Search found 201 matches

by Fond du lac operon
Thu Feb 23, 2012 11:55 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion
Replies: 119
Views: 46029

Re: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion

Yeah, I worried a little about that when I put it in. You may be right, but I'd be curious to see how it actually played. I mean, you still did a pretty good job with the crap you were given (a history question writer I am not, especially non-American history), so I wouldn't beat yourself up over i...
by Fond du lac operon
Thu Feb 23, 2012 11:36 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion
Replies: 119
Views: 46029

Re: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion

I'm going to take the unorthodox step here of criticizing my own question... This entity was called “the biggest festival of [its] century” in a series of theses on it published by the Situationists. Claude Lecomte and Jacques Thomas were killed by sympathizers with this body. This government was se...
by Fond du lac operon
Thu Feb 23, 2012 5:19 pm
Forum: Quizbowl History Forum
Topic: Odd Ways of Learning Things
Replies: 177
Views: 198357

Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

Most of my knowledge of medieval British history is derived from Shakespeare. And I got a tossup on The Mill on the Floss without knowing anything about it because of jokes from the Thursday Next series. So I guess I read those things in books but they weren't the right books so they are probably o...
by Fond du lac operon
Wed Feb 22, 2012 4:06 pm
Forum: Quizbowl History Forum
Topic: Odd Ways of Learning Things
Replies: 177
Views: 198357

Re: Odd Ways of Learning Things

One of my better buzzes, powering Isambard Kingdom Brunel at Gunpei Yokoi, was actually an artifact of my deep Achewood knowledge. I've gotten a tossup on "laying of the transatlantic cable" from the same strip. I've also gotten bonus parts on Paul Grice (he's dead now) due to reading Din...
by Fond du lac operon
Tue Feb 21, 2012 2:46 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Definitive Greatest Players List: Revisited
Replies: 14
Views: 20057

Re: Definitive Greatest Players List: Revisited

In almost every case, the team that loses one of those games will have had a chance to pick up those crucial points: someone will have guessed the answer to a tossup early, but will have sat on it So what you're saying is those teams that win, say, ICT by buzzing early on tossups they think they kn...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 20, 2012 11:05 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion
Replies: 119
Views: 46029

Re: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion

Did the editors mandate that the players not be told about antiprompts and how they worked? Because no one told us, and had I been "antiprompt"ed during the tournament, I would have had no clue what the hell was going on.
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 20, 2012 10:20 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion
Replies: 119
Views: 46029

Re: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion

My other pet peeve: People using clues about Cicero vs. Tully or Hesperus vs. Phosphorus or Scott vs. the author of Waverley as lead-ins for philosophers. I've read a lot of the papers/books ("On Denoting," "Sense and Reference," "Two Dogmas", "Naming and Necessit...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 20, 2012 10:08 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion
Replies: 119
Views: 46029

Re: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion

Okay, not trolling, talking about specific questions. I wish people would stop writing tossups on Stanley Milgram, because I think so many clues about him are well-known that what happens in a lot of rooms (it certainly did in ours) is that you hear one or two sentences, and then a clue about the lo...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 20, 2012 9:38 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion
Replies: 119
Views: 46029

Re: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion

It's probable that this just isn't the game for me. As such, I hereby announce my retirement from quizbowl, and, in news people will actually care about, from trolling the forums. I'm honestly more disappointed about the latter. EDIT: I'm redacting this post, because I was being an idiot. User was w...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 20, 2012 9:28 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion
Replies: 119
Views: 46029

Re: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion

Okay, I'll only make utterly uncontroversial statements from now on. I'll be a character from The Bald Soprano . Because that's way better than having to defend principles that you (presumably) believe to be defensible. Sorry for insulting physics, too. (And I wouldn't be surprised if most people wi...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 20, 2012 9:01 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion
Replies: 119
Views: 46029

Re: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion

I'm not sure it would mean anything; if the bonuses are consistent throughout, what does it matter that there's a harder tossup in there somewhere? Suppose we have four players: A, B, C, and D. A is you: a not-great econ player, but one who can get someone like Myrdal on a giveaway thanks to quizbo...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 20, 2012 8:37 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion
Replies: 119
Views: 46029

Re: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion

You literally have no idea what you're talking about. This is one of the most important, maybe the most important experimental physics effort ever conducted. This is like every wonder of the ancient world rolled into one. Just to give you some examples, landmark experiments from not-that-long ago, ...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 20, 2012 8:25 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion
Replies: 119
Views: 46029

