Chris Frankel wrote:- One issue I did have with the set is that the number of "common link" questions seemed a little excessive, particularly in mythology. I see what was being done (and admitedly writing high level mythology without descending into obscurata or reviving stock clues is tough), but I got tired of answers like "crowns," "cows," "ghosts," and "spiders" coming up.
suds1000 wrote:So somebody tell me...how hard were they?
Considering how good a player Matt Weiner is, I'm surprised he could only muster 135 PPG, with less than 9 PPB. This set must be either really bad or really hard, and, considering the editorship, I'm definitely inclined to guess the latter and not the former.
I agree with Matt's comment that the top teams should be averaging around 20 PPB...the fact that not one of them cracked 15, despite having (at the very least) seven or eight of the top 15 players in the nation playing in the tournament, seems a little suspect to me.
So somebody tell me...how hard were they?
But S-matrix is too hard? I must be getting too out of touch; do people not learn what an S-matrix is in quantum mechanics courses?
But S-matrix is too hard? I must be getting too out of touch; do people not learn what an S-matrix is in quantum mechanics courses?
mreece wrote:I was afraid "fluctuation-dissipation theorem" was a bit on the hard side, but I was trying to come up with non-obvious stat mech / condensed matter questions to offset my personal bias toward particle physics / field theory, and the theorem does seem to be among the more important results in statistical mechanics. Sorry for my bad judgement there.
But S-matrix is too hard? I must be getting too out of touch; do people not learn what an S-matrix is in quantum mechanics courses?
My apologies for any other overly difficult physics. I at least tried to cull the difficult-but-boring questions of the form: "Here's an obvious law you know well; what you didn't know is that it has a name. Name it."
setht wrote: a tossup on Mobius that (as far as I can recall) was devoid of useful science content between "barycentric calculus" near the start and "twisted a strip of paper" at the end.
Chris Frankel wrote:First off, I enjoyed many of the art tossups. The questions on Brancusi, Velasquez, and Gainsborough, for example, did a great job of taking easier answers and making them both challenging and pyramidal on a high level. I also enjoyed seeing a tossup on Et in Arcadia Ego. However, the harder end of the answers seemed way too hard. I have never heard of Domenichino, and only vaguely recognized the name Albert Pinkham Ryder (i.e. wasn't able to match the answer with the clues); both seem like they would have been fine for a 30 part on a bonus, but definitely not as tossup answers. And while the Marriage of St. Catherine seems to turn up a lot of results on google, I can say that as someone who has recently studied most of the artists mentioned in that TU (e.g. Parmigianino), I have never seen that subject ever come up in class or on slides. Effectively, it became a hagiography TU rather than an art one, and went dead in our room since nobody knew the spoked wheel thing.
Birdofredum Sawin wrote:Another point I'd like to make: It seems that science has become a category in which many of the questions are only answerable by people who have taken advanced courses in various subjects. This is not the case with any other category of the game.
Chris Frankel wrote:Music was generally solid, although my annoyance with common link tossups was building up by the end of the day. The tossup on clarinet works was good, but I didn't care for Te Deum's, Second Symphonies, and ballades, especially when considered as elements of a collective set. Since people disagree with me on the trend, I'll briefly explain my frustration (I can probably go into this more in another post) by saying that for players who do recognize the early clues, it adds an annoying puzzle factor of trying to figure out what's being asked for rather than saying straightforwardly what's wanted. Also, to make the leadins hard there has to be a lot of reliance on super-obscure clues early on, with little in the way of transition to the medium ones, and the result is often a "quack-quack buzzer race."
I must be getting too out of touch; do people not learn what an S-matrix is in quantum mechanics courses?
Birdofredum Sawin wrote:The basic objection to these questions seems to be "we don't learn about this stuff in real science classes, so it shouldn't come up." To a certain extent, I sympathize with this. But if you're making this complaint, you ought to be consistent. For instance, you can get a Ph. D. in philosophy in this country without ever reading a philosopher born before the year 1900, and yet I don't recall ever seeing any protests against the number of philosophy tossups that are essentially biographies of long-dead thinkers.
To the best of my recollection, the English department at the University of Chicago has never offered a course on "Amusing Anecdotes About American Authors," and yet nobody seems to have a problem with the occasional tossup on Cooper.
To be consistent, you might argue that every question should correlate to whatever is taught in the better schools nowadays, in which case other categories should be treated in the same way. (But be careful what you wish for: If literature questions were written along the same
lines as today's science questions, the percentage of literary-critical clues would have to shoot up dramatically.)
Alternatively, you might concede that if you don't object when the occasional philosophy or literature question is on the biography of a dead writer, then it should also be acceptable for the occasional science question to be on the biography of a dead scientist. (Also, note that we
are talking about an "occasional science" question -- there were at most 1/1 science history questions in any given round at nationals, and more often there was only 1/0 or 0/1 out of at least 4/4 science.)
One might also note that there are, in fact, classes in which the history of science is taught. At the University of Chicago, for instance, it is possible to receive a Ph. D from the "Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science." The history of science is intrinsically interesting and important, and it is studied in universities. As it happens, it
isn't always (or perhaps often) studied by the same people who go on to graduate school in physics or biology, but that doesn't make it trivial.
