The Quizbowl Resource Center

When people first start playing quizbowl, they often want to get good. But it's hard to know where to start. What if we had a document that had the basic topics of the high school science canon? This would be a good starting point for further study through Quinterest, reading on Wikipedia, etc.

Especially in science (although this is applicable to other subjects as well), the answer lines vary a lot, a lot more than just names or people. So I think it would be a valuable resource for the community if we are able to compile a list of topics that come up often. I envision this to be a collaborative effort that everyone can contribute to.

They are currently organized by difficulty, so a player would start by learning all the topics in the "1" column and then working their way up from there. Feel free to change anything regarding the format.

Here is the list: (EDIT: New link) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... LyGvUN2ZIY.

I'd like to know what people think about this idea.

I mean the problem here is that you're trying to translate the high school canon into a finite list - the canon's pretty big, yo. Certainly this isn't a bad idea, but in the end I doubt you could ever get any sort of comprehensive list of high school topics (especially if you wanted to be rigorous and cover the national HS tournaments like NASAT or NSC). I figure that this would probably be a better project for a team instead of the community as a whole, especially since quiz bowl is still a competition and giving everyone access to information that you spent time compiling seems... unwise. Even if this sort of thing cemented itself as thing for the community to collaborate on, it seems to be leaning towards the idea of a static canon, which is certainly something to be avoided.

I also feel like this sort of information could be pretty easily obtained from experience and reading a few packet sets; sure, it would take longer, but by actually seeing the kinds of clues you would find in a question on a given answerline, you really get a better idea of how quiz bowl interacts with that particular piece of information. If an individual wanted to consult something made by someone else to learn quiz bowl science, packet study will probably beat anything short of a set of actual notes on answerlines.

Feel free to continue with this project, but really it's one for your team (or just you).

It might be worth your time to just see what comes up in Science Olympiad, Chemistry Olympiad, etc. Then, you can form a list from those tests. I did Chemistry Olympiad my senior year of high school and felt the "cannon" of HS chemistry questions in Quiz Bowl aligned reasonably well with that test. I also did Science Olympiad for several years. As mentioned, the quizbowl cannon is not at all static and it is pretty much impossible to encapsulate all that comes up. What constitutes "coming up"? Is it just answerlines or is all clues New clues are discovered constantly so it would be very hard to keep track of them all.

To reiterate: I think the best thing to do for high school science (at least for Chem, Bio and Physics) is to look at AP Exam prep books and Academic tests in those fields. If you find yourself weak at a subdiscipline like E&M, you could always supplement your learning by buying a introductory collegiate textbook from Amazon.

A teammate of mine tried to do something like this for literature in high school but gave up after going through 20 authors. It's going to be impossible to create an exhaustive list.

Good luck though! It's awesome that you are looking to improve at the game.

Progcon wrote:It might be worth your time to just see what comes in Science Olympiad, Chemistry Olympiad, etc. Then, you can form a list from those tests. I did Chemistry Olympiad my senior year of high school and felt the "cannon" of HS chemistry questions in Quiz Bowl aligned reasonably well with that test. As mentioned, the quizbowl cannon is not at all static and it is pretty much impossible to encapsulate all that comes up. What constitutes "coming up"? Is it just answerlines or is all clues? There are new clues in tossups all the time so it's impossible to be thorough.

To reiterate: I think the best thing to do for high school science (at least for Chem, Bio and Physics) is to look at AP Exam prep books and Academic tests in those fields. If you find yourself weak at a subdiscipline like E&M, you could always supplement your learning by buying a introductory collegiate textbook from Amazon.

A teammate of mine tried to do something like this for literature in high school but gave up after going through 20 authors. It's going to be impossible to create an exhaustive list.

Good luck though! It's awesome that you are looking to improve at the game.

Science Olympiad is an invaluable quizbowl resource. I have competed in Science Olympiad for eight years and have found that study topics for my events end up earning me powers in close games. http://scioly.org is the go-to resource for study materials of a Science Olympiad nature.

Learn science, not lists.

The Ununtiable Twine wrote:Learn science, not lists.

This. Maybe see if you can take classes at your community college or take all the AP science classes at your high school if you haven't already. There is relatively little to gain by "frauding knowledge" in science. Plus, learning science is fun!

Progcon wrote:

The Ununtiable Twine wrote:Learn science, not lists.

This. Maybe see if you can take classes at your community college or take all the AP science classes at your high school if you haven't already. There is relatively little to gain by "frauding knowledge" in science. Plus, learning science is fun!

I completely agree. However, I think that for people who are just beginning quizbowl (especially high school freshmen who haven't taken AP classes yet), using Quinterest and lists is probably the best way to rapidly improve and get interested in the game.

I completely agree. However, I think that for people who are just beginning quizbowl (especially high school freshmen who haven't taken AP classes yet), using Quinterest and lists is probably the best way to rapidly improve and get interested in the game.

I think this is a fantastic idea for new players, considering underclassmen may not have the access to AP level classes, so giving them a baseline to build off would be appropriate. A list of answer lines that would come up doesn't imply frauding or memorizing lists by any means, since it serves merely as a guide to what to study; for example, mitochondria might be a common answer line that is on that list, but to study it, a player would have to look into textbooks or online biology resources which would at the same time teach that player about basic cell biology. Furthermore, yes quizbowl is about acquiring real knowledge, but for new players, to keep them motivated, knowledge that will quickly show results is optimal. Therefore a list is more of a gateway to studying common stuff that comes up in quizbowl AND cause the learning of substantial information. However, I think it is a valid point that making a comprehensive list publicly available may not be the best idea in terms of team competition, since it makes it much much easier to build a solid JV team which will be a solid varsity team soon enough.

I think this is a fantastic idea for new players, considering underclassmen may not have the access to AP level classes

This is true, but I think that science could be learned better for these people through free online content. For example, Yale Open Courses has some great introductory physics material.

Ashwin, do you still have that list, because the link claims it's been deleted.

Hi Ashwin,
I was wondering if you still have the list. One of my teammates is trying a similar project where he adds information under vocabulary words to create a sort of quizbowl science glossary. It's already over 40 pages long and over half of the words do not yet have definitions or clues.

I think people seem to misunderstand the concept behind lists. Sewell's lists are a great foundation and also a great way to review especially right before or during tournaments. Obviously one cannot limit oneself to these lists and unlike some other buzzer competitions, quiz bowl cannot be limited to some lists but one can try coming close.
Best,
Christy

cthewolf wrote:Hi Ashwin,
I was wondering if you still have the list. One of my teammates is trying a similar project where he adds information under vocabulary words to create a sort of quizbowl science glossary. It's already over 40 pages long and over half of the words do not yet have definitions or clues.

I think people seem to misunderstand the concept behind lists. Sewell's lists are a great foundation and also a great way to review especially right before or during tournaments. Obviously one cannot limit oneself to these lists and unlike some other buzzer competitions, quiz bowl cannot be limited to some lists but one can try coming close.
Best,
Christy

Yes, I have another copy. I ended up using it as a tally sheet to help new science players at my high school get a better grasp of the canon (and maybe get motivated to study by competing against each other!)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing