Question Specific Discussion

[gyre and gimble]

HFT VIII Question Specific Discussion

[jonah]

Here's the email I sent to Stephen and Will. I've added in the text of questions as seen in the (incomplete) set sent to Auburn.

I'm not going through the set systematically; these are just things that either really stuck out in my memory, or that I noticed while trying to find the things that stuck out.

An operator on a metric space has this property if and only if it is bounded, and if f of x minus f of y is always less than a constant multiple of x minus y, then a function has the Lipschitz variety of this. The Weierstrass function has this property, and homeomorphisms are maps that have this property whose inverses have this property as well. One definition of this concept states that the pre-image of (*) open sets is open. This kind of function satisfies the intermediate value theorem, and the absolute value function has this property, but not differentiability. For 10 points, name this property, which a function has if it has no jumps or breaks and can be drawn without lifting a pencil.
Answer: continuous

"An operator on a metric space has this property if and only if it is bounded". As I mentioned in the thread, this theorem from functional analysis is comically too hard for high school. It's also only true of *linear* operators. Finally, operator continuity is not the same thing as function continuity, although they're certainly related; conflating those in a tossup goes against my sense of aesthetics (especially without saying something like "one property by this name"), though I admit it's common.

Residues of meromorphic functions defined over this division algebra can be approximated by Cauchy’s integral theorem. Holomorphic functions defined over these satisfy the Cauchy-Riemann equations, a pair of differential equations determining whether a function in these numbers is differentiable. Polynomials in this number system have a root in this number system by the (*) fundamental theorem of algebra. They can be conjugated, and when added to their conjugate give a real number. The roots of the equation x squared plus 1 are this kind of number. For 10 points, name this kind of number that can be written as a plus b i, where i is the square root of negative 1.
Answer: complex [prompt on imaginary numbers]

The first sentence is sort of wrong to use "approximately", since that theorem gives the exact values; also, it's kind of backwards, since one usually finds the residues and uses them to find the integral.

A busy highway produces 50 of these and a jet engine can produce up to 140. For 10 points each:
Name this logarithmic scale that is used to measure sound intensity. The measurement of intensity under this scale equals 10 times the logarithm base 10 of the absolute intensity over the hearing threshold intensity.
Answer: decibels
Name this effect that predicts that sound frequency will increase for a source that is moving toward an observer, and that sound frequency will decrease for a source moving away from an observer.
Answer: Doppler effect
The speed of sound through a long, solid rod where the diamater is less than the wavelength is the square root of this quantity for the medium divided by density. The spring constant of a length L of material with area A is given as this quantity times A over L
Answer: Young’s modulus
[No man its the bulk modulus in the speed of sound formula, not Young’s modulus! -EM]

Here's the note from "EM".

Name the following objects in the solar system. For 10 points each:
[10] This object orbits the Earth. The same side of it is always facing the Earth. Neil Armstrong walked on it during the Apollo 11 program.
Answer: The Moon

The first part is insultingly easy. If you want to give clues at the level of "This object orbits the Earth" and "Neil Armstrong...", just use one of them.

Recently, DeBeer and coworkers confirmed the existence of a hexacoordinate carbon atom at the center of a cofactor relevant in the biological analogue of this. That cofactor, named for its iron-molybdenum-cobalt composition, is found in the enzyme catalyzing the biological version of this phenomenon, which is often localized to heterocyst cells of bacteria from the genus (*) Rhizobia. This process has an exothermicity of 92 kilojoules, and it was first catalyzed by osmium but is now catalyzed by iron oxides. The end-product of this process is fed into the Ostwald process to produce nitric acid. For 10 points, name this ammonia-forming process.
ANSWER: Haber process [accept Haber-Bosch process; accept nitrogen fixation until “osmium” and prompt thereafter]

This is half about nitrogen fixation. That's really confusing. If you want to write a tossup on nitrogen fixation, great, but don't put clues about one in the other except perhaps to say "this is the biological (respectively, inorganic) analogue of the Haber process (nitrogen fixation)".

Pushdown automata consist of a finite state machine combined with this kind of data structure. Winding and unwinding are the names of two operations for a specific type of this data structure, which stores information about subroutines active in a computer system and is used when writing recursive functions. That is the “call” variety, and placing too many addresses in it results in an (*) overflow error. Push and pop are the two functions used to add and remove entries from this type of data structure, which is described as “LIFO”, or last-in first-out. For 10 points, name this type of data structure contrasted with queues that is often used to describe a pile of pancakes.
Answer: stack

Seriously with the giveaway?

