2015 Regionals: Regular Difficulty

[Victor Prieto]

A discussion in the IRC prompted me to create the following histograms:

1 PPB bins
2 PPB bins

In my mind, this histogram prompts the following interwoven questions:

1. Is this an appropriate histogram for a regular difficulty tournament? As in, do we want histograms for all regular-difficulty tournaments to look like this?
2. Was ACF Regionals 2015 a regular difficulty tournament?

In my opinion, the answers to these questions are (1) no, this curve should be centered around the 14-15 range, and (2) no, some bonuses shaded towards the tough side.

The following questions arose as a part of the discussion, which I think should be addressed:

3. Should regular difficulty be written to distinguish the best teams from one another?
4. Should regular difficulty be written to cater to those teams that show up to tournaments, but don't bother studying in the interim?
5. Currently, there seem to be four bins between ACF Fall and ACF Nationals: regular-minus (MUT, MFT), regular (ACF Regionals, PADAWAN), regular plus (QUARK, Penn Bowl 2014), and the nebulously defined nationals-minus (Cane Ridge Revival, George Oppen in near future). Is this the ideal gradient of difficulties to achieve the goals of our community?

I'd respond to these questions as (3) no, and (4) yes, and (5) no. To expand on my answer to (5), I'll point out that regular difficulty for high school is not designed to distinguish upper tier teams, and seems to have a better retention factor (even when taking into account the relative populations of high schools vs. universities).

EDIT: added some stuff at the end in italics.