Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

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Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Ras superfamily »

Any question specific discussion should take place in this thread. We would appreciate your comments to polish the set for future mirrors.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by #1 Mercury Adept »

When I read this, I (and some players) noticed that the answer to the third bonus part had sometimes been given or at least mentioned elsewhere (in the leadin or as part of another clue): the Croatian fascists bonus asked for "fascism" as the third part but had basically mentioned that these guys were fascists in the leadin; Väinämöinen's "singing contest" was also mentioned earlier in that bonus; and likewise with the People's Power Revolution.

The question on the fall of Saigon referred to something called "Operation Foreign Wind", which looks like a typo for "Operation Frequent Wind" (which someone subsequently buzzed in with in my room).

There was also some question over whether "triple alpha" should have prompted on "fusion".
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

Distance model wrote:There was also some question over whether "triple alpha" should have prompted on "fusion".
I don't think there would have been any harm done in prompting, but I wouldn't require it. The triple alpha process is a specific pathway of fusion reactions and the first clues make that clear and specifically refer to the answer rather than to fusion in general.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Cody »

The Laplace transform question has a few problems. Writing a uniquely specifying question on the Laplace transform is very difficult; I recommend against trying it without being at least very familiar with the Fourier transform as well.

The moment-generating function a RV X is given by the expectation value of e^xt. This involves taking a Taylor series of e^xt [because the k-th moment of a function is integral from -infty to +infty of x^k f_X(x) dx], multiplying it by the PDF and integrating over -infty to +infty. So, this clue is very confusing, and while it may be right in the abstract, I'm not sure if it is practically useful.
The convolution clue is not uniquely specifying; it also applies to the Fourier transform and the z-transform. In addition, it is entirely possible to correctly buzz [in isolation] on "This operation takes a pair of inputs under convolution" and say integration.
The dirac delta clue is not uniquely specifying; it also applies to the Fourier transform. In addition, the integral from -infty to +infty of the dirac delta is also one.
The transfer function clue is not uniquely specifying; it also applies to the Fourier transform and the z-transform. In fact, almost every transfer function I've derived has been obtained from the Fourier and z-transform, rather than the Laplace transform [exception is when applied to circuit theory].
Your giveaway clue should contain something more substantial than 'transform named for a French mathematician.' Incidentally, this also applies to the Fourier transform.

I'm sure some of the above clue also apply to the DFT [the convolution one shouldn't, if I recall correctly, due to the whole circular convolution thing], but I don't feel like refamiliarizing myself with it.

edit: in fact, reviewing the wording again, I'm pretty sure that the entire convolution clue could be confused for the way you manually do it with integration, since it is the integral of the multiplication of the two functions [except one flipped over the y-axis], and can be easily split into the integration of one function times the integration of the other.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by nvijay »

The lead-in to the Manchester United tossup was i believe factually wrong. The first clue referred to a movie that had Peter Taylor and Brian Clough who had a rivalry with this team. I presume that this refers to The Damned United which in that case the clue would be referring to Leeds United rather than Manchester United. Manchester United does not play even a minor role in the film. The only thing that stopped me buzzing in was my realization of the sheer ridiculousness of the idea of a tossup on Leeds United.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Ras superfamily »

Wow this was a major mistake on my part. You are absolutely correct, and I will fix this for the next mirror. I apologize for the mistake
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Fond du lac operon »

I'll second everything Cody said about the Laplace transform question. In fact, both Jake and I buzzed after the Dirac delta clue with the intention of saying "integration," since that applies to both the Dirac clue and the convolution clue. It might be worth adding "It's not integration, but" before those two clues.

In the Feynman tossup, the path integral clue seems misplaced. Surely there are lesser-known clues about Feynman that can go there.

