Search found 26 matches
- Wed Jul 28, 2010 8:23 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Chicago Open thanks and discussions
- Replies: 126
- Views: 36625
Re: Chicago Open thanks and discussions
First I would like to thank Jerry and everyone involved with tournament. The running of the tournament and the quality of moderation were exemplary barring the usual quizbowl delays. I have to agree with Marnold and some of the other posters that these questions seemed excessively difficult. I think...
- Mon Jun 14, 2010 1:48 am
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Chicago Open matchmaking thread
- Replies: 57
- Views: 16399
Re: Chicago Open matchmaking thread
I am late getting on this but I am interested in playing and looking for a team if there are any with open slots still remaining.
Paul
Paul
- Mon May 31, 2010 9:28 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Player Poll 2010: This is serious business
- Replies: 66
- Views: 16852
Re: Player Poll 2010: This is serious business
My apologies for trying to reanimate a dead forum. My career is something of a control case since I have, almost as a matter of principle, never studied for quizbowl in college but studied quite a bit in high school. I think I peaked around sophomore year of college and have been on a slow and stead...
- Thu Mar 18, 2010 7:21 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Questions about Rewarding Knowledge (mostly in music...)
- Replies: 5
- Views: 2384
Re: Questions about Rewarding Knowledge (mostly in music...)
I am in principle in favor of lead-ins that include trivial or tangentially related information, if it is the sort of information you would only pick up through deep study of a given subject. For instance, Goethe fancied himself a scientist and considered his theory of color his greatest contributio...
- Tue Jan 26, 2010 10:54 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: How long should a tournament run?
- Replies: 17
- Views: 5663
How long should a tournament run?
We've all been there. It' 9:30 at night, you're exhausted, having been up since 6:30, and the quizbowl tournament is somehow still not over. In fact, after a morning peppered with lopsided matches you are now probably playing the most challenging and important matches you will play that day, and all...
- Wed Nov 25, 2009 10:14 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: RMPFest 2 Discussion Thread
- Replies: 39
- Views: 7701
Re: RMPFest 2 Discussion Thread
I was fairly impressed with the Christianity tossups. There were notably no glaring factual errors (something not generally true of quizbowl Christianity questions), and most did reward deep knowledge. As for the chapter and verse debate, I found at least the clue on the passage from 1 Macabbees in ...
- Fri Nov 20, 2009 3:22 am
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Rewarding Different Levels of Knowledge
- Replies: 102
- Views: 16090
Re: Rewarding Different Levels of Knowledge
Questions rarely reward knowing about particular societies or languages, for instance, but often reward knowing about ethnography and theoretical linguistics. Paul, I really wish you would not make categorical statements like that which just aren't true. In fact, quizbowl questions have moved quite...
- Thu Nov 19, 2009 4:01 am
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Rewarding Different Levels of Knowledge
- Replies: 102
- Views: 16090
Re: Rewarding Different Levels of Knowledge
...the emphasis on "academic importance," leads...[leads] to questions with several lines of clues that are effectively unbuzzable...[or]...choosing "academically important" answers that few people who are not graduate students in the field could legitimately have encountered. N...
- Wed Nov 18, 2009 10:31 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Rewarding Different Levels of Knowledge
- Replies: 102
- Views: 16090
Re: Rewarding Different Levels of Knowledge
I also heartily agree with Bruce. In my experience, the emphasis on "academic importance," leads down one of two very unpleasant roads. First it can and has in recent years lead to questions with several lines of clues that are effectively unbuzzable, a waste of time and effort for everyon...
- Fri Nov 06, 2009 9:02 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: How to write packets on time
- Replies: 22
- Views: 3393
Re: How to write packets on time
One should note there are special problems with getting the questions done early for larger programs that regularly send multiple teams (read Chicago, but I think there are others). Once the packet is written it is very difficult to redistribute people on teams. If one or two players decide not to g...
- Fri Oct 23, 2009 10:49 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Clues that reward understanding
- Replies: 44
- Views: 9783
Re: Clues that reward understanding
There are several ways to stop the robot other than perpetual canon expansion, which I am convinced will slowly strangle quizbowl to death in a sea of preposterously obscure answers that perhaps a dozen people on earth find enjoyable to play on. I am not advocating either per se, but I think they wo...
- Tue Sep 29, 2009 1:52 am
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: On Geography at ACF Nationals
- Replies: 31
- Views: 10661
Re: On Geography at ACF Nationals
I think the idea of basing our arguments for a geography distribution on some notion of what is studied in "academic geography"or that geography needs such a justification is flawed. The same arguments would remove mythology almost entirely. At least in my disciplines, mythology is not vie...
- Tue Sep 15, 2009 11:46 am
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Post here if you want required geography at ACF Nats
- Replies: 34
- Views: 6801
- Mon Sep 07, 2009 12:53 am
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Choosing helpful clues for mythology tossups
- Replies: 31
- Views: 5944
Re: Choosing helpful clues for mythology tossups
I don't know Egyptian myth that well, but I think most of them have distinct cult centers at various cities. Sobek at Crocodilopolis, Re the sun god at Heliopolis, Amun at Thebes, etc (the Greek names are often based on the main god). It also makes some of the syncretism less confusing if you put in...
