The Quizbowl Resource Center

cvdwightw

Chris's post reminded me that we did, in fact, have a good discussion about rules as recently as last year's discussion about the creator-creation rule . Unfortunately, the discussion sort of petered out before anyone really did anything about one of the last posts in the thread: What's the solution...

cvdwightw

I think that potentially the best way out of this is to use the rarely-seen "accept [x] after [y]" construction. For instance, this example would read: ANSWER: sword [/u]s [accept scimitar [/u]s after "Arsalan"] This gets around every problem that has cropped up in this thread, a...

cvdwightw

Teams that have officially told me they are coming: Rancho Bernardo UCSD A UCSD B ASU A North Hollywood A North Hollywood B Claremont A Claremont B Claremont C UCI House (pending staffers and field size) Teams that have sent in packets and have not officially told me they are coming: Stanford Caltec...

cvdwightw

Could we get an explanation for why this has been changed to Sunday? This makes it so that we get back around midnight at best. As I've repeatedly posted in other threads and on the QB-WC mailing list (is someone from your school on that?), we're being charged $100/room to reserve the rooms that we...

cvdwightw

Blanford's Fringe-fingered Lizard wrote:Does this tournament have a field at all? (If not, then why not? UCLA and UCI should register immediately.)

As I told Alex, I can't make it on Sunday. Presumably the rest of the club will be discussing whether or not they can send a team without me.

cvdwightw

Since there is nothing on the 29th, nobody signed up so far, and a scheduling conflict with Irvine's high school tournament, this tournament is now on Oct. 29. Sorry you guys had to move the date before we found out that we're being charged insane amounts of money to run tournaments. I will do my b...

cvdwightw

idk if I'm doing something wrong? Like can somebody explain how thye write questions? I usually look at a tournament packet, write down the answer, then go on the Torrey Pines Database, write down some of the key clues I see in all of the different questions (simple search), then write a question. ...

cvdwightw

UCI continues to make a push for "worst room reservations this side of Maryland:" our club found out today that although it is free to reserve rooms in Humanities Hall, Facilities Management will charge us $100/room for actually using them. Obviously this is a totally infeasible situation ...

cvdwightw

UC Irvine will be hosting the West Regional Site for ACF Fall on November 6, 2011. LOCATION: We have secured rooms in the Student Center (see http://uci.edu/campusmaps.php). We will likely be squatting in various areas in and around the Student Center should we get more than 14 teams signed up. PARK...

cvdwightw

I've created a MATLAB program that does the following: -Reads tossups (from .wav files of someone actually reading) -Reads in roster files of up to 6 players (.txt files with every player on a separate line and the name of the team as the file name) -Automatically tracks tossups heard, 10's, and -5'...

cvdwightw

no Kansas Scholar's Bowl school is allowed to attend national tournaments Actually, this isn't true - they can compete in a national tournament that appears on the NASSP's National Advisory List of Student Contests and Activities. PACE applied to put the NSC on the 2011-12 list but I don't see it o...

cvdwightw

Yeah, when you don't have 100% competent trained moderators, you end up having to trade off between "teams will hear all 20 tossups" and "rounds will not take 40 minutes." I think in Vermont the idea of rounds running on time is slightly more important than teams being able to he...

cvdwightw

Everyone has date conflicts. So you miss one quizbowl tournament. It happens. It's not like you live in an area where you have 3 tournaments all year. In time, the field size hits spread out across tournament hosts. Of course, the other option UCLA has is to flip College Novice and TWAIN and have th...

cvdwightw

The 2011 Fall Novice Tournament is currently looking for host sites in the following areas: Alabama Michigan North/Central Florida South Florida Utah/Colorado Iowa Kentucky Oklahoma Arkansas West Texas/New Mexico North and/or South Dakota Indiana (unless all demand is sufficiently covered by the Nor...

cvdwightw

Short answer to your question: throughout most of the 1950's and 1960's, the most visible academic competition for colleges was "College Bowl," a radio/television show from which most of the parameters of the modern game emerged. Many of the longstanding high school academic competitions i...

cvdwightw

As of right now we have eighteen approved sites in sixteen governmental entities. I've started a Google map showing all the current Fall Novice sites . 1. If you think you sent me a bid and I haven't gotten back to you, contact me via PM as that probably means my spam folder ate your bid. 2. If you'...