Pennance Packet 3, Bonus 16 wrote:This nation launched Operation Askari and pulled most of its troops home in one conflict after the indecisive Battle of Cuito Cuanavale. For 10 points each:
[10] Name this country whose army clashed with Cuban forces at the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale prior to withdrawing them per the New York Accords. It also fought SWAPO in another concurrent conflict.
ANSWER: Republic of South Africa [or RSA]
[10] South Africa fought those battles in support of this former militant group then led by Jonas Savimbi. It controlled the southern portions of a country whose independence it had fought for alongside the MPLA.
ANSWER: UNITA [or National Union for the Total Independence of Angola or Uniao Nacional para a Independencia Total de Angola]
[10] UNITA and MPLA are from this former Portuguese colony in southwestern Africa. It borders both Congos to the north because it has an exclave at Cabinda.
ANSWER: Republic of Angola [or Republica de Angola]
There should probably be a note to the moderator not to read alternate answers for the UNITA part, which the moderator in my room did.
Pennance Packet 5, Tossup 15 wrote:...This work blames all social strife as being rooted in master-slave morality, and it introduces the triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. For 10 points, name this work which introduced the dialectic and traces the origin of consciousness, by Georg Hegel.
ANSWER: Phenomenology of Mind [or Phenomenology of Spirit or Phänomenologie des Geistes]
This isn't really my specialty philosophically, but I believe the clues about introducing the dialectic are factually just wrong. Hegel himself attributed the thesis/antithesis/synthesis terminology to Kant, and both Kant and Fichte used things very close to what we'd today call Hegelian dialectic in their works. (This is admittedly just based on secondary sources as I've never read the Phenomenology or any of Fichte, and not much Kant, but the secondary sources I've found seem to agree on this.)
Pennance Packet 1, Tossup 4 wrote:Damocloids are believed to originate from this body, which is located outside the oligarch halo. Gliese 710 is predicted to move through the outer edges of this body. The depletion problem of this body is solved by the interaction via galactic tides between the spheroidal outer region and the proposed dense inner toroidal region. The scattered (*) disc has been proposed as the primary source of objects in this body. John Matese proposed the existence of a gas giant in this body nicknamed Tyche, while another hypothetical object in this body thought to cause periodic mass extinctions is called Nemesis. 2008 KV2 and 90377 Sedna are possible candidates of its inner region. Archetypal objects like McNaught, Hale-Bopp, and Halley are thought to originate here. For 10 points, name this region of the solar system thought to be the origin of long-period comets.
ANSWER: Opik-Oort Cloud
I know that several of the clues in this tossup do specifically refer to the Oort cloud, but I still wonder if you shouldn't prompt on "solar system" -- certainly clues like the Gliese 710 clue, the Tyche and Nemesis clues, and a buzz after "scattered disc" refer to the solar system as well as, more specifically, the Oort cloud. Admittedly this is partly just sour grapes, because I buzzed with "solar system" and would have gotten it on a prompt, but it's worth thinking about.
Pennance Packet 7, Tossup 8 wrote:This event had a cloth depicting Theseus and Ariadne according to the epyllion Catullus 64. One party to this event had previous social obligations cleared when a jealous Astyademia gets the daughter of Eurition, Antigone, to commit suicide. According to the “Themis variant,” a King of Pthia and brother of Telamon wrestled the other figure in this event after a prophecy scared away (*) Zeus and Poseidon, the latter of which gave the immortal talking horses Xanthus and Balius at this event. At this event, Chiron gifted an ashen spear that was later used by a figure hidden at Skyros by one party to this event. One figure not invited to this event, Eris, threw the apple of discord to its guests. For 10 points, name this matrimonial event between the leader of the Myrmidons and a Nereid, the parents of Achilles.
ANSWER: Wedding of Peleus and Thetis [accept equivalents for wedding such as “nuptials”, “marriage”, “matrimonial union”, and others; prompt on Wedding of Achilles’s parents]
Anecdotally, a lot of people at our site could think of one of Peleus or Thetis but not the other, and so couldn't get the 10 despite having like 95% of the knowledge necessary. Maybe "Peleus' wedding" or "Thetis' wedding" should both be acceptable, at least before the very end of the question, and assuming that neither of those figures ever got married to anyone else, which I don't know that much Greek mythology, only Discordian mythology, so I have no idea.
Pennance Packet 7, Tossup 14 wrote:A letter by Sven Ekdahl is evidence that one side in this battle employed a tactical retreat borrowed from the Golden Horde, though Stephen Turnbull argues that they messed it up by returning late to the field. Prior to this battle, the winning side united its forces at Czerwinsk and committed alleged atrocities at Gilgenburg. Before this battle, one commander sent a pair of swords to the other side as an insult. The Peace of (*) Thorn showed the failure of the winning side to capitalize on this victory. This battle’s namesake swords became an emblem of the winning side after being offered to Vytautas and Jogaila by the losing side’s Grand Master, Ulrich von Jungingen. For ten points, name this 1410 defeat of the Teutonic Knights by the newly formed Kingdom of Poland-Lithuania.
ANSWER: Battle of Grunwald [or First Battle of Tannenberg; or 1410 Battle of Tannenberg; do not accept “Second Battle of Tannenberg” or “1914 Battle of Tannenberg”]
Dargan claims this is far too hard for a regular-difficulty tossup. I am probably the worst history player in quizbowl and thus am not qualified to judge his assertion, but I'm passing it along.
Pennance Packet 8, Tossup 12 wrote:An odd mapping of this construct to Euclidean n-space maps a pair of points to the same point by the Borsuk-Ulam theorem. Even-dimensional ones have no non-vanishing continuous tangent vector field. The Möbius transformation is a stereographic projection from the plane to this construct and back. This shape is packed optimally in twenty-four dimensions by the Leech lattice and in three dimensions by a (*) hexagonal-close packed lattice. The equidecomposition of this figure requires the decomposition of the free group formed by the rotations of irrational multiples of pi on orthogonal axes; that fact leads to an interesting consequence of the axiom of choice in which one of these things can be made into two, called the Banach-Tarski paradox. The sum of the angles of a triangle on one of these is greater than 180 degrees, and the variables theta, phi, and r represent the coordinate system named for them. For 10 points, name these figures whose volume is four thirds pi times radius cubed.
ANSWER: spheres (and word forms)
There's a few things I'm going to nitpick here. The first two clues refer to n-spheres, but later clues seem to refer specifically to the 2-sphere, which is I guess fine, but a little confusing (and you should probably, to be safe, explicitly accept "n-spheres" as correct, at least early). Secondly, the Banach-Tarski paradox traditionally applies to balls rather than spheres -- and these are very different things. I'm not sure, off the top of my head, whether you can decompose one sphere and rearrange it into two identical copies. Wikipedia claims that Hausdorff had a "paradoxical decomposition of the sphere," but I'm not sure if it's the same.
Pennance Packet 8, Bonus 12 wrote:This theorem is used to calculate the big-O runtime of an algorithm employing a recurrence relation of the form T of n equals A times T of n over b plus f of n.
ANSWER: master theorem
This is basically fine and a good description of what the master theorem does, but it might be worth prompting on Akra-Bazzi -- since Akra-Bazzi generalizes the master theorem, anything you can do with master you can do with Akra-Bazzi.
Pennance Packet 9, Tossup 2 wrote:One method of arranging these entities is Otto Rosenberg’s Four Corner Method, and Project 748 was an attempt to digitize these entities. One compilation of these entities was called “The Ready Rectifier” and was translated by James Legge, though its actual title was probably closer to “progress towards correctness”. The “Second Scheme” was a failed attempt to alter them. The most famous compilation of these entities organizes them by two hundred and fourteen section headers called radicals. Rules for creating these include making (*) enclosures before contents and creating horizontal components before vertical ones, and a definitive collection of them was created by the Kangxi emperor. For 10 points, identify these logographic entities which come in traditional and simplified forms and are often created using calligraphy, the written component of the Chinese language.
ANSWER: Chinese characters [don’t need “Chinese” after mention, accept literally anything implying the use of writing and the Chinese or Mandarin language]
So, I wonder if the "radical" clue is early, since it's super famous and I knew about radicals even before I started learning Chinese. Also, you should probably accept "hanzi" as well as the names in other languages that use Chinese characters as part of their writing system (so "kanji" and I believe "hanja"?)
Pennance Packet 9, Tossup 12 wrote:Tea and Sugar were the two namesake goods of resupply transports for people who helped complete one of these objects Australia. The person who developed time zones, Sir Sanford Fleming, provided guidance to a Canadian project to complete one of these objects that was finished in Craigellachie, British Columbia. The Chinese city of Harbin was built as part of a plan to build one of these objects by (*) Sergei Witte; that object was finished but experienced logistical nightmares during the Russo-Japanese War and was seized by the Czecho-Slovak Legion in the Russian Civil War. North American types of these objects depended on cheap coolies from China and frequently had the word “Pacific” in their names. For 10 points, name this type of object that comprises a line of track from ocean to ocean on which trains travel across large landmasses.
ANSWER: Transcontinental Railroad [or anything that mentions a railway from ocean to ocean a railway that traverses a continent before mention; prompt on railroad, railway, train, rail line, iron road, tracks, etc.]
I like this as an idea for a tossup, but in practice it seems kind of transparent. It's an engineering project, that seems like it's pretty massive, in Australia and Canada, and there are "resupply transports", which suggests that it's transportation-related -- this narrows it down a lot, and once "railroad" is prompted, you've pretty much got it.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by abnormal abdomen »