- Sun Sep 06, 2009 7:22 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Choosing helpful clues for mythology tossups
- Replies: 31
- Views: 5944
Choosing helpful clues for mythology tossups
Given the largely justified expansion of the quizbowl mythology canon into things that are neither Norse, nor Greco-Roman, I thought it might be constructive for people with some expertise in the various "peripheral" areas to give advice on what sort of clues are useful to people who know ...
- Sun Aug 30, 2009 8:37 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Chicago Open 2009 Discussion
- Replies: 153
- Views: 51721
Re: Chicago Open 2009 Discussion
Charlie's suggestion of confining 20th century music to 1/5-1/6 of the tournament seems hard to justify. A very sizeable portion, probably at least half, of the orchestral canon in most concert halls is Late Romantic or later. There may be about as many top tier composers in each era, but when you ...
- Sun Aug 30, 2009 2:35 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Chicago Open 2009 Discussion
- Replies: 153
- Views: 51721
Re: Chicago Open 2009 Discussion
I think Ginastera is pretty famous, certainly on par with Villa-Lobos. Before reading this thread I would have used him as a medium part of a bonus or as a tossup answer without a second thought. Harris, Schuman, and Cowell are not tossupable, but each individually would not be bad as the hard part ...
- Sun Aug 30, 2009 3:32 am
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Quizbowl: More Impossible than ACF?
- Replies: 49
- Views: 8639
Re: Quizbowl: More Impossible than ACF?
Most quizbowlers are playing most questions on things they will not have done serious academic work in. If you've taken history classes, you've done some academic work in that area. Obviously, a lot more of what people know just comes from outside reading, reading packets, and so on, but I don't th...
- Wed Aug 26, 2009 9:14 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Quizbowl: More Impossible than ACF?
- Replies: 49
- Views: 8639
Re: Quizbowl: More Impossible than ACF?
I think the current emphasis on rewarding several years of graduate study is part of the problem. Many quizbowlers aren't graduate students in anything, and even advanced graduate students will only have that specialized knowledge in a very small area. If you happen to study modern literature this c...
- Mon Aug 24, 2009 11:55 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Past Tournaments as the "Basis" of Quizbowl Knowledge
- Replies: 52
- Views: 13250
Re: Past Tournaments as the "Basis" of Quizbowl Knowledge
First, I should point out my favorite example of canon self-propagation, the Bogomils, a Bulgarian heretical group that at least one Orthodox Priest I knew had trouble coming up with, but which inexplicably came up several times in quizbowl. Central African empires are another such example; while on...
- Thu Jul 23, 2009 7:56 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Writing Music Questions for Music Players
- Replies: 122
- Views: 41427
Re: Writing Music Questions for Music Players
I think a good deal of the problems people encounter when writing music tossups can be avoided by writing works on composers or, if one must, common link tossups on types of works. For me, even though I know a good bit of music theory, attempts to describe the music do not help me identify even work...
- Sat Mar 14, 2009 5:58 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Ratio of American History to European/World History
- Replies: 68
- Views: 19193
Re: Ratio of American History to European/World History
If you count Assyriology as Academic history, then I would be one, but I agree there are hardly any true historian quizbowl players. I would suspect this is because history is relatively easy to pick up, whereas other subjects, particularly science and literature have a much higher barrier of entry....
- Sat Mar 14, 2009 2:27 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Ratio of American History to European/World History
- Replies: 68
- Views: 19193
Re: Ratio of American History to European/World History
A 1/1 ancient history distribution at the expense of American history might not be bad. There are plenty of kings and empires, which make good tossup answers (if not the best history per say) as they are concrete things, and the answer space can be easily expanded without making people go "what...
- Sat Mar 07, 2009 5:34 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Concept tossups in the social sciences
- Replies: 40
- Views: 7774
Re: Concept tossups in the social sciences
While I would like more linguisitcs, I think it does not lend itself to making good tossups. Tossups on Particular languages in general seem ill-advised. There is a very limitted number of languages about which people would know enough in principle to legitimately buzz rather than guessing. It is al...
- Fri Mar 06, 2009 2:38 am
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: SCT Private Discussion Forum
- Replies: 129
- Views: 22681
Re: SCT Private Discussion Forum
Please let me in.
In case the name Sargon did not make it clear, this is Paul Gauthier from U Chicago.
In case the name Sargon did not make it clear, this is Paul Gauthier from U Chicago.
- Sun Jan 25, 2009 2:43 am
- Forum: Best of the Best
- Topic: Distribution: Origins, Motivations
- Replies: 72
- Views: 80095
Re: Distribution: Origins, Motivations
I think a more balanced distribution might be achieved by equalizing the amount of literature, music, and visual arts to something like 2/2 each. It is true that finding helpful clues on musical works is hard, though certainly not impossible. However, one can write very good composer given works tos...