MUT 2012 Discussion

[Cheynem]

All mirrors of this have completed, so I'll open it up to discussion. I'll post the packets at some point pretty soon.

A number of people worked on this. Here is a mildly exhaustive list:

me (Mike Cheyne)--edited history, social science, trash, looked over literature, fine arts, religion
Gaurav Kandlikar--edited science, wrote in various categories, especially social science and fine arts
Andrew Hart--edited literature and fine arts, chipped in questions in various categories
Robin Heinonen--wrote a music tossup, edited some of the physics
Rob Carson--wrote some last-minute questions in I think fine arts and myth
Bernadette Spencer--looked over religion and philosophy and social science
Ike Jose--edited RMP, looked over literature and fine arts
Eliza Grames--wrote a lot of questions in a lot of categories
Gautam Kandlikar--useful science advice, wrote some econ

A number of Illinois players wrote questions, especially in the American history, science, and myth categories. I forget whom they are--Ike can probably explain better.

Packets 11, 12 and 13 were written (or at least contained submitted questions) by Minnesota players.

Any comments are appreciated--obviously if you ran an earlier mirror, we tried to fix typos or factual problems before later mirrors, but some things may still slip through. We tried to keep a consistent difficulty, although obviously there are the usual outliers. This is probably my last hurrah working on MUT for a little while, so I tried to really put forth a good effort and wrote the largest number of questions I've done for this set.

[theMoMA]

Big thanks to Mike and Gaurav for their extended work on this set over our spring break (they were the reason this tournament happened), and to Eliza for writing many good questions. Illinois was also a worthy collaborator; I especially want to thank Ike for his help looking over and editing many questions.

[JamesIV]

I liked this set for the most part (although my brain was still in Nationals-mode and that made for some interesting negs).

The one error I caught: in the bonus that went Ralph Ellison / Invisible Man / paint factory, it claimed that the Invisible Man goes to Harlem to work with Ras the Exhorter. This is false. The Invisible Man works with/for the Brotherhood. Ras the Exhorter is their rival and enemy.

[Kwang the Ninja]

My brother and I are pretty sure that we both got hosed pretty hard on the Book of Mormon tossup. Can somebody post it?

[Madagascar Serpent Eagle]

I liked this set a lot. I don't remember too much, but I do remember that every single room got the Rommel tossup on Asparagus at the Canadian mirror, which seems kind of suboptimal. Also, I enjoyed the special relativity tossup that lead in with exactly what I had been doing in my research Friday before we left.

[Edmund]

This was a good set - I enjoyed reading it at the UK mirror as much as I enjoyed playing on last year's iteration.

I think the version that was used at Warwick was quite an early version, so it may not have had the attention to typos of later revisions, but I would remark that it could have done with a proof-read. There were rather a lot of non-sentences or silly, easily caught mistakes like "Zi" as the chemical symbol for zinc. Also a few questions seemed to confuse the adjectives "British" and "English". Unless there is some particular reason to do otherwise, you should use English as a nationality designator before the Act of Union (1707) and British thereafter.

I'll urge the organisers at Warwick to post results and stats to HSQB, but in brief: Oxford A (Liam Shaw, Hugh Binnie, Maris Rowe-McCulloch, Eva Miller) beat Manchester by 260 - 220 in the final, which went to the last tossup.

[Cheynem]

The Invisible Man bonus part was incorrect--sorry about that.

I playtested the Rommel tossup and nobody buzzed on "asparagus." I was unaware this is that widely known.

The zinc error was corrected for some versions--sorry about sending you apparently an earlier copy. I apologize for the proofreading--by the end of this set, I was proofreading, randomizing, and editing/writing a bunch of things, and sadly the proofreading probably fell by the wayside. I obviously should have returned to more careful proofreading after the first wave of mirrors--I really want to thank people who sent in feedback, such as Jeff Hoppes, Will Butler, Eric Douglass, and Billy Beyer, among others.

