A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

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A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Mike Bentley »

I'm writing a sequel to We Have Never Been Modern called A Culture of Improvement. It will use largely the same distribution as that tournament. It will be tossup only unless something changes radically. Distribution will look something like this:

History of science and technology - 6
Business, consumer and social history - 5
Computer-related things - 5
Academic stuff which doesn't fall into the other categories - 2
Trash stuff which doesn't fall into the other categories - 2

I have around 4 packets written at the moment. I'm shooting for 7 or 8 total.

Exact completion date TBA. There will likely be a Skype mirror, and hopefully it can be fitted into one of the summer open tournaments (perhaps this is the year to have an all side event summer weekend given the number of side event sets last year).
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Oh man, awesome!
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Harpie's Feather Duster »

yesssssssssssssssssssssss
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Cody »

I'm very excited.
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Good Goblin Housekeeping »

The previous iteration of this tournament was absurdly fun so this is pleasant news :party:
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by ryanrosenberg »

This is good news
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by grapesmoker »

this is exciting and cool
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

I share the enthusiasm expressed thus far.

I'm also curious, given how well-received the last two "technology" tournaments have been, whether there's interest in incorporating more of this sort of content in regular-season tournaments, as difficulty and distributional concerns permit. It seems like many of the questions from QCT and We Have Never Been Modern are comprehensible as "business current events," "Your Choice," "General Knowledge," or even in some cases History or "Other Science"...
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Cheynem »

I agree with Matt; I think a lot of the stuff that Mike asked about in his last tournament would be effective questions in the Your Choice, Other, or even Current Events distribution. As I said at the time, I think they reward a particular set of knowledge bases that aren't always tapped into for quizbowl.
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by grapesmoker »

Adventure Temple Trail wrote:I share the enthusiasm expressed thus far.

I'm also curious, given how well-received the last two "technology" tournaments have been, whether there's interest in incorporating more of this sort of content in regular-season tournaments, as difficulty and distributional concerns permit. It seems like many of the questions from QCT and We Have Never Been Modern are comprehensible as "business current events," "Your Choice," "General Knowledge," or even in some cases History or "Other Science"...
On the one hand, I absolutely loved QCT. On the other hand, I don't think most of the questions in that set would really be appropriate for general quizbowl. On the third hand, there's a lot of current events that would be appropriate and in general I think should get larger play.
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by theMoMA »

Perhaps, as Jerry says, some of the topics in and of themselves aren't appropriate for general quizbowl, but they can provide interesting ways to frame areas of the already-existing distribution. For example, the history of inventions of a particular place could be a good idea for a tossup or a bonus theme (i.e. a tossup on "France" that discusses the history of industry and invention of that country, or a history tossup on a particular industry, or a bonus on particularly innovative films from a technical standpoint, or a bonus part on a particular innovation that enabled a new artistic technique to arise, etc.). As people think of different thematic ways to attack the distribution, technology is clearly an area where people have untapped knowledge that can be used to add new depths to areas that we already cover.
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Adventure Temple Trail »

theMoMA wrote:Perhaps, as Jerry says, some of the topics in and of themselves aren't appropriate for general quizbowl, but they can provide interesting ways to frame areas of the already-existing distribution. For example, the history of inventions of a particular place could be a good idea for a tossup or a bonus theme (i.e. a tossup on "France" that discusses the history of industry and invention of that country, or a history tossup on a particular industry, or a bonus on particularly innovative films from a technical standpoint, or a bonus part on a particular innovation that enabled a new artistic technique to arise, etc.). As people think of different thematic ways to attack the distribution, technology is clearly an area where people have untapped knowledge that can be used to add new depths to areas that we already cover.
Yeah, this is what I meant, and yeah, QCT was definitely more "out-there" and less suitable for emulation in regular sets than We Have Never Been Modern if this is the way to go about it.
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Cheynem »

What is the pricing for this tournament?
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Mike Bentley »

The tournament is free to play.

