Bruce wrote:Frankly, I don't see why everyone hates on CBI so much, question-wise.
Bruce wrote:...people were overlooking the redeeming characteristics I've seen in CBI.
ImmaculateDeception wrote:Bruce wrote:...people were overlooking the redeeming characteristics I've seen in CBI.
Which are what, exactly?
Bruce wrote:ImmaculateDeception wrote:Bruce wrote:...people were overlooking the redeeming characteristics I've seen in CBI.
Which are what, exactly?
There are two big ones, though they may be mutually exclusive because they require different approches.
First, if you approach CBI non-seriously and listen to it with an ACF/NAQT mindset, comparing it to those formats while you're playing it, the questions are, simply put, hilarious, due to their length and to the jumps they make from random intro stuff to giveaway. Others seem to be merely annoyed by this; I personally find it amusing.
Second, if you approach CBI seriously, there seems to be another skill at play that isn't there in the other formats. It seems to me that one needs to be very good at being able to predict where exactly a question will go, and this is an element not found in the other formats. I would argue that it requires more thinking than the other formats, which are essentially just memory recall.
I have never competed in CBI at any level higher than the Chicago Intramural Tournament (where the team I was on came within 5 points of beating a team consisting of Andrew Yaphe and Seth Teitler, thanks to Chad)
Rothlover wrote:To approach CBI non-seriously requires an ability to discount the fact that it costs nearly $1000 to even have the chance to get to their nationals, which translates to a full year worth of circuit events. That is a lot of money for mere amusement, not to mention the sort of thing that can cripple a program unless their student union specifically funds CBI (as I know is the case with several programs.
mps4a_mps4a wrote:This, I think, is part of it. I mean no disrespect to you or Chad, but as I don't know who either of you are, I'd expect in NAQT, ACF, or a modification of either, you wouldn't be able to come within five points of beating a team consisting of Andrew Yaphe and Seth Teitler.
Bruce wrote:If I beat Timo Perez, a better baseball player than I, at badminton, does that make badminton an illegitimate, time-wasting sport?
If I beat Timo Perez, a better baseball player than I, at badminton, does that make badminton an illegitimate, time-wasting sport?
unless their student union specifically funds CBI (as I know is the case with several programs.
BrokenSymmetry wrote:There's a great deal I'm willing to tolerate for free airfare to far-flung locales. Whether I bother with CBI next year depends on the nationals host -- I certainly won't be coming for the buzzer races, Friday night matches, and restricted answer space worthy of Trivial Pursuit or a Chip Beal packet. "Maxwell's equations" and "Newton's second law" indeed.
Baron Jacobi wrote:lots of analogies between cotton candy and CBI
As Eric Smith was asking at the tournament, can anything be done about this? Has anyone ever tried to do anything about this?
grapesmoker wrote:BrokenSymmetry wrote:There's a great deal I'm willing to tolerate for free airfare to far-flung locales. Whether I bother with CBI next year depends on the nationals host -- I certainly won't be coming for the buzzer races, Friday night matches, and restricted answer space worthy of Trivial Pursuit or a Chip Beal packet. "Maxwell's equations" and "Newton's second law" indeed.
I hear Auburn University is a real sham. Seriously, is it really worth your weekend even if it's free?
Chris Frankel wrote:Obviously the structuring of CBI's questions is known for producing random and unpredictable results (e.g. Valdosta State??? beating Illinois ... ) ...
steven-lamp wrote:grapesmoker wrote:BrokenSymmetry wrote:There's a great deal I'm willing to tolerate for free airfare to far-flung locales. Whether I bother with CBI next year depends on the nationals host -- I certainly won't be coming for the buzzer races, Friday night matches, and restricted answer space worthy of Trivial Pursuit or a Chip Beal packet. "Maxwell's equations" and "Newton's second law" indeed.
I hear Auburn University is a real sham. Seriously, is it really worth your weekend even if it's free?
Auburn's a pretty good party college town, but if you're playing matches Friday night and stuff, then that kind of sucks.
PRStoetzer wrote: We had all of our expenses paid by the University Activities Board and our campus bookstore and received a $38 per diem for expenses (which we did not use up).
quizbowllee wrote:steven-lamp wrote:grapesmoker wrote:BrokenSymmetry wrote:There's a great deal I'm willing to tolerate for free airfare to far-flung locales. Whether I bother with CBI next year depends on the nationals host -- I certainly won't be coming for the buzzer races, Friday night matches, and restricted answer space worthy of Trivial Pursuit or a Chip Beal packet. "Maxwell's equations" and "Newton's second law" indeed.
I hear Auburn University is a real sham. Seriously, is it really worth your weekend even if it's free?
Auburn's a pretty good party college town, but if you're playing matches Friday night and stuff, then that kind of sucks.
Steven - I'm pretty sure that the reference is to last year's CBI Nationals, which was held not at Auburn, but at Auburn-Montgomery...
Which, being a Montgomerian yourself, you should know sucks.
StPickrell wrote:Tom Michaels [sic] has documented some examples of rudeness from circuit regulars towards HBCU's.
BrokenSymmetry wrote:There's a great deal I'm willing to tolerate for free airfare to far-flung locales. Whether I bother with CBI next year depends on the nationals host...
ImmaculateDeception wrote:StPickrell wrote:Tom Michaels [sic] has documented some examples of rudeness from circuit regulars towards HBCU's.
In the interest of accuracy, what he did was post a single anecdote about a single incident alleged to have occured ten or more years ago in his post that won the Internet.
MaS
StPickrell wrote:I surely hope you are not saying rosaparks54 acted appropriately on the Y! board.