I don't really feel qualified to comment on much, but I just wanted to mention that the leadin for the salat tossup was a bit strange, though a bit humorous. I don't have the set, but the leadin was basically, "One item used in this practice is to be discarded after it is used in order to prevent Satan from performing the same action." I'm fairly certain this is referring to a jani maaz, as it is called in Urdu, or just a prayer rug. Anyways, this clue really threw me off, because in my experience, the only people who advocate this are older Indian/Pakistani Muslims, and they only say this to little kids in order to get them to be respectful towards a prayer area and so forth. To be sure, it has no scriptural basis in the Qur'an or Sunnah, and it's actually a bit of a joke for Muslim adults (it goes a little something like "if anyone needs to pray some salat it's Mr. Iblees/Shaytan/Satan). I guess what I'm trying to say is that, unless I'm misinformed about cultural practices, it's a pretty unhelpful clue to people, and isn't an actual part of Islamic teaching. The rest of that tossup and the other Islam questions in the set were fine, though.

Anyways, I had a fine time at yesterday's tournament.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

I'll second Harrison's comment about Hegelian dialectic - the use of the terms "thesis/antithesis/synthesis" began a few decades after Hegel and certainly wasn't introduced in Phenomenology of Spirit - it was imposed on his work from without.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Matt Weiner »

Orangutan Surfing Civilization wrote:I don't really feel qualified to comment on much, but I just wanted to mention that the leadin for the salat tossup was a bit strange, though a bit humorous. I don't have the set, but the leadin was basically, "One item used in this practice is to be discarded after it is used in order to prevent Satan from performing the same action." I'm fairly certain this is referring to a jani maaz, as it is called in Urdu, or just a prayer rug. Anyways, this clue really threw me off, because in my experience, the only people who advocate this are older Indian/Pakistani Muslims, and they only say this to little kids in order to get them to be respectful towards a prayer area and so forth. To be sure, it has no scriptural basis in the Qur'an or Sunnah, and it's actually a bit of a joke for Muslim adults (it goes a little something like "if anyone needs to pray some salat it's Mr. Iblees/Shaytan/Satan). I guess what I'm trying to say is that, unless I'm misinformed about cultural practices, it's a pretty unhelpful clue to people, and isn't an actual part of Islamic teaching. The rest of that tossup and the other Islam questions in the set were fine, though.

Anyways, I had a fine time at yesterday's tournament.
I guess I'll take this opportunity to say I don't understand this sort of perpetual critique of religion questions--why SHOULDN'T questions reflect what the people practicing the religion actually do/say/believe, as opposed to restricting themselves to certain texts? And you say right here that people actually do believe this (you've heard it yourself!) so I'm not sure on what basis it isn't "an actual part of Islamic teaching." I see people trying to cast doubt on religion questions in this manner all the time, but I think quizbowl would be for the poorer if we relied on transcribing passages from central texts only and didn't take into account the wider and more relevant world of what people in the religions in question actually do.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

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Matt Weiner wrote: I guess I'll take this opportunity to say I don't understand this sort of perpetual critique of religion questions--why SHOULDN'T questions reflect what the people practicing the religion actually do/say/believe, as opposed to restricting themselves to certain texts? And you say right here that people actually do believe this (you've heard it yourself!) so I'm not sure on what basis it isn't "an actual part of Islamic teaching." I see people trying to cast doubt on religion questions in this manner all the time, but I think quizbowl would be for the poorer if we relied on transcribing passages from central texts only and didn't take into account the wider and more relevant world of what people in the religions in question actually do.
I think this is fair. I think I failed to make it clear, though, that the people who do say this don't actually believe it, but do so to get little kids to put away the jani maaz and things like that. Even in that context, though, what you're saying is perfectly reasonable.

To add to this, though, do you think that the idea you're espousing (which I do now agree with) applies despite the fact that, as far as I know, only a small subset of the religion (in this case, Indians and Pakistanis) is even familiar with the idea? I suppose it's entirely possible that I'm wrong, but I don't know of, say, Muslims from the Middle East who are familiar with this thing.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Masked Canadian History Bandit »

Fond du lac operon wrote: There should probably be a note to the moderator not to read alternate answers for the UNITA part, which the moderator in my room did.
I'm sorry this happened. It's unfortunate that out of the many bonuses with this issue, the one that I left untagged was spoiled for you. It'll be fixed for future mirrors.
Fond du lac operon wrote: Anecdotally, a lot of people at our site could think of one of Peleus or Thetis but not the other, and so couldn't get the 10 despite having like 95% of the knowledge necessary. Maybe "Peleus' wedding" or "Thetis' wedding" should both be acceptable, at least before the very end of the question, and assuming that neither of those figures ever got married to anyone else, which I don't know that much Greek mythology, only Discordian mythology, so I have no idea.
The "previous social obligation" that was cleared was when Peleus's previous wife committed suicide. So "Peleus' wedding" should only be promotable. There is a case to be made for "Thetis' wedding" though.
Fond du lac operon wrote: Dargan claims this is far too hard for a regular-difficulty tossup. I am probably the worst history player in quizbowl and thus am not qualified to judge his assertion, but I'm passing it along.
I think it's a significant battle, and within the upper limits of regular difficulty. Others may have different opinions.
Fond du lac operon wrote: So, I wonder if the "radical" clue is early, since it's super famous and I knew about radicals even before I started learning Chinese. Also, you should probably accept "hanzi" as well as the names in other languages that use Chinese characters as part of their writing system (so "kanji" and I believe "hanja"?)
"Radicals" are definitely more famous than stroke order rules and shouldn't be in power. "Hanzi" should also be acceptable, but I'm not sure about "kanji" and others because I'm not sure how earlier clues apply to them (Eric wrote this question).
Fond du lac operon wrote: I like this as an idea for a tossup, but in practice it seems kind of transparent. It's an engineering project, that seems like it's pretty massive, in Australia and Canada, and there are "resupply transports", which suggests that it's transportation-related -- this narrows it down a lot, and once "railroad" is prompted, you've pretty much got it.
I disagree that it's transparent. China and Canada are two of the world's three leading hydroelectricity producers (and the province British Columbia gets nearly all its power from hydro), while Australia has some large-scale hydroelectricity projects such as the Snow Mountain scheme. So it could realistically be a tossup on dams/hydro power stations, or maybe even on some renewable energy project (solar power station, wind farms,etc.). However, using the word "transports" so early in the question probably helps key people towards the answerline, so "method" or "system" might work better.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