Book of Mormon tossup:

1. This text makes the claim that men who are thrust down into hell, men who deny not the Holy Spirit and men who did not receive the gospel of Christ have glory equal to that of the stars, which it terms “telestial.” It notes that evil men don’t give good gifts and that the skin of evil people was blackened. One of its figures notes that his father “dwelt in a tent” and that his descendants fought the Lamanites. It relates the Testimony of the Eight Witnesses and describes Jacob, who is the brother of Nephi. This work describes Moroni, who titles its last section, who inspired its creation. This work’s author owned a seerstone before his First Vision and named its locations after places in New York. For 10 points, name this text supposedly translated from golden tablets by Joseph Smith. ANSWER: The Book of Mormon

[gaurav.kandlikar]

Yeah, sorry about the shoddy copy-editing. I told myself that I'd go through the set again after we had put it all together, but the fatigue of spending all of spring break writing etc. combined with the stresses of school prevented that from happening.

In addition to everything Mike has said, thanks a bunch to Billy Busse for his comments on chem questions as I was editing them. Some of his suggestions didn't end up getting into the set because I was stupid and didn't make sure that the final versions of things were put into packets, but he had many helpful suggestions.

I tried to have a lot of "real" science in this set, and from what I saw at the Minnesota mirror, this went over all right (with exceptions, of courses - that Elsevier/PLoS/Science bonus ended up being much harder than I thought it would be). I guess the downside was that unless a team had a biology student, some bonus parts in the bio distribution were kind of ungettable (eg. the bonus part on counting cells), but I think I'm all right with that.

[Vernon Lee Bad Marriage, Jr.]

Nobody buzzed on "asparagus" at our site, I don't think.

[Kwang the Ninja]

Book of Mormon tossup:

1. This text makes the claim that men who are thrust down into hell, men who deny not the Holy Spirit and men who did not receive the gospel of Christ have glory equal to that of the stars, which it terms “telestial.” It notes that evil men don’t give good gifts and that the skin of evil people was blackened. One of its figures notes that his father “dwelt in a tent” and that his descendants fought the Lamanites. It relates the Testimony of the Eight Witnesses and describes Jacob, who is the brother of Nephi. This work describes Moroni, who titles its last section, who inspired its creation. This work’s author owned a seerstone before his First Vision and named its locations after places in New York. For 10 points, name this text supposedly translated from golden tablets by Joseph Smith. ANSWER: The Book of Mormon

The first three phrases in that lead-in are incredibly vague and resemble phrases present throughout Mormon doctrine (but also standard Christianity!) but the "glory equal to that of the stars" is almost a direct quote from 1st Corinthians. Also worth noting that the word "telestial" doesn't appear anywhere in theology before Doctrine and Covenants 76 (too lazy to find a link right now) and that unless I'm thinking of a different verse than you're referencing, "evil men don't give good gifts" is a blatant misquotation of 3rd Nephi 14:11. This is just everyone's annual reminder that not fact-checking your questions will garner you the scorn of uptight assholes everywhere.

[Ike]

On Illinois's end in case you were wondering:

Billy Busse wrote some non-negligible amount of the science.

Austin Listerud edited a bunch of the myth and wrote me some replacement questions for world literature. Most of his questions that he edited I chose to use with minimal editing. He saved me a lot of time by agreeing to reduce a bit of my load during my Peaceful Resolution / GDC / MUT escapades.

I may have written questions for other things as well, and looked them over, I honestly can't remember anymore.

The first three phrases in that lead-in are incredibly vague and resemble phrases present throughout Mormon doctrine (but also standard Christianity!) but the "glory equal to that of the stars" is almost a direct quote from 1st Corinthians. Also worth noting that the word "telestial" doesn't appear anywhere in theology before Doctrine and Covenants 76 (too lazy to find a link right now) and that unless I'm thinking of a different verse than you're referencing, "evil men don't give good gifts" is a blatant misquotation of 3rd Nephi 14:11. This is just everyone's annual reminder that not fact-checking your questions will garner you the scorn of uptight assholes everywhere.

Hey I'm sorry that this tossup was frustrating to play: you're right the term telestial isn't used until Doctrine and Covenants 76, and upon a second look I should have caught that. I'll also remark that unless I put things into quotes, I'm not quoting directly. Obviously as a player you can't tell, but I generally assume that things are not quoted. It is entirely possible that I should be quoting passages entirely, but I deemed that a bit verbose for me. Either way, my sincere apologies.

