2017 EMT General Discussion

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RexSueciae
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2017 EMT General Discussion

Post by RexSueciae »

This is the general discussion thread for the Eisenhower Memorial Tournament.

A broad overview of authorship credit runs something like the following:

Literature was written by Charles Hang and Gabe Guedes.
History was written by Jacob O'Rourke and myself (with several contributions by Charles).
Biology, Chemistry, and Physics were entirely the work of Ryan Humphrey (!) -- Other Science was the same except for some maths and computer science by myself or Alex Damisch.
Religion was mostly Alex Damisch (except for me with questions on Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism), as was the vast majority of the Fine Arts content.
I wrote the Mythology, Geography, and most of the Philosophy.
Social Science, Current Events, Popular Culture, and Other were a colorful mishmash of pretty much everybody. More specific numbers might materialize once I get around to it and once the dust settles from the final edits.

For more detailed information on this question set or those categories, feel free to consult either the question-specific thread or any writer (who may offer their own perspectives and goals from the writing process). At present, I don't have particularly earth-shattering except 1) it was funny to write a career third tossup on war elephants, and 2) at some point I was going to write a Philosophy tossup on Adolf Hitler.
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Re: 2017 EMT General Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

As I said in the main thread, this tournament represented a good effort from its writers, whom I commend for putting the set together so quickly. I'll leave a few general thoughts on each category, with the exception of current events, which I've written a longer paragraph because I thought that category had the most serious philosophical problems.

The literature at this tournament was, by our team's general consensus, quite strong and a good model for tournaments of this target difficulty. I heartily congratulate its authors. The religion also seemed fairly solid as well - the latter seemed biased towards the Bible and Christian practice, but I think that's better than having too many minor religions or something like that at a tournament of this level. The mythology seemed a bit hard and top-heavy on clues in general.

The arts, or at least the ones I know some things about, seemed to be a bit scattered in difficulty, though it trended towards being quite hard. The painting questions generally used good descriptions and picked good clues, but needed a bit more smoothing in difficulty - the clue ordering was a bit off in many cases, and there were some pretty tough answers. The music similarly generally chose good clues, but often reached for Regionals or Nationals-level topics (Mendelssohn's violin concerto, that Amy Beach bonus). Looking at these arts questions, the power-marks also seem to be fairly stingy in general. I'd be happy to give more specific examples in private.

The history, by contrast, seemed to trend towards being far too easy in bonuses. Many easy and middle parts did not have substantive difficulty variation - either a player would know both of them (and both would be around high school regular difficulty) or they'd probably not be getting anything - i.e. "namesake islands war fought by Margaret Thatcher" then "what country are the Falkland Islands in?" At a tournament where a lot of lower-skill teams will play, it is important that the easy, middle, and hard parts can all differentiate teams. The tossups varied a lot in difficulty by author, with Vasa's questions being a lot tougher than Jacob's.

I don't recall hearing too many philosophy or social science questions, so I didn't really get much of an impression there. I also can't comment too much on the science, and will leave that to people who have real knowledge about that subject.

This next paragraph is about something that's decidedly secondary on the chopping block compared to the above issues, but I think it is worth saying for future. I hate to be harsh, but the Current Events for this tournament basically appear to have been written off the Facebook feed of a typical student at a left-wing elite university, or person with a lot of friends in such universities. From what I could tell, there were few questions on substantive policy issues or important social/economic trends, and instead a focus on amusing and/or shocking incidents that are "trendy" in viral news/social media feeds. Writing questions like this does create accessible questions for people in these circles, but it doesn't really differentiate people much because almost everybody that pays attention to their social media feed (as opposed to reading newspapers, following political websites, etc.) is going to buzz at a certain point before "for 10 points" unless they read up on incredibly minor details about these recent incidents. Even though some of these recent incidents are very important and likely to have lasting consequences (i.e. the utter insanity around Park Geun-hye, which is something that's actually been a long-simmering issue), writing all questions in this way is biasing the distribution heavily towards a certain type of knowledge. Similarly, NAQT was once roundly criticized for having apparently written almost all of its world current events for ICT out of a single copy of The Economist - you need to be careful about what different sources you are drawing on for writing these questions.
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Re: 2017 EMT General Discussion