By the way, I'll probably start some playtesting for this soon. If you're interested in taking part, shoot me an e-mail at [email protected]. My preference is to do the playtesting over Skype.
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Mike Bentley »

FYI there will be 9 packets for this tournament.
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Mike Bentley »

I've mailed the set to the Columbia, VCU and California mirrors of this tournament. I'll have it with me for the Michigan mirror. If you think you should have received it and haven't yet, please let me know ASAP.
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Cody »

As expected this tournament was amazing and almost certainly not to be surpassed by any other event this weekend. Mike's technology tournaments are a true quizbowl treasure.
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Cheynem »

At Michigan, the team of Rob Carson, Mike Cheyne, Andrew Hart, and Tejas Raje won this event.
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Mike Bentley »

Stats for the Michigan site are available here: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... nal_stats/

If a moderator can set up a private discussion forum that would be much appreciated.
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by theMoMA »

Like its predecessor, this tournament was a delight. Thank you, Mike, for putting it together.
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Yeah, this tournament was characteristically awesome. Highlight of the quizbowl calendar, for sure.
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Theory Of The Leisure Flask »

This was most excellent. My only regret is that we only got to play five rounds of it.
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Mike Bentley »

Theory Of The Leisure Flask wrote:This was most excellent. My only regret is that we only got to play five rounds of it.
People who only played part of this are welcome to play the rounds they didn't hear in the Skype mirror on Sunday.
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Steeve Ho You Fat »

This was super fun, thanks for writing it.
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by armitage »

I'm glad I got roped into playing this set last minute. it was really worth experiencing this kind of refreshing material at the tail end of my qb career.
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by 15.366 »

Thank you for writing this tournament. As someone who spent a year being a more-or-less solid B-team humanities generalist, I did not realize that history of science and tech was my niche until I ended up top scorer at the Michigan mirror.

Although I would like to play on a larger team in the next iteration, I consider it even more important than my individual enjoyment that tournaments of this type continue for the community. So, Mike, if you're in a situation where you need co-writers for the next iteration, please feel free to contact me and I will be happy to help out writing and take editorial guidance.
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Mike Bentley »

A private forum has been created to discuss this tournament.
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Jason Cheng »

We played five rounds of this today at UCSD as a shootout. Here are the stats to the best of my scorekeeping ability:

Rd. 1
Michel Chen 0/0/0
Kevin Wang 1/3/3
Corry Wang 1/1/1
Griffin Stamp 0/1/1
Jason Cheng 0/1/1
Jonathan Luck 1/5/0
Mik Larsen 1/6/0

Rd. 2
Michel Chen 1/1/1
Kevin Wang 0/4/5
Corry Wang 1/5/3
Griffin Stamp 0/0/1
Jason Cheng 0/2/1
Jonathan Luck 0/2/2
Mik Larsen 0/4/0

Rd. 3
Kevin Wang 1/5/2
Corry Wang 1/4/4
Griffin Stamp 0/0/0
Jason Cheng 1/4/0
Jonathan Luck 0/0/1
Mik Larsen 0/3/2

Rd. 4
Kevin Wang 1/1/2
Corry Wang 0/6/2
Griffin Stamp 0/0/1
Jason Cheng 1/4/1
Jonathan Luck 0/4/1

Rd. 5
Kevin Wang 0/0/2
Corry Wang 1/6/2
Griffin Stamp 1/1/1
Grant Summers 0/1/0
Jason Cheng 1/4/1
Jonathan Luck 0/4/0
Mik Larsen 0/0/1

TOTAL
Michel Chen: 1/1/1 -- 20 points over 2 rounds; 10 ppg
Kevin Wang: 3/13/14 -- 105 points over 5 rounds; 21 ppg
Corry Wang: 4/22/12 -- 220 points over 5 rounds; 44 ppg
Griffin Stamp: 1/2/4 -- 15 points over 5 rounds; 3 ppg
Grant Summers: 0/1/0 -- 10 points over 1 round; 10 ppg
Jason Cheng: 3/15/4 -- 175 points over 5 rounds; 35 ppg
Jonathan Luck: 1/15/4 -- 145 points over 5 rounds; 29 ppg
Mik Larsen: 1/13/3 -- 130 points over 4 rounds; 32.5 ppg

NOTE: I actually didn't keep track of people who came and went, so some of the 0/0/0 statlines might actually be when they weren't there (in which case I sincerely apologize)
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Re: A Culture of Improvement - Summer 2016

Post by Mike Bentley »

I've submitted the questions to quizbowlpackets.com.
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