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Orangutan Surfing Civilization wrote: To add to this, though, do you think that the idea you're espousing (which I do now agree with) applies despite the fact that, as far as I know, only a small subset of the religion (in this case, Indians and Pakistanis) is even familiar with the idea? I suppose it's entirely possible that I'm wrong, but I don't know of, say, Muslims from the Middle East who are familiar with this thing.
Well we have clues about sects of religions all the time; I don't see any reason not to reward people who have deep cultural knowledge of a subset of a religion with a fantastic buzz.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

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Tokyo Sex Whale wrote:
Orangutan Surfing Civilization wrote: To add to this, though, do you think that the idea you're espousing (which I do now agree with) applies despite the fact that, as far as I know, only a small subset of the religion (in this case, Indians and Pakistanis) is even familiar with the idea? I suppose it's entirely possible that I'm wrong, but I don't know of, say, Muslims from the Middle East who are familiar with this thing.
Well we have clues about sects of religions all the time; I don't see any reason not to reward people who have deep cultural knowledge of a subset of a religion with a fantastic buzz.
Yeah, that makes plenty of sense, actually. I'm not sure why I didn't originally see it this way.

By the way, can I be emailed a copy of the set at [email protected]? Thanks!
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

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Fond du lac operon wrote:
Pennance Packet 8, Tossup 12 wrote:An odd mapping of this construct to Euclidean n-space maps a pair of points to the same point by the Borsuk-Ulam theorem. Even-dimensional ones have no non-vanishing continuous tangent vector field. The Möbius transformation is a stereographic projection from the plane to this construct and back. This shape is packed optimally in twenty-four dimensions by the Leech lattice and in three dimensions by a (*) hexagonal-close packed lattice. The equidecomposition of this figure requires the decomposition of the free group formed by the rotations of irrational multiples of pi on orthogonal axes; that fact leads to an interesting consequence of the axiom of choice in which one of these things can be made into two, called the Banach-Tarski paradox. The sum of the angles of a triangle on one of these is greater than 180 degrees, and the variables theta, phi, and r represent the coordinate system named for them. For 10 points, name these figures whose volume is four thirds pi times radius cubed.
ANSWER: spheres (and word forms)
There's a few things I'm going to nitpick here. The first two clues refer to n-spheres, but later clues seem to refer specifically to the 2-sphere, which is I guess fine, but a little confusing (and you should probably, to be safe, explicitly accept "n-spheres" as correct, at least early). Secondly, the Banach-Tarski paradox traditionally applies to balls rather than spheres.
I think according to the proof I know you have to have some sort of solid structure there, so I don't think anything homeomorphic to a sphere can be duplicated in this way.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by The Ununtiable Twine »

Damocloids are believed to originate from this body, which is located outside the oligarch halo. Gliese 710 is predicted to move through the outer edges of this body. The depletion problem of this body is solved by the interaction via galactic tides between the spheroidal outer region and the proposed dense inner toroidal region. The scattered (*) disc has been proposed as the primary source of objects in this body. John Matese proposed the existence of a gas giant in this body nicknamed Tyche, while another hypothetical object in this body thought to cause periodic mass extinctions is called Nemesis. 2008 KV2 and 90377 Sedna are possible candidates of its inner region. Archetypal objects like McNaught, Hale-Bopp, and Halley are thought to originate here. For 10 points, name this region of the solar system thought to be the origin of long-period comets.
ANSWER: Opik-Oort Cloud
John Matese was my quantum teacher. I'm so sad I did not get to press the button on this question.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

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The Ununtiable Twine wrote:I think according to the proof I know you have to have some sort of solid structure there, so I don't think anything homeomorphic to a sphere can be duplicated in this way.
So I looked up the proof of Banach-Tarski, and in fact you can decompose a sphere in the Banach-Tarski manner -- actually it's slightly easier than doing it for a solid ball. (Mathematically inclined readers who don't know the proof: The basic idea is to exploit some weird properties of the free group of rank two, which can be embedded into the group of rotations in 3-space. Since a rotation of the 3-ball fixes the boundary which is a 2-sphere, the decomposition works the same either way.) Nevertheless, the theorem is almost always stated for a 3-ball, so I still think it's not a very good clue.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Fond du lac operon »

I'm going through the packets I didn't hear Saturday, and you probably already caught this, but the bonus in Packet 11 on the Philippines mentions the answer to the last part in the clue to the first part.