[RyuAqua]

I thought this was on the whole a good set of easy questions, and I'm glad that basically every circuit got a chance to earnestly run it this year.

This question stood out to me as one which didn't service the goal of rewarding newer quizbowl players' knowledge of things, and I wish it had either been more focused on the author's two or three more famous works or just replaced with something more appropriate:

This author wrote about a film star named Sakura who was raped by American soldiers in The Beautiful Annabel Lee was Chilled and Killed. At the end of one of his novels, the unnamed narrator killed a blacksmith using an iron ingot after escaping from a warden who promised his detainees they could live normal lives. In a parody of Yukio Mishima, he wrote about a man who wears goggles in a hospital bed and hopes he has cancer in The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away. Bird, the antisocial protagonist of another of his novels, is the father of an abnormal newborn. Mitsu and Takashi narrate another of his works as they return to their childhood village after Mitsu’s handicapped son is institutionalized. For 10 points, name this Japanese author The Silent Cry.
ANSWER: Kenzaburo Oe

[Kenneth Widmerpool]

Another question which stood out to me as needlessly hard was the philosophy of _Italy_ tossup, which spent the entire time describing The New Science and Oration on the Dignity of Man.

[Joey]

I played for the only high school team at the Warwick mirror and had a great time. It was nice to finally play a tournament directed more to my knowledge level.

I only noticed one factual error. It was in the bonus set about Vargas Llosa. I believe that it referred to him as the 2011 Nobel Literature winner, when he actually won in 2010. Transtromer was the winner in 2011. It was extremely minor, though, and doubt it caused anyone to miss the bonus, as you'd have to be pretty bizarrely informed to both know that Transtromer won in 2011 and think he is Peruvian.

There was also a bonus that asked for the name of St. Augustine's biography in the first part, and then asked for the author of Confessions in the middle part.

Another minor quibble, which might be peculiar to the team I played on, was the mention of "alkene" in almost every packet we played, sometimes more than once. Perhaps it just out to us due to our extreme lack of orgo-chem knowledge, I don't have any idea how significant alkenes are.

On the whole, though, I must repeat myself in saying that I felt this was fantastic set.

[Cheynem]

The Augustine error was corrected for future sites--again, I think the English site was (unfortunately!) operating from an earlier version of the set.

[Madagascar Serpent Eagle]

I tried to have a lot of "real" science in this set, and from what I saw at the Minnesota mirror, this went over all right (with exceptions, of courses - that Elsevier/PLoS/Science bonus ended up being much harder than I thought it would be). I guess the downside was that unless a team had a biology student, some bonus parts in the bio distribution were kind of ungettable (eg. the bonus part on counting cells), but I think I'm all right with that.

This is something I strongly support in general, as it's always really frustrating for me and the other scientist on our team to lose buzzer races on topics we know about because of eponym bowl. I can't speak for the rest, although most of the physics was decently successful in this. However, there were occasional instances of things being too hard for a tournament geared towards underclassmen specifically and undergrads in general, like the aforementioned scientific journals bonus (I think we got Science, off of a guess, and it would probably be better in the kind of tournament played by people more likely to read or publish in them, although it would be a really cool idea there), or the liquid crystal bonus, which I zeroed after having never discussed any of it in class.

[Muriel Axon]

However, there were occasional instances of things being too hard for a tournament geared towards underclassmen specifically and undergrads in general, like the aforementioned scientific journals bonus (I think we got Science, off of a guess, and it would probably be better in the kind of tournament played by people more likely to read or publish in them, although it would be a really cool idea there)

I was confused about which was the hard part in the Elsevier/PLoS/Science question. Elsevier has been in the news a lot lately, so I thought that was the medium part, but PLoS, being an actual (system of) well-regarded journal(s), is probably more likely to pop up in the everyday vocabulary of scientists. (Of course, as Joe and Gaurav noted, they're both fairly difficult for a tournament like MUT. I thought it was a really good question, just placed in the wrong tournament.)

