Hello! This is my (Eric's) page about The Big Brain Theory: Pure Genius, which I am (was?) a contestant on. I guess the main point of this is a place to put my behind-the-scenes observations. As you can see, I'm not much for making websites, so my Facebook page will be the place for news, interaction, etc.
One thing that often frustrated me was that I ended up working on electronics, an area in which I have no particular expertise, rather than showcasing my skills in areas where I actually know what I'm doing. Unfortunately, I had more experience with electronics than any of the other contestants, so it always ended up being my job. So, if you're asking yourself, "How did this guy ever get an electrical engineering degree?" remember that I don't and I never claimed to. I guess that's just the price I paid for being the generalist with a breadth of skills. But I was usually pretty far out of my comfort zone with the electronics, which would've been fun if it hadn't been such a high-pressure situation with not enough time to troubleshoot or iterate.
It's important to remember that our goal was not simply to succeed at the challenge. Our goal was to do better than the other team. This creates a pressure to complicate your design because if you think the other team will succeed at the challenge, you have to succeed at the challenge in a way that will be judged better. This creates a situation where you need to do the most complicated thing you can while still being able to comlete it (much like trying to get as close to 21 as possible without going over in blackjack).
If it looks like a team failed a challenge because they overcomplicated things, chances are the team was perfectly aware of the simple way, but felt that something more complicated would be more likely to beat the other team even if it had more chance of failing the challenge entirely. It took us a few challenges to really get the hang of predicting what we could accomplish in time, making it very difficult to decide how much to complicate things.
Regardless of how the show comes out, I had a ton of fun making it. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to make ridiculous stuff with teams of incredible people and other people's money. I'm a mechanical engineer who currently writes code for a living (as much as grad student is "a living" anyway); I miss making things, and this was a great chance to get back in the shop. It was probably the most stressful thing I've ever done, but I had fun every day but one.
The show itself is blah. I think they tried to get both the "nerd" audience and the usual reality TV audience, but ended up splitting the difference and making something that neither is really happy with. That being said, I don't regret doing it. Filming the show was so much fun and a completely unique experience!
Questions or comments to: eric.whitman1@gmail.com