Post by csheep »

As mentioned, the music skewed very hard. Stuff like Boulanger/Amy Beach bonus and "wind symphonies" as a toss-up are pretty difficult. Haydn string quartets is pretty hard too I think? I remember thinking the cluing for the "horn" toss-up was hard.

I actually thought the Mendelssohn VC toss-up wasn't too bad though Will obviously disagrees. I guess this could be a distinction of "quiz bowl famous" vs. "real life famous"? My impression is people with "real knowledge" of music might find the Mendelssohn VC pretty reasonable to ask about, but maybe my perception is just way off here.
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Re: 2017 EMT General Discussion

Post by Aaron's Rod »

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:The religion also seemed fairly solid as well - the latter seemed biased towards the Bible and Christian practice, but I think that's better than having too many minor religions or something like that at a tournament of this level. The mythology seemed a bit hard and top-heavy on clues in general.
Just wanted to let you know that we had only 11 of the 15 packets ready to go for the Skype mirror, and the religion that didn't make it in was all non-Abrahamic or miscellaneous religion.
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:Looking at these arts questions, the power-marks also seem to be fairly stingy in general. I'd be happy to give more specific examples in private.
Will, please do PM/Facebook message/email me.

I'm going to make a separate thread for my topics which will include Fine Arts.
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Re: 2017 EMT General Discussion

Post by alexdz »

Just wanted to write since I think there was never an official update/communication about this, but a few days after my initial expression of interest in helping write for this, I got a handle on my schedule and realized I wouldn't be able to write nearly as much as I thought. So, I let the team know I wouldn't be able to help write substantially, and ended up being able to contribute three total questions. Probably not worth a whole thread just for those, but they were the trash bonus on Beauty and the Beast/Groban/Great Comet, an "other" bonus on ice/hail/wood, and an "other" tossup on cell phones.
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Re: 2017 EMT General Discussion

Post by tiwonge »

Do you want grammar/readability corrections? I'd be happy to e-mail some of that stuff (I didn't make notes, but I can go back over it) to an editor for future mirrors, if you let me know who to e-mail. The proofing wasn't bad--this sort of thing always comes up, and there certainly have been worse--but it might make it more pleasant for future mirrors.
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Re: 2017 EMT General Discussion

Post by Ciorwrong »

This next paragraph is about something that's decidedly secondary on the chopping block compared to the above issues, but I think it is worth saying for future. I hate to be harsh, but the Current Events for this tournament basically appear to have been written off the Facebook feed of a typical student at a left-wing elite university, or person with a lot of friends in such universities. From what I could tell, there were few questions on substantive policy issues or important social/economic trends, and instead a focus on amusing and/or shocking incidents that are "trendy" in viral news/social media feeds. Writing questions like this does create accessible questions for people in these circles, but it doesn't really differentiate people much because almost everybody that pays attention to their social media feed (as opposed to reading newspapers, following political websites, etc.) is going to buzz at a certain point before "for 10 points" unless they read up on incredibly minor details about these recent incidents. Even though some of these recent incidents are very important and likely to have lasting consequences (i.e. the utter insanity around Park Geun-hye, which is something that's actually been a long-simmering issue), writing all questions in this way is biasing the distribution heavily towards a certain type of knowledge. Similarly, NAQT was once roundly criticized for having apparently written almost all of its world current events for ICT out of a single copy of The Economist - you need to be careful about what different sources you are drawing on for writing these questions.
Will Alston is right on the money here. I thought the current events were either transparent as possible like on cell phones (was this current events?), school vouchers (ha ha Betsy Devos so stupid!, Establishment Clause... wonder what this could be :roll: ), Park, etc. or were just trendy topics. I am not a huge fan of the current events category, but I don't remember any tossups on business happenings aside from the oil price falling in Russia in the Ukraine bonus, and I don't remember many Modern World type answerlines that were particularly outside the box. The current events felt very similar to the current events I see when reading to high school teams at our tournaments.