Also, Joe - we didn't get that bonus. And I would've 30'd it.

[Madagascar Serpent Eagle]

However, there were occasional instances of things being too hard for a tournament geared towards underclassmen specifically and undergrads in general, like the aforementioned scientific journals bonus (I think we got Science, off of a guess, and it would probably be better in the kind of tournament played by people more likely to read or publish in them, although it would be a really cool idea there)

I was confused about which was the hard part in the Elsevier/PLoS/Science question. Elsevier has been in the news a lot lately, so I thought that was the medium part, but PLoS, being an actual (system of) well-regarded journal(s), is probably more likely to pop up in the everyday vocabulary of scientists. (Of course, as Joe and Gaurav noted, they're both fairly difficult for a tournament like MUT.)

Also, Joe - we didn't get that bonus. And I would've 30'd it.

Oh, that was when we were playing Ben I guess. Anyway, I still think my point is valid that it's not something that most undergrads who don't publish papers like you do are likely to run into.

[gaurav.kandlikar]

For context:

Timothy Glowers called for a boycott of journals run by this company for its support of the Research Works Act, and this publication is the subject of the Cost of Knowledge protest movements. For 10 points each:
[10] Name this Dutch publishing company, which runs the Science Direct and Trends journals. The BBC reported that this company offered people $25 gift cards to give their products good reviews.
ANSWER: Elsevier, BV [accept Reed Elsevier]
[10] At the opposite side of the open access spectrum is this project, which was founded by Michael Eisen. Journals under its heading include its namesake “Neglected Tropical Diseases” and “ONE” journals.
ANSWER: PLoS [accept Public Library of Science; accept PLoS ONE or PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases]
[10] This aptly named journal has an impact factor which is second only to that of Nature. This journal gives out the Breakthrough of the Year award, and published Felisa Wolfe-Simone’s terrible paper on arsenic based life.
ANSWER: Science Magazine [accept SciMag from all the cool kids]

edit: I guess I agree that the medium/hard distinction is fuzzy. I had intended for PLoS to be the hard part, but I realized when writing this that it had more of a medium-hard/medium-hard/easy structure (at least in my mind).

Re: Joe's comment about the liquid crystals bonus - the easy part there was supposed to be surfactants. Presumably you got that part and just don't remember it.

They can be oriented identically and arranged in sheets in the smectic phase, or they can have the same orientation and be randomly distributed in the nematic. For 10 points each:
[10] Name this state of matter in which mesogens tend to line up along the director axis to point in a certain direction
ANSWER: liquid crystal [accept LC]
[10] These substances are examples of lyotropic liquid crystals, arranging into micelles when at the correct concentration in a solvent. These substances reduce the surface tension of liquids.
ANSWER: surfactants [accept detergents]
[10] Surfactants are often studied in a “trough” named for this scientist. A probe named for this man can be used to study various parameters of a plasma.
ANSWER: Irving Langmuir

[Smuttynose Island]

I know that it's a little stupid, but I wanted to give a huge shout out to whatever person included the "Sun City" and "Constructive engagement" clues in the South Africa TU. I didn't get to hear the "constructive engagement" clue, but the "Sun City" song clue absolutely made my day.

[Cheynem]

Thank you.

[Madagascar Serpent Eagle]

Re: Joe's comment about the liquid crystals bonus - the easy part there was supposed to be surfactants. Presumably you got that part and just don't remember it.

They can be oriented identically and arranged in sheets in the smectic phase, or they can have the same orientation and be randomly distributed in the nematic. For 10 points each:
[10] Name this state of matter in which mesogens tend to line up along the director axis to point in a certain direction
ANSWER: liquid crystal [accept LC]
[10] These substances are examples of lyotropic liquid crystals, arranging into micelles when at the correct concentration in a solvent. These substances reduce the surface tension of liquids.
ANSWER: surfactants [accept detergents]
[10] Surfactants are often studied in a “trough” named for this scientist. A probe named for this man can be used to study various parameters of a plasma.
ANSWER: Irving Langmuir

OK, seeing it written out it isn't as bad as I thought. I think we just missed the reducing surface tension clue, and I've heard of Langmuir probes used in plasmas before, but couldn't pull it when we were playing.

