The Quizbowl Resource Center

setht

The plan for now is that Chicago is hosting its mirror on the 14th. I'm waiting to hear back from some people to make sure that that date will work. If that date needs to change, I will post announcements to that effect. While we're at it, my understanding is that Georgia Tech is planning on hosting...

setht

So far, EFT has mirror sites at UCLA, UT-Austin, Chicago, Brown, Georgia Tech, and USF. Contacts for the various sites are: UCLA—Dwight Wynne (dpwynne AT ucla DOT edu) UT-Austin—Eric Kwartler (ekwartler AT gmail DOT com) Chicago—Seth Teitler (setht AT uchicago DOT edu) Brown—Jerry Vinokurov (jerry_v...

setht

My predictions, which are almost certainly correct: 1) Cohn/Ferrari/Kemezis. Doesn't even matter who the fourth is. Too much knowledge to contend with. Adam fucking Kemezis, Susan motherfucking Ferrari, and Ed Cohn are uniting the forces of Michigan and Chicago, and they are going to be a really go...

setht

Nick Bendler at Georgia Tech has expressed interest in mirroring EFT on October 8th (I gather there's a football conflict on the 7th). I think he's waiting to hear back from other club members, but hopefully it'll work out for them to host a mirror.

-Seth

setht

It's the 7th. I've changed the original post title. Thanks for pointing that out.

-Seth

setht

This is a preliminary announcement for ACF Regionals 2007. ACF Regionals 2007 will take place on the weekend of February 17th, 2007 at various sites which will be announced later. The tournament will be edited by Jerry Vinokurov, Ryan Westbrook, myself, and possibly others. Bids to host will be acce...

setht

This is the official announcement for the Early Fall Tournament (EFT), to be held on October 7th, 2006. The tournament set will be written by Jerry Vinokurov, Ryan Westbrook, myself, and possibly some other people. The questions will be similar in length, difficulty and distribution to ACF Fall (i.e...

setht

I was disappointed in the complete lack of computer science questions. I know that this category is usually relegated to the fringe of the distribution since most people don't take anything past a computer literacy course in college, but I was hoping that since this was a masters tournament that th...

setht

Hi all, the Chicago club has money left in this year's budget that we're looking to spend by July 1st. We'd be happiest pumping some of this money back into the quiz bowl economy by attending a tournament on June 24th. From talking with club members, I believe we have at least 2-3 teams' worth of in...

setht

Are packets supposed to be written by one person and kept blind to their partner, or are we planning on doing byes for each team on their own round so that both members of the team can help write the packet? -Seth While I am open to suggestions as to ideas for how to run a tournament in which teams...

setht

Remember, MATTE. At this point, since all requests have been for theme packet topics, I'm just making this a theme packet tournament. So check out the distribution and send me an email (ekwartler at gmail dot com) if you have an idea. Remember, May 9th. Also, y'all should decide who you're gonna pa...

setht

this year it will be tossups only. The distribution is as follows: Chemistry 4/4 Physics 4/4 Biology 4/4 Math/Computer Science/Engineering 3/3 Earth Sciences/Astronomy 3/3 Other 2/2 I assume you mean that the distribution is: Chemistry 4 Physics 4 Biology 4 Math/Computer Science/Engineering 3 Earth...

setht

I've attended every ICT from 2000 to 2006, and I feel that the 2005 and 2006 ICT sets were the best ICT sets I can remember. Admittedly, I didn't have much of a sense of question quality for my first several years of playing, but I'm confident that anyone who had issues with the question quality in ...

setht

Here's an attempt to get things back on track a bit: I thoroughly enjoyed the question set. My compliments to the writers and particularly the editors. A couple people have noted some seemingly skewed subdistributions (lots of pope questions, lots of Pauline epistle questions, classic rock and littl...

setht

I have an intense dislike for the majority of the geography questions I hear in typical tournaments. These geography questions are almost invariably questions on specific features/places (River X, or Mountain Y, or Island Z) full of clues mentioning nearby features/places (tributaries, other mountai...

setht

By the way when you criticize "old people" for taking over programs bear in mind that the bloom is going to fall off your rose any year now bub. I'm not sure I understand your point here. If Matt Weiner wants to criticize an old person for doing something objectionable, what difference do...

setht

acetyl coA is involved in _everything_, including beta oxidation, lipid synthesis, etc, whereas glyoxylate cycle is it's own process. It'd be like writing glucose vs. glycolysis, they're just different things, even though one happens to appear in the other. E.g. glyoxylate cycle uses diff enzymes, ...

