<p>Wow so my friend is competing in a regional Brain Bee, and there’s 170 participants signed up who are set to compete. It’s a purely Jeopardy-style setup for our local Brain Bee, and it is supposed to last for 4.5 hours. Is this even humanly possible to get through 170 people in that span of time with such a type of competition? Each person also gets up to 30 seconds to answer…you are eliminated if you make 3 mistakes…just wat</p>
<p>Well, since all the competitors are humans, and one of those competitors will be the winner, it is certainly humanly possible. Does that answer your question?</p>
<p>Edit: I’m assuming that by “get through 170 people” you mean beat them.</p>
<p>Ok fine, lemme rephrase my question. Is it possible for the judges to run the 170 participants through their questions in time to get down to the final winner in time, in such a limited time window of 4.5 hours? Mathematically, since each person is given 30 seconds, that would mean to get through them all for the first round, it would take around 85 minutes (give or take), not including the reading of the questions = 1 hour and 25 minutes. Since one is eliminated only after his or her third mistake, and assuming at least half of the participants are at least somewhat adequately prepared, there would still be a sizeable number (30+) of people left after the 3rd round, which would near the stated end time of the competition.</p>