Re: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion

Anyway, I don't know that asking for "science current events" answerlines is a great idea in any case Depends on the answerline... as it makes the set less useful for future study/practice What?! I mean, nobody's going to know/ask about CMS and ATLAS in ten years when some bigger supercol...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 20, 2012 6:12 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion
Replies: 119
Views: 46029

Re: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion

I don't really feel qualified to comment on the hardness of the bio and chem bonuses, because I am turrible at those subjects. But there were definitely some really hard-seeming ones, with stuff I'd never heard of coming up as (presumably) middle and hard clues... As for the Higgs bonus, I imagined ...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 20, 2012 3:21 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion
Replies: 119
Views: 46029

Re: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion

As a player way below Matt Jackson's level, I'll say that the problem for my team was less overly-hard hard parts (we wouldn't get more than a quarter of those anyway), and more the wild difficulty swings in the middle parts. I know Bradley already mentioned the "Irma's injection"/dream/Fr...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 20, 2012 3:08 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Repeated Toss-Up Answer Lines in a Set
Replies: 14
Views: 5209

Re: Repeated Toss-Up Answer Lines in a Set

My understanding has been that you should not be able to learn something in one round that would allow you to score points in another round. Strictly speaking, this was my problem with the Alexander bonus repeat -- they both referred to him as a "Macedonian ruler" or similar and dealt wit...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 20, 2012 1:32 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion
Replies: 119
Views: 46029

Re: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion

Because it's an expectation that exists in the field? Like, maybe we should just do more to disabuse people of that assumption, but we shouldn't just say "FUCK THEM IF THEY DON'T KNOW HOW ACF WORKS," because that's not a strategy that will get a lot of new teams coming back. Not that I'm s...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 20, 2012 12:04 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion
Replies: 119
Views: 46029

Re: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion

There were weird things that came about due to the head editor not removing duplicate answer lines, like two tossups on "time" in consecutive rounds (one in computer science and one in philosophy), plus another physics TU on "time reversal" later. I see absolutely nothing wrong ...
by Fond du lac operon
Sun Feb 19, 2012 7:32 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion
Replies: 119
Views: 46029

Re: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion

Well, the problem is that people don't realize answer lines are going to be duplicated, so (in theory) they say Philip II of Macedon for the bonus part on Alexander, because Alexander has already come up.
by Fond du lac operon
Sun Feb 19, 2012 7:15 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion
Replies: 119
Views: 46029

Re: ACF Regionals 2012 Discussion

There were weird things that came about due to the head editor not removing duplicate answer lines, like two tossups on "time" in consecutive rounds (one in computer science and one in philosophy), plus another physics TU on "time reversal" later. IIRC, Alexander the Great was al...
by Fond du lac operon
Sun Feb 19, 2012 1:19 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ACF Regionals at Georgia Tech(2/18)
Replies: 22
Views: 8181

Re: ACF Regionals at Georgia Tech(2/18)

Thanks to Will and to Georgia Tech for a well-run tournament, even if the field was pretty disappointingly small. I think this may be the only tournament I've played where everything was done by 1700h...
by Fond du lac operon
Wed Feb 15, 2012 9:27 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: GUERRILLA IV - Chicago, IL - Saturday, 3/31
Replies: 57
Views: 24185

Re: GUERRILLA IV - Chicago, IL - Saturday, 3/31

Should the questions be marked for powers and supers, like last year's?
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 13, 2012 1:24 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 SCT: Critique my questions
Replies: 28
Views: 6960

Re: Critique my questions

That's pretty surprising to me. I too am a math major, haven't taken vector calc (or used it in physics or elsewhere) in over four years, and would know it cold on that clue. I don't think it's quite too easy, but I do think it's among the easier lead-ins for math questions in that set, and maybe e...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 13, 2012 1:10 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 SCT: Critique my questions
Replies: 28
Views: 6960

Re: Critique my questions

Dot product Wasn't saying the dot product symbol was in the divergence too easy as a lead in? FWIW, I didn't get it there (actually I think I was 上海'ed into scorekeeping that round) despite being a math major, although it's true I took vector calculus an embarrassingly long time ago. I'm not sure p...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 13, 2012 1:04 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Quizbowl sports analogies
Replies: 38
Views: 11486

Re: Quizbowl sports analogies

Okay, I feel bad for derailing this thread (and to think I don't even drink!), so I'll try to provide a half-baked analogy. Quizbowl's a little like baseball in that a lot of questions (or plate appearances) are pretty high-leverage situations -- unlike in basketball, where the number of shots you g...
by Fond du lac operon
Sun Feb 12, 2012 8:44 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Quizbowl sports analogies
Replies: 38
Views: 11486