cvdwightw

I don't really know much about any of this stuff and I'm not saying "just because someone else does this you have to do it too," but I'm not sure if complaints about mACF distribution for trash are that common. If you are actually saying what I think you're trying to say, then no, there i...

cvdwightw

No amount of sophisticated statistics-keeping software is going to be able to determine the Chris Ray Scoring Champion (cf. "Diary of Chris Ray," the player who knows the most things immediately after a teammate's buzz). Sure it would be nice to have more sophisticated data so that things ...

cvdwightw

My favorite thing about this stat is that you get an indefinite player rating if you put up zero tossup points on a team that grails.

cvdwightw

Magister Ludi wrote:I think I'll print out a list of this "Top 25" and hand it out to freshman as motivation.

Your team has multiple reportedly dedicated incoming freshmen.

In the long run, I think that's sort of more important than being ranked n spots too low on Mike Cheyne's Preseason Top 25.

cvdwightw

I don't even know how to respond to your posts because they combine the bizarro premises that "people in this thread are arguing for the elimination of anatomy/physiology questions" and "people are doing whatever the hell they want in the science subdistribution because of their subje...

cvdwightw

Alright. I'd take a quick explanation why anatomy's a bad idea, if someone wants to give that. Otherwise we can wrap things up here. Anatomy questions by themselves aren't bad per se , but generally the types of anatomy questions that show up are lazily written lists of other body structures that a...

cvdwightw

I believe any writer willing to put in the time can write a quality science question (ie one that will not spawn threads like this one) by following the same approach that literature question writers have been using for years now. Using Jerry's analogy to titles in literature, the approach is to fo...

cvdwightw

But I do think that we should be looking to the core knowledge areas in the various categories for guidance on a substantial chunk of our answer lines. And I also think that Jerry's position that science is the only category in which we should look to core knowledge, while filling up the other area...

cvdwightw

No, I'm sure many people do not realize it simply means "fast". That doesn't make "fast" a technical concept the way "chord" is. The fact that you have to define "allegro" in terms of small words people know makes it musical jargon. Plus you're using a very s...

cvdwightw

This is a reminder that if you intend to host this tournament in September, I need to have your bid by the end of the weekend (or at least a statement that you intend to bid and are compiling details). Exceptions will be considered but are less likely to be approved.

cvdwightw

Fall Novice Tournament Sites: 9/10 9/17 Boise State University (ID) 9/24 10/1 Northwestern University (IL) 10/8 UC San Diego (CA) 10/15 Ohio State University (OH) Dorman (SC) Virginia Tech (VA) Bellarmine (CA) University of Texas (TX) University of Waterloo (ON) 10/22 St. Anselm's (DC) Lisgar Colleg...

cvdwightw

In most of the threads you linked to, you have Good Quizbowl Person X popping in to take a potshot and leave, compared to Crazy Person Y making ten or so rule-breaking posts and finally getting a warning for the last one. Forgive me if I'm putting words in Chris's mouth, but I think what he's worri...

cvdwightw

I am too lazy to hit copy-paste for the whole thing, so I provide the link instead. I wrote this article in a little over an hour. It is quite obviously missing the list of good textbooks and journals, which I hope the community can help provide (again?). I encourage people who know more than me abo...

cvdwightw

I can't really think of a good reason to do this. I'd think the better idea would be to adjust for quality/consequence, rather than for difficulty, as others have mentioned. Something along the lines of: 0.8 - NAQT-A 1.0 - NAQT-IS / HSAPQ - Reg / Most housewrites 1.2 - State+ championships 1.5 - Na...

cvdwightw

While there's a lot of information still missing, I think contributors to QBWiki could do a better job accurately gauging the importance of topics, including their own selves, to quizbowl as a whole when they figure out how much text is needed to describe them. A QBWiki page doesn't have to be a co...

cvdwightw

If any of the resident statistical mavens could suggest a reasonable way for accounting for varying set difficulty, I'd be glad to implement it. This is an off-the-cuff suggestion that I have no idea whether or not will actually work. I encourage you to try it once you have some more nationwide dat...

cvdwightw

Coach Ed Powers, My computer saved you from having to read a long, rambling, bizarre, and certainly Forbidden-Zone-worthy mishmash of nonsense by crashing. Since waiting ten minutes for the computer to boot back up has put me in a saner frame of mind, I'll just post the three arguments buried in the...