A participant in this event stated, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” Cheryl Mills defended the central figure of this event, who later ended up paying an $850,000 settlement to Paula Jones. In exchange for immunity, Linda Tripp gave Kenneth Starr a set of taped phone conversations prior to this event. This event was followed by an acquittal by the Senate of charges of perjury and (*) abuse of power, and was the result of a scandal involving a woman whom the central figure claimed to not have had sexual relations with. For 10 points, name this 1998 indictment of an American president who was previously accused of sleeping with Monica Lewinsky.
Answer: the impeachment of Bill Clinton [prompt on related events or less specific answers, such as “Lewinsky scandal,” “Clinton scandal,” and “Clinton trial”]

This lead-in is ridiculously easy even for people who don't actually remember the quote being said, because it's been made fun of so much. This led to an 8-way buzzer race, none of whose participants were sure what was actually being asked for.

While references to this day in the Book of Ezekiel may refer to the month of Nisan, the holiday occurs yearly on the first two days of Tishrei. This holiday was known as Yom Hazikaron before the creation of the Israeli national holiday of that name. One practice on this holiday is praying by flowing water, or tashlikh, and another custom involves (*) one hundred instances of a certain musical action. “Shanah Tovah” is a common greeting among people celebrating this holiday, which begins the “Days of Awe” and entails eating apples dipped in honey and sounding the shofar. For 10 points, name this holiday, the Jewish New Year.
Answer: Rosh Hashanah [accept Yom Teruah]

"first two days of Tishrei" belongs nowhere near the beginning of a tossup on Rosh Hashanah, which is *still* known as Yom HaZikaron -- there are just two holidays by that name, distinguished by context.

One player of this instrument named a hard bop quintet with the trumpeter Clifford Brown. That performer released the album We Insist! and collaborated with Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus for the album Money Jungle. Another player of this instrument released the album A Night in Tunisia with his Jazz Messengers and performed a famous rendition of Bobby Timmons’ (*) “Moanin’” on an album of the same name. For 10 points, name this instrument played by Chick Webb, Elvin Jones, Max Roach, and Art Blakey, which often involves using a hi-hat, snare drum, and cymbals to produce a percussive sound.
Answer: drums [or percussion]

This is all kinds of screwed up. What is the Night in Tunisia clue talking about? It's by Dizzy Gillespie, a noted trumpeter, and was prominently played by the band led by Earl Hines, a pianist. The Jazz Messengers were led by Art Blakely, who was a drummer, but neither he nor they had anything to do with A Night in Tunisia. Ctrl-F'ing on the Art Blakely article on Wikipedia suggests maybe you meant "A Night at Birdland"? Anyway, this got negged hard, and protested hard, near the end of a close finals match. Why is the phrase "snare drum" near the end of a question on _drums_?

Note: It was subsequently pointed out to me that A Night in Tunisia is also the name of an album by Blakely. That just means the clue is horrible instead of wrong.

Normed vector spaces give rise to these entities. For 10 points each:
[10] Name these mathematical entities that consist of a set and a binary function. The function must be non-negative, symmetric, and satisfy the triangle inequality.
Answer: metric space
[10] The function on metric spaces is used to measure this concept, which is how far away two points are and is the length of a line connecting two points.
Answer: distance
[10] The standard distance metric on the real numbers is named after this Greek mathematician, who laid the basis for geometry using 5 axioms in his treatise Elements.
Answer: Euclid

Normed anythings give rise to metric spaces -- if you have a norm, you have a metric. "distance metric" is redundant. This bonus has an impossible (for high school) first part and trivial second and third parts.

One character in this work’s husband, Pasha Antipov, becomes a general known as “The Shooter” after escaping a POW camp because of his tendency to murder captives. For 10 points each:

"This work's husband"? This work is unmarried. Say "The husband of one character in this work".


Please don't take these nitpicks as implying nothing else was problematic about the set. These, along with the purple nail polish example from the thread (of which there are many instances), are the things I think you can easily fix before future mirrors. Making the set appropriate for any version of high school difficulty is impossible at this point.

[Stained Diviner]

I don't have time to go through everything. Here are some notes on the first few rounds.

Round 1:
Top teams aren't going to get Too Late the Phalarope without being given Paton.
There's a bonus that mentions Agincourt twice, which is almost followed immediately by a bonus asking for Agincourt.
Along with a bunch of difficult bonuses, there is a trinity bonus that could be used in a middle school set.
It's difficult to write a bridge tossup, and this one doesn't really work. If they don't get Sundial or Millennium, this is probably getting frauded.

Round 2:
Finnish composers isn't a good idea for a high school tossup.
The question placement makes it likely that a Japan bonus will immediately be followed by an Emperor of Japan tossup.
Romanian writers also isn't a good idea, and students have to listen very closely to realize that all those Ionesco clues are not pointing to France.
Speaking of France, a match between average teams probably goes to the giveaway of the next tossup, which is trivial.
Phases of the moon could use more alternative answers--tides and phases are both determined by the position of the moon. In general, this bonus is easier than the others.
I don't know why you give ten seconds for sine two theta, since teams are not going to derive the formula in anything less than a few minutes.

