. “You realize it's just so much harder when you're under that pressure,” Wang said. “I'm much more sympathetic to seeing people struggle on live TV than I had been previously.”

To see Wang compete, viewers can find their local network affiliate and airtime on the "Jeopardy!" website.

Learn more about Wang's experience on "Jeopardy!" on the Cornell Bowers CIS website.

Patricia Waldron is a writer for the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.