cvdwightw

This isn't endorsed by any organization or anyone else, and is barely endorsed by me. I do not mean to slight anyone by my rankings and, if they cause any offense, I apologize in advance for that. That's the last thing I want to do with this process. At some point, though, I do need to stick someon...

cvdwightw

So is this an actual invitational or is it open to all teams? If it's an invitational, what do teams need to do to qualify? As of now, it is a true invitational with the following qualifications: 1. We will invite all schools that attend a pyramidal quizbowl tournament during the 2011-12 competitio...

cvdwightw

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the proper response here, if you really want a finals packet, is: -Set out to write as many packets as you're supposed to be writing -Set a writing deadline that is sufficiently far enough ahead of the tournament to do editing for difficulty -During editing, if you see que...

cvdwightw

There appear to be high schools in cities just south of Provo (the Nebo School District) that have giant "Knowledge Bowl Week" IM tournaments. You may be able to contact some of the people who run those tournaments and see if they're up for something interscholastic. Source 1 Source 2 Sour...

cvdwightw

Man, the very first reply to this topic and there's already an argument about a trash subdistribution. That's a record even by the standards of modern discourse. And Jake doesn't even have his facts right! Anyway, to give this post actual substance, I'd like to see the mixed-impure-academic distribu...

cvdwightw

INFORMATION (NOTE that this will be updated piecemeal as Chris and I decide things and survey results continue to come in) The West Coast Invitational will take place on Saturday, March 10, at a site we are still determining. For now, the plan is for Chris and I to write about half of the questions...

cvdwightw

"genome size" was a NASAT answer last year...I have absolutely no interest or real knowledge in chemistry or biology whatsoever, and i never will, so answer lines need to be really really clear even for myself who usually can make pretty good judgements on almost every other subject. The ...

cvdwightw

So, um, is Andrew announcing this schedule (with the addition that College Novice mirrors can happen up to the end of October) or are we waiting on someone else to do something? It would be nice to actually have this fall scheduling thing completed so schools that are now all out for the summer can ...

cvdwightw

Chris Chiego and I are in the planning stages of the 2012 West Coast Invitational. We are starting early this year because we don't want to have the sort of bystander effect/Dwight gets busy problem that plagued the last two. Chris is officially "in charge" of this tournament, but we will ...

cvdwightw

I apologize for the snafu on the Interior question. There are other sources, e.g., Britannica , that credit E. Roosevelt with helping to arrange the concert. I did not check these sources. I believe that my word choice is correct; however, I understand how it is difficult to parse the difference bet...

cvdwightw

There is a very small high school circuit that runs on NAQT questions. NAQT indicates that teams from Juan Diego Catholic, St. Joseph Catholic, and Christian Heritage attended a 2011 tournament on IS-A questions. BYU showed up to ACF Regionals last year (2010), so I think they still have some sort o...

cvdwightw

The Saturday match tracker is complete except for two playoff games in the Akutagawa bracket (TJ A-Alpharetta and Auburn A-St. Anselm's). These are unofficial standings. I believe Donald Taylor has the official ones, but I don't know when PACE will be releasing them. The Sunday match tracker will be...

cvdwightw

I realize that, but you currently have, for example, A1 vs A4 in Round 1 and A1 vs A5 in Round 2. If that's the way it will actually play out, great. If not, it would make the document easier to read if it matched the actual schedule. After some testing, it looks like I won't have to do any extra c...

cvdwightw

Is there some way that somebody from PACE could give Dwight the schedule and he could use that to match the schedule in the document? It's not in any way useful to know that, for example, A1 plays A2 in the first round if you don't know who A1 and A2 are, so I would hope that this could be shared, ...

cvdwightw

On Saturday and Sunday I will be running a Match Tracker spreadsheet similar to the HSNCT one. This will happen on the assumption that I will be getting scores out of the NSC control rooms. The spreadsheet is available as a webpage here . This should allow more than 50 people at a time to access the...

cvdwightw

NAQT claims the following questions of mine made it into the set, so you know who to blame if things went terribly wrong: Round 1: tossup on dwarves Round 3: tossup on ozone Round 6: tossup on carbon dioxide, bonus on egg biology Round 8: bonus on codons Round 10: tossup on mice (please complain if ...

cvdwightw

As my flight to HSNCT has been cancelled (American Airlines strikes again!), I will not be staffing HSNCT. I am willing to help out in any HSNCT-related online project on Saturday afternoon. Contact me if you are running one of those projects and are looking for help.

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