Department of Mathematics alumnus Matthew Amodio had a truly spectacular performance on Jeopardy! He achieved 38 consecutive wins on the well-known game show. Matt now ranks third-highest [DES1] in the number of consecutive games won throughout the history of Jeopardy!, which debuted more than half a century ago with episodes numbering over 8,000.
In addition, Matt now ranks third in highest winnings in regular-season play, and fourth in all time winnings, after he amassed $1,518,601 from his historical winning steaks on the show.
Amodio, a native of Medina, Ohio, graduated from the Department of Mathematics at Ohio State in 2012 with a Bachelor of Science with honors in actuarial science. He went on to complete master's degree in statistics at Ohio State and is currently pursuing a PhD in the Department of Computer Science at Yale University with a focus on machine learning.
Amodio writes the following about his Ohio State experience. "While I enjoyed all of my math classes at OSU, I would like to give special thanks to Dr. Ban and Dr. Rempala." Chunsheng Ban is Professor and Vice Chair of Undergraduate Studies in the mathematics department, and Professor Grzegorz Rempala is a world-class expert in mathematical biology and applied probability.
Amodio adds, "Dr. Ban's enthusiasm for extremely complicated and intimidating concepts was inspirational, and I thank him immensely for being such a great teacher. I only had Dr. Rempala for one course, but it was a computational biology survey course, and that ended up as a field that's a large part of my current PhD research. I'm not sure if I would be doing it today if it weren't for him!"
Professor Ban is very proud of Amodio’s incredible successes. After the Sept 16, 2021, Jeopardy! contest aired, Professor Ban wrote, “FYI, Matt Amodio squeaked out another win on Jeopardy last night, his 22nd straight win.”
[DES1]Amy Schneider won 40 consecutive games in late 2021/early 2022, likely after this was written
