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Double Jeopardy

On television this past Tuesday (9/12/06), the Jeopardy show had a math category for "Double Jeopardy." It is always fun watching the contestants avoid this category, plus note the simplicity of the "answers"...in comparison to the other categories.

But this episode was special...but let's delay that for a bit. First, if I can read my notes correctly, these questions were answered "correctly":

[$800] The square root of the square root of 16.
[Note: I wonder if they would have accepted -2?]

[$1200] 1 x 2 x 4 x 8 x 10

[$1600] 111 plus 222 plus 333 divided by 6.
[Note: The accepted "correct" answer was 111, but this is wrong. Using order of operations rules, the correct answer should have been 388.5.]

And now the final question, illustrating alot about problems in math education:

[$2000] The sum of 1/2, 1/3, 1/10, and 1/15.

The contestant (the current one-day champion) got it wrong...when he said "What is 1/30?"

How could this be a reasonable answer, given the first number in the sum is 1/2? We have a long way to go...