setht

Next, since several people have been saying that the physical sciences questions at ACF Nationals 2005 were much harder than the biological science questions: to what extent was this true within physics? I am aware of the complaints about "S-matrix" and "fluctuation-dissipation theor...

setht

Jason, I don't recall them not getting the bio We didn't, according to my notes. I believe the bio tossups in the two final rounds were on asthma and hyphae; I think we negged asthma and got beat to hyphae (I don't remember whether we lost a buzzer race or got beat by a good early buzz). I don't th...

setht

There are many things I want to respond to in this thread; I guess I'll just wade in and go backwards, for the hell of it. The S is for "scattering." It's basically a matrix that connects before and after states for some quantum process. I think it was a fine question; it's just that in my...

setht

Looking over the last two posts reminded me of a point I wanted to bring up regarding writing myth questions: I think myth, as a category, has a natural advantage over many other categories that I wish people would take advantage of more often. Myths are frequently inherently hilarious or bizarre, a...

setht

I have indeed found this to be the case. I think the structure and difficulty of the questions in the set is perfect. I wasn't suggesting that you add in anything painfully obscure to make the tournament unpleasant for people. I'm just saying that it could ave been more diverse. I know I've heard t...

setht

Incidentally, TRASH Regionals averaged 5.6 tossup answers that I'd never heard of per round. Why do I get the feeling that someone who posted this with "ACF ____" instead of TRASH Regionals would be told to study more, write more questions, read Benet's, etc? If someone posted this with &...

setht

Couple of other things from ACF fall, mostly for Seth, since he asked for it. Again, forgive me for picking nit like a louse-farmer. No problem, and thanks for the commentary--this gives me an excuse to take breaks from working, but more importantly, it will hopefully result in stronger question se...

setht

19. Is "ordinary" really needed for differential equations? I said normal and regular before eating the neg, but perhaps you could just point out my ineptitude. The answer is yes. Every singe math class or text I've ever been to or read on the subject has been quite explicit in its differ...

setht

Seth, what is the reason to support having a more well-known answer, if the knowledge being tested is identical? It seems to me that what you propose is just changing a few pronouns, and it's not clear to me how that will by itself make the question easier. Well, let's take Ray's Raskolnikov tossup...

setht

I wanted to point out something that may not be clear to a lot of people: the group of editors for this year's ACF Fall was, with the exception of Andrew, completely new to editing ACF tournaments. I would really like to encourage everyone to give us lots of feedback and commentary/criticism, partic...

setht

1st of all, no one is insinuating that there's anything sinister going on, and a list of my rejected questions was only used to reveal its cardinality. 2nd of all, I don't need to receive an argument on behalf of ACF as previously posted, just a list of questions rejected and outcomes, something as...

setht

I'm not sure I would ever feel "My questions are likely to be thrown out or merged, so I'll write crappy questions", but perhaps I function differently from others. What I -would- think, however, is "These editors are getting thousands of questions from all across the country which t...

setht

(I also requested that my replaced questions be left in the packet for people to read after the tourney, but I don't know what ever happened with that--but no, I'm not bitter.) It just isn't feasible, with ~50 submitted packets or packet fragments, to append all the submitted questions to the backs...

setht

I don't think being unfamiliar is the same as being hard. Perhaps they're simply from pantheons people aren't familiar with. I know nothing about Scottish/Welsh/whatever myth, so Cuchulainn, Rhiannon, Bran, or whoever were completely unfamiliar to me. Although I do appreciate the references which I...

setht

The solution would be to see Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc be more common bonus parts in lower-level (relative to ACF Fall) tournaments, so Quetzalcoatl wouldn't be the only askable Aztec god in ACF Fall. I know NAQT has done some of that at the high-school level, but the key here is in a raising of q...

setht

Various people have seemed interested in figuring out the science subdistribution for ACF Fall. I count the following: Astro 5/6 Bio 22/17 Chem 19/19 CS 4/5 Earth and Planetary Science 5/7 Math 8/9 Physics 23/24 Interdisciplinary 1/0 I believe two of the 17 rounds ended up with 6/6 science apiece. I...

setht

3. As postulated before the tournament in another thread, questions like that on "Quetzcoatl" at this level aren't necessarily a good idea, because it quickly devolves into an eight-way thought of "this is an easy tournament, so it's probably the by-far-most-famous answer in this par...