I also remember a name the African country lit bonus that had two very difficult parts. In general, it seemed like there were too many questions asking to name a country, including three USA tossups. There was also a round in which the 2nd and 3rd tossups were both geography, but the announced distribution for this set was .5/.5 geography.

[hydrocephalitic listlessness]

Thanks! The Agincourt thing has been changed, don't know why I didn't catch that as I was reading it. I'll try to respond more once finals are over, but for those who are interested, there were an average of a little less than two country tossups per round. I agree that this is a little high.

[pajaro bobo]

The Australia lit toss up (forgot what round it was) incorrectly names a character from Riders in the Chariot as "Mordecai Hillefarb", or something similar. The correct name should be "Mordecai Himmelfarb".

[adamsil]

A few things I remember from reading today (and I'm pretty sure there's a lot more that I could point out if you sent me the packets, thanks!):

The activation energy bonus says it's the energy between transition state and products; it should be energy between TS and reactants. I also found the wording of the Hammond postulate bonus part to be strange, but I don't have the packets in front of me so I can't remember if there was a factual error or not.

The clue about Lee-Kesler in the vapor pressure tossup is misleading. According to my Thermo textbook, there are Lee-Kesler correlations for compressibility factor, residual enthalpy, residual entropy, and fugacity coefficient, and there's probably correlations for lots of other stuff, too. (If you're stuck on using Lee-Kesler, the definition of the acentric factor might work as a clue?) Also, that tossup's description of Raoult's Law was not correct: it said something like the mole fractions are equal to the vapor pressures?

There was a bonus part on Gustav Kirchoff that literally had the answerline _Kirchoff_ without any additional information, including the guy's first name.
The tossup on Mahayana has the word Buddhahood in power. That does not seem like a very good idea.
I had somebody give me the answer _apotheosis_ for the tossup on "becoming immortal"--that's probably a logical thing to add to the answerline.
I remember a round with four arts tossups--two painting. It was the round that had questions on Mondrian and Cezanne (6 maybe?)
It doesn't really make sense to me to have a clue about "reticulons" in a tossup on the endoplasmic reticulum. I've never heard of them--but it's not exactly difficult to figure out?
Assad should be acceptable for al-Assad.

[fett0001]

Also, that tossup's description of Raoult's Law was not correct: it said something like the mole fractions are equal to the vapor pressures?

Unless I'm stupid, one interpretation of raoult's law is VaporPressureofA(Pure) * MoleFractionofA = VaporPressureofA(Mixture)

[gyre and gimble]

Hey, so my apologies for not responding to the earlier posts in this thread, but we felt most of the points were fair and made the corresponding changes. However, we changed things strictly for distributional reasons and to even out difficulty between categories, so comments along the lines of "this question was too difficult" were not addressed to maintain the integrity of the original set's contents.

Adam's and Alex's comments are also very helpful; I'll just comment on the ones I don't agree with completely. What Mike said is what we were going for, but we didn't word it properly. The implication was that the "mole fraction" of the total vapor pressure was the partial pressure, but what we should have said was "proportional to" and not "equal to" to make it clear. Also, we made a last-minute change before our own tournament in November to cut half the social science distribution and just have a 0.5/0.5 Misc. category. One (or more, maybe?) of those happened to be that Cezanne question, which is why there were four arts tossups in that packet.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone, and I think our writing team would be interested to hear more general impressions (especially from people who have played previous HFTs) in the other thread.

[Off To See The Lizard]

IIRC, the tossup on Garcia-Marquez seemed very hard. Could I see it again?

[hydrocephalitic listlessness]

In one story, this author created an ambulance driver who plans to scam a deposed president who is in Geneva for a back operation. This author of “Bon Voyage, Mr. President” wrote a novella in which a character is forced into prostitution after burning down her grandmother’s home. That character, Erendira, appears early in a novel in which a character who signs the Treaty of Neerlandia repeatedly crafts golden fish and melts them back down. In that novel by this author, (*) Remedios the Beauty ascends into the sky and the seventeen sons of Colonel Aureliano Buendia are murdered. For 10 points, name this creator of Macondo, the Colombian author of One Hundred Years of Solitude.
ANSWER: Gabriel Garcia Marquez [Prompt on “Marquez.”]

[Panayot Hitov]

For the question on Vishnu, I don't see the need of using the word "kshatriya." I'm pretty sure that kshatriya just means warrior in sanskrit, and that's what they are in the myth anyway, if I'm not mistaken.
In the finals packet, I think "secondary protein structures" should be promotable for the question on alpha helixes.