Sallyportal: Madly Blogging Reed

Reedie Wants To Be a Millionaire

By Miles Bryan '13 on October 10, 2012 04:40 PM

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Almost any Reedie would tell you that they did not embark on the life of the mind for its monetary potential. Yet few would turn down the opportunity to earn some quick cash by flexing their mental muscle. On this week's episode of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Daniel Herman '15 did just that.

Daniel was well prepared for the show: having been on academic quiz teams in high school, and currently working towards a degree in math and physics he breezed through the first few questions. The question of which presidential couple had been married longest made him pause (answer: George and Barbara Bush), but he deployed a lifeline and continued on unabated. By the end of round one Daniel had $68,000 in the bank, and one lifeline left.

Round two began the next day. He nailed the first question, what the phone number "811" was created to deal with (answer: digging in the ground)but missed the $100,000 question of which magazine sent a reporter to race Nellie Bly in her famed 72-day trip around the world. Answer: Cosmopolitan!

Nonetheless, Daniel walked away with a cool $25,000 for his performance. When Meredith Vieira asked what he would do with the money, he replied that he would repay his parents for his airplane ticket to New York, and spend the remainder on his thesis—a synthesis of quantum mechanics and cryptography. Daniel, that answer should earn you a lot of timé.

Tags: math, physics, Reed College, time, trivia