Additionally, I thought this problem plagued the trash and geography distributions as well with the very problematic questions on Grayson Allen's tripping, MJ on the Wizards, the same comic strip showed up twice, etc. I also don't remember any band/artist tossups. I'm not good at trash music, but those questions are more interesting to listen to than that Hamilton tossup. Geography seemed to be entirely "cool physical feature" stuff over cultural geography but--to be fair-- I'd have to look at each geo question to be sure because I think there were a couple good cultural clues.

I will add more thoughts later but the writers did a pretty good job assembling this set on such short notice. My main issues were that the power marking was almost arbitrary at points because I saw single digit science powers. I only distinctly remember my eigenvalue power. Additionally, some of the world lit seemed pretty hard to power at this difficulty as well. History, to contrast, had plenty of free powers on "River Rouge"--> Ford and "isolationism"--> Tokugawa. Science on the whole was far more difficult than the other categories and there was a ton of hard bio chem and orgo that I think sank a lot of team's ppb. (My team had a player in Orgo 2 and we were eking out 10 on some of these chem bonuses and we were getting more science tossups than the other team almost every game so him and I aren't shit at science.) Religion was really good and literature was solid on the whole aside from a couple duds like "Chicago" which has been done to hell and back. I didn't hear much philosophy or real social science all day so that is unfortunate. Why did the editors choose to shrink those categories if they want to toss boring people like Boas up and have a Malinowski bonus?
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Re: 2017 EMT General Discussion

Post by 1992 in spaceflight »

tiwonge wrote:Do you want grammar/readability corrections? I'd be happy to e-mail some of that stuff (I didn't make notes, but I can go back over it) to an editor for future mirrors, if you let me know who to e-mail. The proofing wasn't bad--this sort of thing always comes up, and there certainly have been worse--but it might make it more pleasant for future mirrors.
We'd certainly appreciate it. You could certainly email me (jacob.orourke.7 at gmail.com) with the corrections.
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Re: 2017 EMT General Discussion

Post by 1992 in spaceflight »

Progcon wrote:I will add more thoughts later but the writers did a pretty good job assembling this set on such short notice. My main issues were that the power marking was almost arbitrary at points because I saw single digit science powers. I only distinctly remember my eigenvalue power. Additionally, some of the world lit seemed pretty hard to power at this difficulty as well. History, to contrast, had plenty of free powers on "River Rouge"--> Ford and "isolationism"--> Tokugawa. Science on the whole was far more difficult than the other categories and there was a ton of hard bio chem and orgo that I think sank a lot of team's ppb. (My team had a player in Orgo 2 and we were eking out 10 on some of these chem bonuses and we were getting more science tossups than the other team almost every game so him and I aren't shit at science.) Religion was really good and literature was solid on the whole aside from a couple duds like "Chicago" which has been done to hell and back. I didn't hear much philosophy or real social science all day so that is unfortunate. Why did the editors choose to shrink those categories if they want to toss boring people like Boas up and have a Malinowski bonus?
Harris, I'm glad to hear that you thought the set was good. It's entirely possible we were pretty arbitrary with powers. In a lot of cases, Vasa trusted where I originally put the powermarks (I think I could count on one hand the number of powermarks that Vasa changed that I placed). I have to disagree, however, with powers in history being "free:" if you're buzzing in on a mention of "isolationism" and saying Tokugawa, you're saying it because you know a clue. That's not a free power.