Birdofredum Sawin wrote:I want to dissent from my esteemed colleague Paul. Until we conduct a scientific poll of the entire community, all we can say for sure is that a few vocal science players have made a habit of denouncing science history questions on this board. Against this, at least one player (i.e. me) likes science history, and several teams opted to submit science biography questions to ACF nationals. So it's not as if I decided to impose a new category (like 1/1 questions on, say, fly fishing) out of the blue.
Another point I'd like to make: It seems that science has become a category in which many of the questions are only answerable by people who have taken advanced courses in various subjects.
This is not the case with any other category of the game. Consider this recent discussion about the "S matrix," whatever it is.
Can you imagine a parallel discussion of any literature tossup? An equivalent would be, say, Ezequiel posting "Yeah, I really liked that 'Signifying Monkey' tossup, but I thought that the Greenblatt clue came too early in the 'Harsnett's Declarations of Egregious Popish Impostures' question." Those are the kind of books that get read in advanced English courses, but we don't write tossups about them because only English grad students (and some very advanced undergrads) would have a prayer of answering the questions.
Basically, I'm concerned that a few science players have decided that only they should be able to answer questions in their category, and have tried to shame the rest of us into not asking questions on things that might be answerable by people who haven't done advanced coursework in science. To take Paul's example: From one point of view, I would love it if all philosophy tossups were on the kind of thing that gets covered in advanced philosophy programs, because I would have a virtual lock on the category. A lot of people can buzz if the answer is "Hobbes" or "Aristotle," but if every tossup were on "Naming and Necessity" or "Jaegwon Kim" I would have a field day. Obviously, I think the latter topics should come up occasionally, but it would be selfish of me to insist that the former be banned from the game.
I never intended this tournament to be some sort of Las Navas de Tolosa of science history, in which the reconquista of the science distribution by biographical tossups would at last be accomplished. Nobody is asking for a total ban on "S matrix" tossups. But complaints against science history tend to take the form "there's no place in the game for anything but real science, the kind we science people learn in our classes." I'm arguing that this is a case of special pleading (other people aren't clamoring for similar treatment) and that it is detrimental to the game (if other people were to start clamoring for equivalent questions in their own pet categories, difficulty would go through the roof and this year's nationals would look like a walk in the park).
grapesmoker wrote:There have already been plenty of literary-critical clues, I think, especially in the last two tournaments. I have no objection to such clues, and in fact, no objection to a little more literary theory. A little more, but not too much more, because after all, the study of literature, in my view, is about the actual literature, and only secondarily about what other people wrote of said literature.
Something I have not seen brought up: Keeping science questions focused overwhelmingly on conceptual science as opposed to science history also forces people like me to learn some conceptual science in order to write a proper question. If I hadn't imposed a firm rule on myself against writing any science history (outside of those odd distributions that specifically mandate it) I would know even less than I do about science, and one of the primary purposes of quizbowl would be lost.
Hoc verum esse
mreece wrote:But I do want to say one more thing, briefly: I think a straw man is being attacked in some of the posts here. How many science players make the argument that science questions should only (or even mostly) reflect what they learned in class?
jerry wrote:I'm not even opposed to tossups to which the answer is a scientist, but I would like for the clues to be something that a scientist could reasonably expect to know. For an example, consider the Bethe tossup in this same tournament. I forget what the first clues were, but I got it on the mention of his explanation of the Lamb shift, which is an extremely important sort of thing that you learn about as a physicist. That's the kind of context in which Bethe's name might be mentioned prominently. On the other hand, at no time in any of my science classes have I heard anything about Doppler's history or the history of the discovery of the effect.
jerry wrote:For example, the Gibbs question, which I'm sure is uniquely identifying from the beginning, contains the following gem: "During the early 1880s, this man worked on a modification of the quaternion which he thought could be adapted into a new system of vector analysis, but it had little impact." If it had little impact, in what possible context could one have learned about it? Certainly not in the context of an actual physics class. What's even worse about that question is that "Elementary Principles of Statistical Mechanics" appears midway through the tossup; I can only name one thing by Gibbs, and that's it. Most of the clues before and after that one (except the "American physicist known for his namesake phase rule") are totally empty of any science content that one actually learns about in a science class.
grapesmoker wrote:Two things:
First, I just wanted to say that the pop-culture questions at Nationals rocked my socks. I believe I managed to answer almost all the pop-culture questions that I heard (excluding "Whitesnake") which is totally unprecedented for me.
vsirin wrote:grapesmoker wrote:Two things:
First, I just wanted to say that the pop-culture questions at Nationals rocked my socks. I believe I managed to answer almost all the pop-culture questions that I heard (excluding "Whitesnake") which is totally unprecedented for me.
I'm with Jerry on this one. I wasn't answering many tossups at Nationals, but I did enjoy the many excellent pop culture questions. The tossups on "21 Jump Street" and "Folsom Prison" were particularly memorable. Also, the bonus on Chris Romero's favorite movie -- I think it was "Sorority Boys". It made me wish the ACF people would produce their own ACF/pop culture tournament, which would be much less lame than real trash tournaments.
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