Also, I love that there's a question about the planet in Alpha Centauri like two days after they announce the discovery of an actual planet in the Alpha Centauri system.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

Fond du lac operon wrote:I know that several of the clues in this tossup do specifically refer to the Oort cloud, but I still wonder if you shouldn't prompt on "solar system" -- certainly clues like the Gliese 710 clue, the Tyche and Nemesis clues, and a buzz after "scattered disc" refer to the solar system as well as, more specifically, the Oort cloud. Admittedly this is partly just sour grapes, because I buzzed with "solar system" and would have gotten it on a prompt, but it's worth thinking about.
The solar system is not a "body." The Oort cloud is. Gliese 710 is not predicted to pass through the entirety of the solar system (fortunately!) but rather through the cloud.
Anecdotally, a lot of people at our site could think of one of Peleus or Thetis but not the other, and so couldn't get the 10 despite having like 95% of the knowledge necessary. Maybe "Peleus' wedding" or "Thetis' wedding" should both be acceptable, at least before the very end of the question, and assuming that neither of those figures ever got married to anyone else, which I don't know that much Greek mythology, only Discordian mythology, so I have no idea.
This is pretty basic Greek myth stuff. You gotta know the names of both people involved in the event, and only one name is not enough.
(re: Tannenberg) Dargan claims this is far too hard for a regular-difficulty tossup. I am probably the worst history player in quizbowl and thus am not qualified to judge his assertion, but I'm passing it along.
This question is totally fine for a regular difficulty tournament.
There's a few things I'm going to nitpick here. The first two clues refer to n-spheres, but later clues seem to refer specifically to the 2-sphere, which is I guess fine, but a little confusing (and you should probably, to be safe, explicitly accept "n-spheres" as correct, at least early). Secondly, the Banach-Tarski paradox traditionally applies to balls rather than spheres -- and these are very different things. I'm not sure, off the top of my head, whether you can decompose one sphere and rearrange it into two identical copies. Wikipedia claims that Hausdorff had a "paradoxical decomposition of the sphere," but I'm not sure if it's the same.
If you would have said "n-sphere" I'm sure you'd have gotten points for that. I believe that BT also applies to spheres (which aren't really that different from balls... sphere = ball + boundary). Cursory googling confirms it, but if that's not right, you can blame me.

Pennance Packet 9, Tossup 12 wrote:Tea and Sugar were the two namesake goods of resupply transports for people who helped complete one of these objects Australia. The person who developed time zones, Sir Sanford Fleming, provided guidance to a Canadian project to complete one of these objects that was finished in Craigellachie, British Columbia. The Chinese city of Harbin was built as part of a plan to build one of these objects by (*) Sergei Witte; that object was finished but experienced logistical nightmares during the Russo-Japanese War and was seized by the Czecho-Slovak Legion in the Russian Civil War. North American types of these objects depended on cheap coolies from China and frequently had the word “Pacific” in their names. For 10 points, name this type of object that comprises a line of track from ocean to ocean on which trains travel across large landmasses.
ANSWER: Transcontinental Railroad [or anything that mentions a railway from ocean to ocean a railway that traverses a continent before mention; prompt on railroad, railway, train, rail line, iron road, tracks, etc.]
I like this as an idea for a tossup, but in practice it seems kind of transparent. It's an engineering project, that seems like it's pretty massive, in Australia and Canada, and there are "resupply transports", which suggests that it's transportation-related -- this narrows it down a lot, and once "railroad" is prompted, you've pretty much got it.[/quote]

There's a problem with this question, but it's mostly one of wording. A railroad is not an "object" except in the most vague sense of the word. It's a project or undertaking or something like that, but it's definitely not a single object under any ordinary usage circumstances.

edit: doing some more reading on BT indicates that the theorem is formulated in terms of a ball, so I should have rewritten that clue to make that explicit. My bad.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Fond du lac operon »

grapesmoker wrote:
Fond du lac operon wrote:I know that several of the clues in this tossup do specifically refer to the Oort cloud, but I still wonder if you shouldn't prompt on "solar system" -- certainly clues like the Gliese 710 clue, the Tyche and Nemesis clues, and a buzz after "scattered disc" refer to the solar system as well as, more specifically, the Oort cloud. Admittedly this is partly just sour grapes, because I buzzed with "solar system" and would have gotten it on a prompt, but it's worth thinking about.
The solar system is not a "body." The Oort cloud is. Gliese 710 is not predicted to pass through the entirety of the solar system (fortunately!) but rather through the cloud.
Is there a technical astronomical definition of the term "body" that I'm not aware of? Because the solar system, it seems to me, is as much of a "body" as the Oort cloud is -- they're both collections of dust, gas, and solid objects that are bound together by gravity (specifically the gravity of the sun). Like, I could see the argument that Ganymede, for example, is more of a "body" than the Oort cloud, as the word is commonly used, but not this one.

And the Gliese 710 clue says in particular that Gliese 710 will move through the outer edges of the Oort cloud -- so if the cloud is considered to be part of the solar system, which as far as I can tell it generally is, that clue still applies to the solar system. I mean, I get that the depletion problem clue and the oligarch halo clue specifically clue Oort, but everything else up to I think "inner region" can be read as applying to the solar system as well. It's not my call, and I understand that there are good arguments against prompting on "solar system," but I think it's worth consideration.

As far as the railroad tossup goes, I think it could probably be rewritten to eliminate linguistic fraud, and maybe replacing "objects" with "projects" would help with that. The other thing that stands out to me is the clue that the Canadian railroad was finished in a certain city -- that sort of implies, to me, that it's either something bigger than a city or something like the space shuttle that can be constructed at multiple sites, and the former option seems more likely.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

I'm confused as to how "resupply transports" makes the railroad one transparent--unless I'm confused, doesn't it just refer to transports bringing supplies? How does that imply the actual project is transportation related? I could need resupply transports to bring food and drink to people building a bridge, building a dam, building a tower, right?
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by The Ununtiable Twine »

Fond du lac operon wrote:
The Ununtiable Twine wrote:I think according to the proof I know you have to have some sort of solid structure there, so I don't think anything homeomorphic to a sphere can be duplicated in this way.
So I looked up the proof of Banach-Tarski, and in fact you can decompose a sphere in the Banach-Tarski manner -- actually it's slightly easier than doing it for a solid ball. (Mathematically inclined readers who don't know the proof: The basic idea is to exploit some weird properties of the free group of rank two, which can be embedded into the group of rotations in 3-space. Since a rotation of the 3-ball fixes the boundary which is a 2-sphere, the decomposition works the same either way.) Nevertheless, the theorem is almost always stated for a 3-ball, so I still think it's not a very good clue.
It's not the best of clues, although by the proof, it does apply. That particular clue, if I had heard it, would have suggested that I say "ball" because that's how the theorem is stated.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Fond du lac operon »