Boas may be boring, but he's also important! There wouldn't be anthropology departments in the United States without Boas. I don't think 1/1 anthropology is unreasonable at all for a 15 packet set. However, we absolutely did not do the best job of making sure there were more economics questions; if we do this again next year, we should have enough time to make sure the social science is more reasonable distributed.
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Re: 2017 EMT General Discussion

Post by Bensonfan23 »

cell phones (was this current events?
It was categorized as "other", from the PopCulture/Other category.
Additionally, I thought this problem plagued the trash and geography distributions as well with the very problematic questions on Grayson Allen's tripping, MJ on the Wizards, the same comic strip showed up twice, etc.
Curious to hear what you thought was "very problematic" about the first two questions, since I wrote both. Trash admittedly isn't my best/favorite category to write, but as an avid basketball fan, I at least thought these questions would present interesting ways of asking about two relevant topics among basketball fans. If it was a matter of how the question was executed, I'd gladly appreciate feedback on how they could be improved.
I also don't remember any band/artist tossups.
There was a pop-music tossup in finals2, and (off the top of my head) at least 3 contemporary music bonuses throughout the set (Lorde, Groban, Modest Mouse).
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Re: 2017 EMT General Discussion

Post by Ciorwrong »

Curious to hear what you thought was "very problematic" about the first two questions, since I wrote both. Trash admittedly isn't my best/favorite category to write, but as an avid basketball fan, I at least thought these questions would present interesting ways of asking about two relevant topics among basketball fans. If it was a matter of how the question was executed, I'd gladly appreciate feedback on how they could be improved.
The best sports questions are on simple answerlines unless it's a side event like an NBA basketball only tournament. One, both sports tossups were on basketball which is kinda silly in terms of packetizing. I'd try to have like 2/2 sports where 1/0 or 0/1 are each of the Big Four American Sports. Furthermore, the Jordan tossup was written in a way that was very clunky but it could have been written with almost identical clues if the answerline was just "Washington Wizards". You just pick a bunch of players that Jordan played with on the Wizards and you can also maybe drop some 70s Bullets clues with like Wes Unsled or something. It was just really awkward to hear with like the Brendan Haywood lead-in thing and stuff. Even just a tossup on Michael Jordan would have been better because I didn't really know what was going on. I'd look at my tournament FTP for what I like to see in sports questions. The questions aren't going to be perfect because that was my first time really writing, but I try to stick to simple answerlines only with the exception of a tossup on a specific kind of injury which was a questionable idea. CO Trash and ACRONYM also have some simple sports questions that I think can be too easy at points but are really solid all around.

The Allen tossup was just kinda weird there. If you had tossed up Allen, you could have included near identical clues and would have likely reduced negs. A teammate negged it with "Trump rally" which kind of made sense based on the power clues. Similar to my argument on the mortgage tossup, if there is only like 2/2 sports in a set, I want them to be things that are gettable (and I got MJ on the Wizards fwiw) and the anwerlines should be simple. Teams and players are ideal answerlines.

Just to compare: at SCT D1 this year, I powered every sports tossup I heard except one the other team negged and 30d every sports bonus I heard so it's not like I'm a sports imbecile. Here I only got the MJ tossup and I would have 0d the running bonus which seemed kind of strange when the other team heard it. I didn't hear the Osweiler bonus and don't know its content.
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Re: 2017 EMT General Discussion

Post by CPiGuy »

So, I greatly enjoyed playing this set; there were a few questions which were pretty iffy, but overall it was a very fun set and a good time. I'll post specific comments on questions in the specific discussion threads.
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Re: 2017 EMT General Discussion

Post by wcheng »

Overall, I thought that this was a pretty good set, especially considering the fact that this was written in just three months! The difficulty generally seemed about right, and I thought that this set included a fair number of fresh and interesting clues regardless of the difficulty level. Thus, I'd like to commend the writers and editors for their hard work on putting this set together.
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Re: 2017 EMT General Discussion

Post by Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock »

I thought in many ways this was a very fun set to play, and my team had a really good time doing so yesterday. I want to commend the writers for coming together so quickly and producing it for us to play.