Re: Quizbowl sports analogies

I guess it depends on what you mean by spectator sport, but I think that quizbowl is actually the ultimate spectator sport. You can actually participate in what's going on...to some extent, anyway. Instead of saying, "I bet I could have caught that pass way better than [fill in athlete] just d...
by Fond du lac operon
Sun Feb 12, 2012 3:26 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Penn Bowl Mirror (Athens GA) March 10, 2012
Replies: 55
Views: 14978

Re: Penn Bowl Mirror (Athens GA) March 10, 2012

It's looking less likely that an Alabama team will attend as such, but I'm still interested in attending this -- put me down as a free agent. Anyone interested in me as an addition to their team should PM me.
by Fond du lac operon
Fri Feb 10, 2012 12:08 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: I'm sorry, but we're declining our invitation...
Replies: 7
Views: 2336

Re: I'm sorry, but we're declining our invitation...

Man, no matter what Bama's ranked #1 in, you just can't get behind it, huh?
by Fond du lac operon
Thu Feb 09, 2012 7:09 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 SCT individual question discussion
Replies: 114
Views: 24135

Re: talk about individual questions here

Brian Ulrich wrote:That said, in addition to sitting there, they also block rain and affect invasion routes.
Unless you're a super-badass like Hannibal.
by Fond du lac operon
Thu Feb 09, 2012 12:42 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 SCT: Difficulty
Replies: 146
Views: 29094

Re: Difficulty

Mechanical Beasts wrote:both of whom are unaware of the fact that it's quite possible to compete with grad students, what can I do?
Oh, believe me, I'm quite aware that it's possible to compete with grad students; I've beaten Mr. Sundberg in practice a few times. Also BARGE, but we don't talk about BARGE.
by Fond du lac operon
Wed Feb 08, 2012 6:22 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 SCT: Difficulty
Replies: 146
Views: 29094

Re: Difficulty

No, look, you're still not getting this. In fact, very few of you are getting this. Let me lay it out for you: It's fine to think of improvements and even advocate for a wholesale restructuring of the game, if you think that that's what it takes. I've been part of those discussions, and sometimes, ...
by Fond du lac operon
Wed Feb 08, 2012 12:47 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 SCT individual question discussion
Replies: 114
Views: 24135

Re: talk about individual questions here

Ah, I just remembered another thing: in the DII tossup on Milton Friedman, both Jonathan Thompson and I buzzed (in separate rooms) after "Along with his wife Rose...". That's probably fine as part of a lead-in at that level, but it's arguably not well-placed since it's possible to guess th...
by Fond du lac operon
Wed Feb 08, 2012 12:26 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 SCT: Difficulty
Replies: 146
Views: 29094

Re: Difficulty

The reason we're using linguistic approximations for these statements is because we have made these arguments eleven billion times. Of course, if I were feeling argumentative, I'd say that raises the question: is there something wrong with the DII set that people keep making these arguments, or is ...
by Fond du lac operon
Tue Feb 07, 2012 2:28 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 SCT: Difficulty
Replies: 146
Views: 29094

Re: Difficulty

And to say that I would make D2 unplayable is also ridiculous: your position would make D2 not have stock clue lead-ins (because, quelle horreur, there might be a buzzer race between two teams that are going to qualify anyway) which is significantly worse for teams truly starting at nothing. I can'...
by Fond du lac operon
Tue Feb 07, 2012 2:15 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 SCT: Difficulty
Replies: 146
Views: 29094

Re: Difficulty

Joseph said what I wanted to better than I could. DII should be easy, but saying "Let's make it EVEN EASIER so that people with some skills but who have never played collegiate quizbowl before have to go to DI!" is exactly the wrong thing to do. Also, I don't think making DII easier will c...
by Fond du lac operon
Tue Feb 07, 2012 1:40 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 SCT: Difficulty
Replies: 146
Views: 29094

Re: Difficulty

Yes, let's just get rid of DII so that high school students from Alabama have to go from nonpyramidal tossups about the Mona Lisa to tossups about "Darwin Among the Machines," that's an excellent idea that won't discourage anybody.
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 06, 2012 8:00 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 SCT: Difficulty
Replies: 146
Views: 29094

Re: Difficulty

[really long post] Yeah, on reflection, I agree with pretty much everything Seth says. I'm still a little concerned that a decent number of people thought, subjectively, that the DII SCT was a little too easy for them to fully enjoy it (and I don't think that saying "play DI" really resol...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 06, 2012 6:20 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 SCT: Difficulty
Replies: 146
Views: 29094