[Muriel Axon]

Re: Joe's comment about the liquid crystals bonus - the easy part there was supposed to be surfactants. Presumably you got that part and just don't remember it.

They can be oriented identically and arranged in sheets in the smectic phase, or they can have the same orientation and be randomly distributed in the nematic. For 10 points each:
[10] Name this state of matter in which mesogens tend to line up along the director axis to point in a certain direction
ANSWER: liquid crystal [accept LC]
[10] These substances are examples of lyotropic liquid crystals, arranging into micelles when at the correct concentration in a solvent. These substances reduce the surface tension of liquids.
ANSWER: surfactants [accept detergents]
[10] Surfactants are often studied in a “trough” named for this scientist. A probe named for this man can be used to study various parameters of a plasma.
ANSWER: Irving Langmuir

OK, seeing it written out it isn't as bad as I thought. I think we just missed the reducing surface tension clue, and I've heard of Langmuir probes used in plasmas before, but couldn't pull it when we were playing.

I'm pretty sure Connor got the surfactants part. Still, that's a bit hard for a MUT easy part, dontcha think? The liquid crystal part (presumably the medium part) had some pretty hard clues, too.

[ValenciaQBowl]

whatever person included the "Sun City"

It was obvious that was a Mike Cheyne clue/question, but there was much smugness in the readers' room after the round with the South Africa TU, as people older than 35 mostly were certain they would've beaten the whippersnappers on the "Sun City" clue. I loved the many history questions which brought important cultural info into play, particularly in questions about things that happened post-1960, though I don't have the set to cite specific examples. Overall, I thought it was a great set for undergrads.

As to the Dallin's grumbling on the "Book of Mormon" TU, all I'll say is that Valencia's Mormon (Brady Harris) got it, giving him the Mormon QB Knowledge title for our Orlando mirror. I was going to say something about not getting one's magic underwear in a wad about it, but that would certainly be inappropriate, so I won't.

[Edmund]

Oh, and with respect to the bonus set that began _hurricane_, we Brits usually measure wind speed in mph, not kmh. Or in knots, if you are at sea. We also have mph speed limits and mile distances on road signs, and we sell beer and milk by the pint. Do not confuse us for a metric nation, despite the best efforts of the EU!

I would commend the author / editor, however, for a well-intentioned addition to a question in a set with mirrors in multiple countries.

[csheep]

Quiz bowl newbie here, but I was totally surprised to hear a Lin Biao question. I was unaware people outside of China knew he existed haha, big props for including a question on him, but maybe he actually makes many appearances at quiz bowl and I was just unaware.

I was surprised at the lack of Beethoven. With questions in pretty much every "major" composer (Mozart twice, three if you count the oboe question!), and not even a fleeting reference to Beethoven! (unless he was the giveaway in the sixth symphony question?)

Can I see the toss up on Grieg?

[gaurav.kandlikar]

Welcome to the forums, Michael.

(unless he was the giveaway in the sixth symphony question?)

Yup, he was.

In the third section of one work, this composer grouped rhythms in patterns of 13, 22, and 27 notes and continued into a ‘hurling’ dance. This composer included a “Valse Impromptu” and a piece called “Butterfly” in one collection that opens with “Arietta.” This composer, whose Piano Concerto in A Minor was inspired by Schumann’s, opened one piece with a flute and oboe playing a melody that symbolizes the rising of the sun. Those composer, who used Bach’s Third Orchestral Suite as the basis for his Holberg Suite, wrote incidental music that includes the movements “Morning Mood” and “In the Hall of the Mountain King.” For 10 points, name this composer of Lyric Pieces and the Peer Gynt Suite, who hailed from Norway.
ANSWER: Edvard Hagerup Grieg

[Muriel Axon]

Speaking of classical music, I was very excited about the clues on Poulenc's Oboe Sonata (answer: oboe) and the opening bars of Shostakovich's Viola Sonata (answer: Shostakovich). Whoever wrote those is my hero.