That said, I think this set had two big issues on which I would like to provide feedback for the future. The first of these was that the feng shui of the set seemed to be a bit off. I wasn't reading, of course, but it seemed like there were several typos that our moderators had to try to make sense of before they could move forward with the question. In addition, there was still a repeat tossup in packet 11. Just something to be more aware of going forward.

Second, I thought the set's major problem was a lack of a uniform difficulty. Literature I think did the best job of staying on target, and that's where the set really shined. I can say the same for most of the RMPSS. The other categories, though, seemed to swing around a fair bit. I will fully admit that we are not a great science team and maybe that's the reason for this, but the science felt brutally difficult compared to the other categories. There were several tossups that went dead for both teams and a lot of 0s and 10s on bonuses. Again, this may just be a matter of us needing to learn more things, but just from my own short college playing experience, some of these questions wouldn't have felt out of place at regular difficulty or higher.

Other categories felt a bit off too, and I think this was most noticeable in the bonuses. Some seemed like they had two easy parts (Alamo/Texas, the aforementioned Falklands bonus), while others felt like they didn't have an easy part at all (Honegger/Different Trains/Alkin is the one that stuck with me). This may just be a case of different writers viewing their categories differently, but there were times where it felt like close games came down to who got the more forgiving bonuses. I'll go through my notebook and draw on some more specifics in the thread for specifics (hopefully in the next couple days, as I have a fair bit of class work to catch up on), but my general point is that difficulty should be roughly equivalent across and within categories, and it just felt to me that it was not so.

Again, all this to say, I still liked the set and appreciate greatly the work put in by the writers to make it a reality. I fully intend all of what I said above to be not "this sucked" but rather "here's how I think it could be done better." I really hope you guys all stick around and continue producing questions in the future!
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Re: 2017 EMT General Discussion

Post by Edmund »

Having read this set at the weekend, it seemed to go over well on the whole.

As one criticism of the editing and proofing, the pronunciation guides were really substantially wrong for the French. There were some small issues with a few of the other European languages, but the French introduced extra consonants and even extra syllables, had wrong vowel sounds and stresses everywhere, and would presumably have been unhelpful for any player in the field who knows French who had to play in a room with a moderator who didn't.
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Re: 2017 EMT General Discussion

Post by 1992 in spaceflight »

Edmund wrote:Having read this set at the weekend, it seemed to go over well on the whole.

As one criticism of the editing and proofing, the pronunciation guides were really substantially wrong for the French. There were some small issues with a few of the other European languages, but the French introduced extra consonants and even extra syllables, had wrong vowel sounds and stresses everywhere, and would presumably have been unhelpful for any player in the field who knows French who had to play in a room with a moderator who didn't.
Edmund, do you know of any sources future editors could use for French pronunciation guides? If you could share it, I think it would be worthwhile for everyone on the forums to see it.
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Re: 2017 EMT General Discussion

Post by Edmund »

1992 in spaceflight wrote:Edmund, do you know of any sources future editors could use for French pronunciation guides?
Hey, sorry, I don't. I rely on knowing the language.

For languages I don't know, normally I find Wikipedia + IPA to be trustworthy, especially for things like stressed syllables, silent letters, etc.

I didn't realise French didn't actually have a section in HSQB's "A Moderator's Guide to Pronunciating Foreign Words". Better to do something than complain - after May I might have time to contribute something, particularly if there are other Francophones to help. I'll add it to my list of projects for the summer...
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Re: 2017 EMT General Discussion

Post by armitage »

I like to check Forvo for pronunciations I haven't encountered (example). If that's no good then I try to find news reports and such on Youtube.
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Re: 2017 EMT General Discussion

Post by 1992 in spaceflight »

The set can be found here. Thanks to everyone who played the tournament!
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