Chris Frankel wrote:
Although a lot of the results of CBI Nationals can be explained by the lack of a quality field, due to boycotting by the vast majority of top players, one can't outright dismiss the quality of the field this year since ~top 5 teams like Illinois and Rochester and solid second tier teams like Stanford showed up at full strength. In this sense, watching a team like Minnesota, who couldn't even get past the bottom bracket with full strength teams at ICT's 2004-2005, win a repeat championship is absolutely baffling.
NoahMinkCHS wrote:I do think it's a different audience. Not on the scale of company softball vs. the major leagues, but the same principle. At least in theory.
NoahMinkCHS wrote:If that's the model you're working with, you, as a business, aren't going to ask "hard stuff". Nobody's gonna read the Bhagavad Gita for a trivia contest... but we all know about John Paul II and Cokie Roberts.
NoahMinkCHS wrote:…take the guy who powered a ten-line tossup on a 14th century Korean poet and ask him a 3-liner about "soup" and he'll be just as out of his element.
NoahMinkCHS wrote:...I am saying that I think that CBI and the pyramidial formats are designed to test different areas of knowledge in different ways. Does that mean one is more or less legitimate than the other? I don't think so. I think an argument can certainly be made that ACF/NAQT test deeper academic knowledge. I don't think one can say that that's necessarily "better" -- though, of course, it will be more or less enjoyable for certain people.
NoahMinkCHS wrote:Regardless of what many of y'all may have heard, it's not ALL bad. But yeah -- as with anything, parts are.
I have to disagree there. The pretend ACF is at least as bad as CBI for most of us. As for the real thing... I'm getting there.Matt Weiner wrote:The fictitious straw-man version of ACF that only exists in online arguments is still better than CBI.
I'm not sure how surprising that is, if at all. But most of us do own TVs. Whether that's a legitimate topic for academic quiz bowl has been and will be discussed probably as long as we have the game. But my contention was merely that CBI aimed for the "general college student" audience that they feel (I think correctly, though I don't know) would better know TV newspeople than Eastern religious works. Is that how quiz bowl should be? You can decide that. I was just hazarding an explanation as to why I think they ask that.ImmaculateDeception wrote:I challenge this assumption. I neither know nor care to know who or what Cokie Roberts is. Research indicates she’s someone who's in television news. Television is terrible, and I’m glad I don’t own one.
Fair enough. ACF doesn't have powers, and (admittedly) that was the target I had in my head. Further,ImmaculateDeception wrote:This situation is telling and typical in that this hypothetical guy doesn't exist. That is because the question you're citing as typical of... some format with "impossible" questions and powers...has never existed.
ImmaculateDeception wrote:I challenge your assumption here, again. What is there in actual academic quizbowl that's so damn hard? Please try to keep in mind that I’m talking about actual quizbowl now, not whatever asks about 14th century Korean poets or whatever else. Look at, say, ACF Fall, or a novice set. What is so hard about the answers to those questions?
You and I both know that the answer is "nothing much" and the real difference is that these questions don't allow the less knowledgeable, less prepared, less experienced, less studied (in short, less good and less deserving) team to win as frequently.
For that, I have to respect you. I've always supported the idea of "Don't knock it till you try it", especially on this board (where it's too often ignored), and if I violated that principle regarding ACF-type formats, then I should and do apologize. I appreciate that both Sudheer and MaS came, tried, and didn't like. While we don't totally agree, I respect their opinion much more than I would have had they never experienced what it is they're criticizing. (Though I realize that getting my respect is probably not high on their list of things to do.)ImmaculateDeception wrote:The thing that convinced me of this more than anything was my own experience of CBI.
NoahMinkCHS wrote:But my original point was that CBI targets not the "professional" quiz bowler, but rather the hobbyist. Of course, now, most teams that make CBI Nats are probably much more than that (CBI pros as opposed to ACF pros) so that distinction is blurry.
(However, while I do agree pyramidial questions are the best tests of knowledge, and my favorites, I don't think they're necessarily the only legitimate questions. Hoses, of course, should be unacceptable, but short questions with one or two facts that turn into speed tests are not, innately, bad. Isn't speed, like knowledge, one of many components of quiz bowl that can be emphasized? If you don't want to play them, or feel they're against your idea of quiz bowl, that's your business.)
However, while I do agree pyramidial questions are the best tests of knowledge, and my favorites, I don't think they're necessarily the only legitimate questions. Hoses, of course, should be unacceptable, but short questions with one or two facts that turn into speed tests are not, innately, bad.
suds1000 wrote:The only way to actually get CBI to alter either their general demeanor or their question quality would be to attack them where it hurts: the bank account. All they care about is making money, and so as long as they can keep university student unions in the dark about the now arguably unorthodox practices they use, they'll also have a stranglehold on basically all the money.
What I've been considering recently is writing to all of the teams who played only CBI this past year, and showing them old sets of ACF and NAQT packets to illustrate to them what else is out there. It's clearly up to them what sort of decision they might make on what to play, but maybe at worst they could show some things to their union directors or whatever, and try to paint an accurate picture of what's going on.
suds1000 wrote:What I've been considering recently is writing to all of the teams who played only CBI this past year, and showing them old sets of ACF and NAQT packets to illustrate to them what else is out there. It's clearly up to them what sort of decision they might make on what to play, but maybe at worst they could show some things to their union directors or whatever, and try to paint an accurate picture of what's going on. Of course, this will definitely take at least several years to have any kind of impact, but I think that it's probably the best step that can be taken for the moment.
suds1000 wrote:What I've been considering recently is writing to all of the teams who played only CBI this past year, and showing them old sets of ACF and NAQT packets to illustrate to them what else is out there.
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