Cheynem wrote:I'm confused as to how "resupply transports" makes the railroad one transparent--unless I'm confused, doesn't it just refer to transports bringing supplies? How does that imply the actual project is transportation related? I could need resupply transports to bring food and drink to people building a bridge, building a dam, building a tower, right?
You're right. That was a dumb argument. I do think that saying "transports" might prime people to thinking about transportation-related answers, although I guess a bridge or something is transportation-related as well. The big clue that I used to fraud the answer was the "completed in Whatever, British Columbia" clue, which, like I said above, seems like it rules out bridges, towers, dams, etc.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

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Penn-ance Round 9 wrote:17. 1952 Helsinki was the Olympics in which all four current versions of this type of event were present; the Soviets won all the golds for these events the first two times. In the most recent Olympics, Marcel Nguyen and Victoria Komova won silvers in two of these events, and the Ukrainian and British men’s teams in this type of event were bumped down after the Japanese team won a protest for points on a shaky dismount by their star. Carly Patterson and Paul Hamm won individual golds in this type of event at Athens, while a Chinese sweep of these events at Beijing was stopped by Nastia Liukin’s gold. At London, the individual golds in these events went to Kohei Uchimura and Gabby Douglas. For 10 points, name this type of event where men and women respectively go on four and six apparatuses for artistic gymnastics.
ANSWER: Artistic Gymnastics all-around event [accept all-around at the very end; accept any answer that specifies beyond Artistic Gymnastics all-around, such as men’s individual AGAR, women’s team AGAR, etc.; prompt on Gymnastics, Artistic Gymnastics, team events; prompt on all-around before end; do not accept any answers that mention “rhythmic gymnastics” or “portable apparatuses”]
A few things here. Firstly, "all-around" should be accepted, as even though there is a distinction between team and individual all-around competitions, announcers refer to the individual competition as the all-around and the team competition as the team finals. I know because I have been watching these competitions since the Seoul Olympics. Secondly, a trash question with four lines of acceptable answers and prompts is not necessarily a good idea for anything but a trash tournament, perhaps. I understand sometimes things have many names, but if someone buzzes with "all-around" they should not be negged because they hear announcers constantly saying things like "Jordyn Wieber did not make the all-around because of stupid Olympic rule changes" and "Gabby 'The Flying Squirrel' Douglas is the all-around champion!" Thirdly, since this question is so specific as to what the answerline needs to be here, the tossup as it stands is just too hard for this tournament, in my opinion. Since the individual all-around is referred to as the all-around and the team all-around is referred to as the team finals by announcers, producing the current answerline on the first clue seems just about impossible, and even afterwards (when I buzzed after hearing "Komova") it is confusing as I don't know of anyone who refers to the individual and team all-around as a group of four competitions. I have always considered the all-around to be two competitions and the team finals to be two competitions, and even though that adds up to four, there is enough of a distinction between the team and individual competitions such that it's hard to just add them up when prompted, but even if you do, what do you call what you just added up? When I heard "Marcel Nguyen" and then "Viktoria Komova" I buzzed with gymnastics (expecting at worst a prompt, which I got) but could not figure out for the life of me which four competitions you wanted, and the point of the clues should be that they are buzzable for those that have knowledge of the events. It couldn't be the women's individual competitions, even though there are four of those, because Marcel Nguyen is a Vietnamese-German male gymnast, and it couldn't be the men's individual competitions because Viktoria Komova is not a dude, and also there are six individual event competitions on the men's side, and I figured it couldn't be the all-around (as the individual competitions are commonly referred to as the all-around) because there are only two of those, one for each gender (although technically there are four but we've talked about that already). But suppose I did produce all-around as an answer, the horror of being prompted again would have occurred! At this point, I may have had some Kashtanian outburst, as this question did pop up when the score was 210-175 in a game against Tech and I was rather animated in the first place. Perhaps you could rework this question to have an answerline of "gymnastics" or "men's gymnastics" or "women's gymnastics" - that seems a lot better for a regular difficulty tournament. The current answerline is almost impossible to produce except when you can accept "all-around" at the end, and as written, Bela Karolyi would neg the question.

Regarding the hockey bonus, you may want to also accept "1980 Olympic Hockey men's semifinal" and put a note not to accept "gold medal game" under any circumstances because as we all know the Miracle on Ice was not in fact the gold medal game, although many people think it was.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

I don't know that "body" is any kind of term of art, but it's generally used to designate reasonably well-defined "single" objects. The Oort cloud is a "single" cloud so people generally call it a body, but I've never ever heard the solar system referred to using that term. Nor have I ever heard it applied to gravitationally bound structures like the Milky Way (people usually use the word "object" to designate those, e.g. Messier Objects). I suppose a more appropriate term might be "region."

Maybe this is a bit of a linguistic morass, but I don't think that there was much confusion engendered by either the pronouns or the clues here. If I reasonably thought that someone could buzz and say "solar system," I would have added a prompt, but that just did not occur to me.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

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Also, the inductor question goes straight from "clues I've never heard of" [fundamental fallacy blah blah blah] to "clues I use in high school questions" [which are for some reason in power?]. I don't know what other clues there are for inductors (since they are rarely used in microelectronics), but you definitely need some between Nagaoka and "in an AC circuit."
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Fond du lac operon »

Jerry: Okay, that's good to know. I of course did buzz and say "solar system"; feel free to draw conclusions about my reasonableness and intelligence, or lack thereof, as you see fit.
Pennance Round 10 wrote:18. The protagonist of this work is asked by an engineer to change the patenting rules for Yoyodyne, a company in which the protagonist of this work holds stock; that engineer informs the protagonist about an inventor who created Maxwell’s Demon. The protagonist of this work meets a member of the Peter Pinguid Society and later travels to Berkeley to speak with Emory Bortz, a professor who wrote an introduction to a fictional work by (*) Richard Wharfinger. The protagonist’s husband Mucho becomes addicted to LSD, and the protagonist spends much of her time investigating the play The Courier’s Tragedy. This novel begins with the protagonist becoming the executor of Pierce Inverarity’s estate, which contains a collection of stamps showing a muted post horn. For 10 points, identify this novel about Oedipa Maas’s investigation into the Tristero mail organization by Thomas Pynchon.
ANSWER: The Crying of Lot 49
Am I crazy or is Yoyodyne placed way too early in this question? I've never read the book but if I were pressed to name 5 Pynchon creations, Yoyodyne would absolutely be one of them, up there with Oedipa Maas, Tristero, and Tyrone Slothrop.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