Re: Difficulty

OK, this is a somewhat more reasonable post. I think the issue here is that you're deriving an "ought" from an "is." The fact that you don't normally power that many questions doesn't mean that something is wrong if you get more 15's on an intentionally easier set with generous ...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 06, 2012 6:09 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 SCT: Difficulty
Replies: 146
Views: 29094

Re: Difficulty

Cernel Joson wrote:EDIT: So yeah. At your site, 11.8% of tossups were powered, and the average bonus conversion was around 14.7. That's right around NAQT's goal and maybe even a little lower.
Nope. You're double-counting total number of TUH. 23.6% of tossups were powered.
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 06, 2012 6:05 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 SCT: Difficulty
Replies: 146
Views: 29094

Re: Difficulty

Look dude, you missed one in three bonus parts and failed to power most tossups when power extended through the majority of the question. Statistically, you were not so good that this tournament failed to challenge you. Maybe some individual questions were too easy, but the numbers confirm that the...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 06, 2012 5:29 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 SCT: Difficulty
Replies: 146
Views: 29094

Re: Difficulty

Why should D2 cater to players good enough to play D1? Because the DII field isn't some Platonic ideal of fresh-faced kids straight out of high school who've never played pyramidal tossups before. There are going to be people like Matt Jackson last year, like Joseph and Joey from Auburn, like our g...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 06, 2012 5:19 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Assorted Freshmen Problems
Replies: 18
Views: 4040

Re: Assorted Freshmen Problems

By the way, re: the kid who gets panic attacks during the matches: if we're talking actual, legitimate panic attacks (as opposed to, like, just being extra nervous) that's a problem that probably should be dealt with by a medical professional rather than a quizbowl team. If he has a panic disorder o...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 06, 2012 4:42 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 SCT: Difficulty
Replies: 146
Views: 29094

Re: Difficulty

Sarcasm entirely not aside, uh, that's nice, but this post quoted a comment by an entirely different person who played at another site (where no such issue existed, but that's not really the point). I have absolutely no idea why you seem to have concluded it was directed at you, but the idea that N...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 06, 2012 4:17 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Assorted Freshmen Problems
Replies: 18
Views: 4040

Re: Assorted Freshmen Problems

Also, positive reinforcement is good: praise good buzzes and even plausible negs. This. I'm not sure that the "buzz on every toss-up" exercise would work well in practice -- I know my instinct would likely be to wait as long as possible before buzzing. But it might be worthwhile to have t...
by Fond du lac operon
Mon Feb 06, 2012 3:12 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 SCT individual question discussion
Replies: 114
Views: 24135

Re: talk about individual questions here

Our team 10'd that name-change bonus (we got Boof Bonser but not the other two) but it wasn't a very good question, I don't think -- there were way less obscure parts that could have been asked instead of a middleweight boxer who retired well before most DII players were born, and a mediocre basketb...
by Fond du lac operon
Sun Feb 05, 2012 8:10 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 SCT individual question discussion
Replies: 114
Views: 24135

Re: talk about individual questions here

For DII, I went over the packets last night and found a few tossups that I had issues with: The HMS Pinafore tossup has something of the form "Never... well, hardly ever" as its first clue. Since that's one of the best-known bits from that operetta (and it recurs several times) I'm not sur...
by Fond du lac operon
Sun Feb 05, 2012 7:52 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 SCT: Difficulty
Replies: 146
Views: 29094

Re: Difficulty

One of the players on Alabama A compared the DII questions to "high-school clues on college-type answer lines." From what little I remember about my high school years, that seemed about right. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing -- I think the giveaways, and indeed maybe most of the st...
by Fond du lac operon
Sun Feb 05, 2012 4:01 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: 2012 NAQT Sectionals at UF (2/4/12)
Replies: 17
Views: 8137

Re: 2012 NAQT Sectionals at UF (2/4/12)

After the late start, I thought this was a very well-run and -managed tournament. Thanks to UF for hosting! (Even if I didn't get the chance to Tebow at Ben Hill Griffin...)
by Fond du lac operon
Fri Feb 03, 2012 4:32 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: BARGE General Discussion
Replies: 72
Views: 23635

Re: BARGE General Discussion

The issue I had with this question was the lead-in, everything else was just fine. I buzzed in right after "factored" in the first line with the answer line "polynomials" because, well, cyclotomic polynomials are irreducible in general and so that seemed like the natural spot to...
by Fond du lac operon
Wed Feb 01, 2012 4:43 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: GUERRILLA IV - Chicago, IL - Saturday, 3/31
Replies: 57
Views: 24185

Re: GUERRILLA IV - Chicago, IL - Sometime on ICT weekend

Mark Morris and I are interested in playing as a duo, assuming scheduling works out.