setht

...for many newer players, it just kind of sucks to sit there for line after line after line after line of material. Nine- or ten-line tossups are simply (based solely on my experience as moderator/player/coach, and not on any scientific studies) unpleasant for many newer players, and it's hard to ...

setht

Consider the following tossup: Independently of Joseph Le Bel, he discovered that the four bonds that carbon can form are direct towards the corners of a tetrahedron, thus helping to found stereochemistry. In a book titled Studies In Dynamic Chemistry, he developed a general thermodynamic relations...

setht

At West, we saw 600-point rounds. Is this unreasonably high? I don't think it's unreasonably high. Suppose a fairly balanced team of very experienced, knowledgeable players is matched against a team of new players who have played, say, a grand total of one or two tournaments prior to ACF Fall. Assu...

setht

I am unclear whether, when you say "discussion," you mean public discussion here or comments/criticisms sent directly to the editors. I am personally interested in seeing any discussion people feel interested in conducting publicly, and in any comments or criticisms people feel like sendi...

setht

When it comes to Classical mythology (Greco-Roman), then that overrepresentation is justified because these things have a significance apart from their mere existance as myth. Classical mythology has infiltrated our own culture and our own language, and has done so throughout the West. People talk ...

setht

I assume it's safe at this point to start discussing ACF Fall, including specific questions. I wanted to open by soliciting comments on the question set in general. I'm particularly interested in any reactions to the myth, earth science and astronomy questions, but I'll be interested to hear anythin...

setht

First, I wanted to ask whether anyone has any recommendations on good question-writing sources for (non-Indian) Asian or Arthurian myth. I'm interested in all myth book recommendations, but I had more trouble finding good sources for those areas. Second, some quick thoughts on using websites and boo...

setht

It seems Indian myth appears more in standard (e.g. ACF) packets than it is represented in the distr above, more about the same as Norse it appears, but may be that's just due to my preference for Indian questions in general. Ray. You're very possibly right; my initial plan was to have equal amount...

setht

This post grew monstrously long as I worked on it, so feel free to skip most or all of it. Hopefully it might be useful to people interested in finding some good ideas for mythology references. I've included some websites that seem fairly reputable/useful. I've also tried to note which books were ea...

setht

I have some free time now, so I thought I'd start flooding the board with a bunch of posts about the myth tournament, writing myth, and writing questions in general. To start with, here's what I wrote for the myth singles tournament: 91 Greek 39 European 26 Norse 20 Egyptian 19 Indian 13 Mixed 13 Am...

setht

Matt: yup, people do use that strategy. actually, there are two different circumstances: one is the obvious one -- where you don't know the subject and your opponent does; the other is where you do know the subject but have been playing qb long enough to know that there's only a couple possible ans...

setht

recfreq wrote:(Finally, for fellow ex-Berkeleyites, does using the Kohan index mean that Selene Koo was the greatest QB player ever?)

Ray.

"Was"?

setht

The myth question set is now available on the Stanford Archive ( http://quizbowl.stanford.edu/archive/ ; specifically, http://quizbowl.stanford.edu/archive/myth-singles-1/index.html ). I'm interested in any feedback people have to offer--general comments on the set, remarks about specific questions,...

setht

14 players participated in the UIUC edition of Myth Singles 1: Tlazolteotl Chows Down. Congratulations to Seth Kendall, who took first place with an overtime win in the first game of the final series. Players were split randomly into two brackets of 7, played a 7-round round robin, then were seeded ...

setht

Dan Passner's post reminded me that I don't remember hearing any questions produced from Beaver Bonspiel teams (at least, I didn't hear any such teams announced as packet authors). Similarly, a couple weeks ago at WIT, there was only the one packet from the Harvard mirror. So, what's up with that? W...

setht

It looks like I will have about 13 rounds of myth questions. People hosting mirrors at other schools: I will try to send the questions out by Wednesday night. Let me know if it's going to be a problem if I send the questions on Thursday or Friday. So far, I'm planning on sending the questions to Ang...

The Quizbowl Resource Center

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ACF Regionals 2007 Preliminary Announcement

Early Fall Tournament: October 7, 2006

Who wants some money?

Re: Science Monstrosity IV: She Blinded Me With Science

Re: Biology in the modern QB era.

Re: Biology in the modern QB era.

ACF Fall discussion

Results: Myth Singles