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Another thing:

Did the bonus part on oligodendrocytes say to accept oligodendroglia? We gave the latter as our answer and it wasn't accepted, but it didn't end up mattering anyway.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

Orangutan Surfing Civilization wrote:Another thing:

Did the bonus part on oligodendrocytes say to accept oligodendroglia? We gave the latter as our answer and it wasn't accepted, but it didn't end up mattering anyway.
Oops. Ill put that in.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

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The voodoo question in Packet 13 makes two references to "these figures" (a problem since it is looking for a religion not for a figure). Preliminary research says it should be "those figures."

edit: or "those individuals"
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by nvijay »

The Charlie Parker tossup had a lead in that mentioned something like "One of this musician's compositions has an 8 bar trumpet solo, followed by an 8 bar saxophone solo". I understand that it's a lead-in, but all that clue gives you is that the tossup is on a jazz musician whose career started before LP's became the predominant form of music distribution. Considering it's a lead-in, its probably not a huge deal, but questions in general should probably try to avoid having excessively vague clues that impart no information to the players.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

Out of curiosity, which things were changed for the October 27th mirror?
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

Off the top of my head, Gymnastics was replaced, the Silk road tossup was switched out, the Laplace transform, railroad, and Chinese character tossups were edited, various typos were fixed, and Saajid made some changes to the lit to make it more clue heavy. I forget if I did anything else.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Ringil »

I'd just like to say that for the sphere tossup, certainly disc and maybe circle should be accepted or at least promptable. The Mobius transform notably maps the plane into the unit disk.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by 1992 in spaceflight »

Eric, would you mind posting the tossup on Alexander II whenever you get the chance?
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Masked Canadian History Bandit »

The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi wrote:Eric, would you mind posting the tossup on Alexander II whenever you get the chance?
Assuming Eric didn't change anything:
Penn-ance Packet 4 wrote:12. During this man’s reign, Vera Zasulich, the failed assassin of Fyodor Trepov, was acquitted in a jury trial despite overwhelming evidence. While his wife Marie of Hesse was dying, this man kept Catherine Dolgorukov as a mistress. This man died shortly after signing into law the Dictatorship of the Heart proposed by his Interior Minister Count Loris-Melikov. After his father’s death, this ruler signed the (*) Treaty of Paris that ended the Crimean War. He ordered his son, who was notably the first bearded ruler since Peter I, to be instructed by Constantin Pobedonostsev. His successor built the Church of the Saviour on the Spilt Blood, where a group that wanted reforms beyond the zemstvos bombed this man’s carriage. For 10 points, name this Russian tsar assassinated by the People’s Will sometime after he freed the serfs.
ANSWER: Alexander II of Russia [or Alexander the Liberator; or Aleksandr II Nikolaevich; or Aleksandr Osvoboditel]
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Muriel Axon »

I believe the bonus part on the Chinese Room had an error. It refers to the Chinese Room as an argument against dualism. In all of Searle's works I've read, I have never seen it explicitly referred to as an argument against (or for) dualism. It's true that Searle claims to be a biological naturalist, but the Chinese Room is only an argument against dualism in the sense that Searle considers strong AI to be a form of dualism, which virtually nobody else does, as far as I know, which makes the statement that the Chinese Room is an argument against dualism false from the perspective of most people.

Could you please post the tossups on Plato's Republic and Gender Trouble?
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

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The Eighth Viscount of Waaaah wrote:I believe the bonus part on the Chinese Room had an error... Could you please post the tossups on Plato's Republic and Gender Trouble?
Penn-ance Packet 8 wrote:13. John Searle once made a distinction between biological naturalism and the “property” form of this idea, and the substance form of this idea states that mental events cannot exist in space. For 10 points each:
[10] Name this philosophical idea most famously expounded by Rene Descartes, which states that the mind and the body are made of different substances.
ANSWER: dualism
[10] Another challenge to dualism is this thought experiment by Searle, in which a man sitting in an isolated area receives writings in the namesake language, then translates them using a book, then replies in a convincing way.
ANSWER: Chinese room [or Chinese box]
[10] Dennett used this term to describe thought experiments like the Chinese Room. This term describes the use of unconscious reasoning in thought experiments to arrive at an answer while glossing over the logic used.
ANSWER: intuition pump
Penn-ance Packet 8 wrote:11. One section of this work rejects the idea that forms of oppression can be plotted as discrete entities, instead stating that they merge in the social field. This work states that signification is a form of regulated repetition, meaning that it reinforces oppressive rules. One section of it criticizes Foucault for stating that Herculine Barbin was in a “happy limbo” when he was actually hamstrung by social control. Its final section, entitled “From Parody to Politics”, states that the subject/object distinction is artificial and rails against identity politics, echoing a previous section which states that the (*) body is a socially constructed notion. This work uses the example of drag shows as destabilizing a particular binary. For 10 points, identify this philosophical work which states that outward manifestations of biological sex are performative, a work of post-structural feminism by Judith Butler.
ANSWER: Gender Trouble
Penn-ance Packet 11 wrote:16. One section of this work warns against carelessness by telling of a man who chose to be a tyrant but was fated to eat his own children. The primary speaker of this work notes that often times we fail to see the truth because of the misleading tales of poets. Another section of this work posits a line divided into unequal fourths that compares sections representing shadows and reflections to the realms of real objects. This work concludes with a tale of a figure who meets the goddess (*) Necessity and the Sirens in a trip through the afterlife, and one speaker in this work considers the implications of a magic ring that awards its wearer invisibility. Socrates attempts to refute the claim by Thrasymachus that “justice is the will of the stronger” by constructing Kallopolis in, for 10 points, which Platonic dialogue that contains the Allegory of the Cave and formulates an ideal city?
ANSWER: Republic [accept Politeia]
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Muriel Axon »

Thank you! Turns out I don't really have any problem with Gender Trouble; I just misheard the question. I stand by my criticism of the Chinese room part, although the error I think I identified would not throw anybody off, so it's not a devastating problem.

