I've been working on the periphery of this project for about a year now (my company created the on screen "avatar" that's shown at Watson's podium on stage) and it's been amazing to watch as Watson has progressed.<p>Some of the early matches I got data from were downright funny. Lots of nonsense answers and weird correlations that kinda made sense but made it obvious Watson didn't really understand the problem space.<p>In case you're interested the avatar gets realtime data from Watson and visualizes both Watson's internal state and the game state. The core bit is a collection of "threads" that swarm around the surface of a sphere. The speed, variability, color, and length of the threads are all tied to the data we get from Watson. The colors roughly correspond to confidence, and when the threads bunch up it has to do with what Watson is "doing" (i.e. if he gets an answer wrong the threads will go slow and gather to the bottom of the sphere, if one of the other contestants is answering the threads will gather on that side of of the sphere, etc).<p>The designer and my team agreed early on that there would be exactly 42 threads. ;-)<p>Oh, and when Watson speaks the threads push off the surface of the sphere to the intensity of the audio. It also makes a subtle glow in the center of the sphere brighten in an homage to Hal.