Like others, I think there were problems with hard part difficulty, since in no way are "scalawags" and some other relatively easy hard parts comparable to many of the rather difficult hard parts in other bonuses (EDIT: e.g. Explosion in a Cathedral). I was also surprised by questions on things like "Taung boy," which seems unreasonably difficult for a regular difficulty set (and I'm an anthropology major). Overall, the set was good, so these are just minor quibbles.

EDIT: The bonus part on Russian Easter Festival Overture probably should not require "festival." I saw it called Russian Easter Overture in International Music Company's famous books of orchestral excerpts, but on looking farther, others who omit the "festival" part include the Kennedy Center (http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/ ... on_id=2478), the LA Phil (http://www.laphil.com/philpedia/music/r ... y-korsakov - which alternates), and the CSO (http://cso.org/uploadedFiles/1_Tickets_ ... Easter.pdf). It is more often called Russian Easter Festival Overture, but enough relatively reputable sources don't include the "festival" that I think that should be acceptable. (I think you can also find some editions and arrangements that just say Russian Easter Overture, though I'd need to look more carefully to back that up.)
Last edited by Muriel Axon on Sun Oct 28, 2012 10:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Fond du lac operon »

Ringil wrote:I'd just like to say that for the sphere tossup, certainly disc and maybe circle should be accepted or at least promptable. The Mobius transform notably maps the plane into the unit disk.
Quick note that a disc isn't a sphere, it's a ball. Once again, these are different things and should not be confused with each other in quizbowl.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Muriel Axon »

Could you also please list the alternate answers acceptable for the Sun Wukong question? Someone on our team said "the Monkey King" and it wasn't accepted, so I'm curious to know why.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by sephirothrr »

The Eighth Viscount of Waaaah wrote:Could you also please list the alternate answers acceptable for the Sun Wukong question? Someone on our team said "the Monkey King" and it wasn't accepted, so I'm curious to know why.
Monkey King was accepted from my teammate, so it might have been acceptable until a certain point in the question, or just a moderator issue.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Masked Canadian History Bandit »

sephirothrr wrote:
The Eighth Viscount of Waaaah wrote:Could you also please list the alternate answers acceptable for the Sun Wukong question? Someone on our team said "the Monkey King" and it wasn't accepted, so I'm curious to know why.
Monkey King was accepted from my teammate, so it might have been acceptable until a certain point in the question, or just a moderator issue.
Penn-ance Packet 5 wrote:9. This figure stole purple bells from a demon who kidnaped the Queen of Purpuria. He drew a circle on the ground to protect against the shapeshifting White Bone Demonness and was banished by his magical instructor for turning into a tree in front of fellow students. He developed a weakness to smoke after being captured by Lord Erlang and spending 49 days in a (*) cauldron, after which he could see evil. This Keeper of the Imperial Horses carried out a Great Disruption of Heaven. This figure was born from a stone egg on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit was quashed under a mountain by the Buddha until he was given a diadem controlled by a monk working for Taizong. For 10 points, name this mythological figure who was the senior disciple to a Sand Monk and a humanoid Pig and who once ruled over primates before going on a journey to the west.
ANSWER: Sun Wukong [or Monkey; accept Great Sage Equaling Heaven and Qi Tian Da Sheng; prompt on Sun]
There's no reason not to accept Monkey King, especially since Monkey is acceptable and "ruled over primates" is in the giveaway. However, there wasn't an explicit prompt, so inexperienced moderators might have gotten confused.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Windows ME »

Can you post the tossup on the pituitary gland?
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Masked Canadian History Bandit »

fourplustwo wrote:Can you post the tossup on the pituitary gland?
Penn-ance Packet 10 wrote:8. One part of this organ is affected by Gagel’s granuloma, which is a form of Histiocytosis X. Tumors of this organ can be diagnosed by inferior petrosal sampling and are removed by trans-sphenoidal resection. Craniopharyngiomas of this organ may spontaneously bleed to cause apoplexy. One section of this organ expresses pro-opio-melanocortin, which is the precursor to several forms of melanocyte-stimulating hormone. Another product of this organ (*) spikes at ovulation. This organ, which secretes TSH and ACTH from its anterior lobe and oxytocin from its posterior lobe, responds to signals from the hypothalamus. For 10 points, name this gland in the skull that controls several other parts of the endocrine system.
ANSWER: pituitary gland
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

That's by far my favorite question in this tournament.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by The Ununtiable Twine »

Fond du lac operon wrote:
Ringil wrote:I'd just like to say that for the sphere tossup, certainly disc and maybe circle should be accepted or at least promptable. The Mobius transform notably maps the plane into the unit disk.
Quick note that a disc isn't a sphere, it's a ball. Once again, these are different things and should not be confused with each other in quizbowl.
For instance, the unit disc (or any disc, not only our favorite one) is contractible while the sphere is not. In other words you can shrink a disc down to one of its points whereas this is impossible for the sphere. Hence, they are different.

EDIT: wording
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

I want to quibble with calling the AK model an "endogenous" model of economic growth, even though apparently the Barro and Sala-i-Martin textbook categorizes it that way. Economic growth occurs in the model because the parameter settings are such that the marginal return to capital is always greater than the rate of effective depreciation. Moreover, the household savings decision is explicitly exogenous: the household saves a constant proportion of wealth. There's nothing endogenous about growth in that model. Indeed, if you make the contrary, neo-classical assumption of diminishing returns to scale in one input but allow the "A" in the AK model to grow deterministically, you have what is always and uncontroversially called exogenous growth, even when you let the household choose how much to save.

Growth models called "endogenous" typically have an economic agent choosing how much to invest in R&D or how much human capital to acquire, or doing something else that involves their optimizing over the possible extent of the production possibility frontier, rather than (as is typical of exogenous growth models) choosing where on that frontier to operate. In AK, the model is rigged up so that the frontier marches outward.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

Also: I didn't count answers, but I hope to God that the Tarquinius Superbus question was in the myth distribution.
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Re: Penn-ance Question Specific Discussion

Post by Masked Canadian History Bandit »

Tees-Exe Line wrote:Also: I didn't count answers, but I hope to God that the Tarquinius Superbus question was in the myth distribution.
It was.
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