As for the comment on Beethoven - I find it more useful to think of the classical music distribution in terms of styles, time periods, genres. While most tournaments will probably have a question mentioning Beethoven or something by Beethoven at some point, I wouldn't necessarily go in expecting that.

Could you please post the sixth symphony tossup?

[Fond du lac operon]

For context:

Timothy Glowers called for a boycott of journals run by this company for its support of the Research Works Act, and this publication is the subject of the Cost of Knowledge protest movements. For 10 points each:
[10] Name this Dutch publishing company, which runs the Science Direct and Trends journals. The BBC reported that this company offered people $25 gift cards to give their products good reviews.
ANSWER: Elsevier, BV [accept Reed Elsevier]
[10] At the opposite side of the open access spectrum is this project, which was founded by Michael Eisen. Journals under its heading include its namesake “Neglected Tropical Diseases” and “ONE” journals.
ANSWER: PLoS [accept Public Library of Science; accept PLoS ONE or PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases]
[10] This aptly named journal has an impact factor which is second only to that of Nature. This journal gives out the Breakthrough of the Year award, and published Felisa Wolfe-Simone’s terrible paper on arsenic based life.
ANSWER: Science Magazine [accept SciMag from all the cool kids]

I'm not sure if this is a typo, but I'd just like to point out that the guy's name is Timothy Gowers. Also it's not clear whether just "Elsevier" was accepted, but it should be.

[JLai]

First thanks to Minessota for producing some very well written questions. I know that our NYU team really enjoyed playing them.

I guess my only real criticism is what I thought were some variances in bonus difficulty. Just speaking from personal experiences it seemed for our team at least most of our bonuses were either 10's or 30's (and yeah a few 0's on the comp sci) as opposed to more 20's. I also agree with most of the comments above regarding the science. I thought they were written really well aka non science players like me could not fraud them (except the tossups on the Andromeda Galaxy and Feldspars, both of which i thought were a little transparent given the limited size of astro/earth science cannon at this level).

Also I felt this tournament used more opera tossups to fit the 3/3 Fine Arts requirements than most question sets and felt there were less architecture/sculpture/other tossups. Another comment regarding this and I guess the ACF distribution in general, but in my personal opinion I feel 3/3 fine arts is a little heavy (Puts up flame shield ). Mostly because I feel like 3/3 fine arts takes away from the social science questions. Not saying Fine Art's isn't an important category cause it is. But I think the SS's are as well and they cover way too many fields (anthro, law, econ, psych, sociology, etc). I guess I would just much rather see 2.5/2.5 fine art and 1.5/1.5 Social Science. Of course this is just a personal opinion from another newbie in his first year of playing competitive college qb and maybe not something heavily shared by the pros out there.

But again, overall great questions and we had a lot of fun.

[csheep]

As for the comment on Beethoven - I find it more useful to think of the classical music distribution in terms of styles, time periods, genres. While most tournaments will probably have a question mentioning Beethoven or something by Beethoven at some point, I wouldn't necessarily go in expecting that.

That's fair and all, but three questions on Mozart? Really? @@

[theMoMA]

Important people tend to come up a lot at this level, sometimes multiple times per tournament, especially in areas of the distribution like music where the answer space is already fairly restrictive.

[gaurav.kandlikar]

I'm not sure if this is a typo, but I'd just like to point out that the guy's name is Timothy Gowers. Also it's not clear whether just "Elsevier" was accepted, but it should be.

Yeah, that was a typo -- sorry about that. Elsevier was enough for an answer.

Carl Nielsen’s work of this type and number contains a second movement “Humoreske” for winds and percussion alone and ends with a loud low B-flat “raspberry” played on two bassoons. Le midi and Le soir finish the trilogy begun by Le matin, Joseph Haydn’s work of this type and number. Another work of this type and number contains the so-called “Alma theme” in its first movement and ends with a movement containing three “hammer-blows of fate”. Yet another work of this type and number contains a cadenza for three woodwind instruments imitating birdcalls at the end of its movement “By the Brook”. For 10 points, identify the common genre and number of Mahler’s Tragic and Beethoven’s Pastoral.
ANSWER: sixth symphony [or sixth symphonies; or Symphony No. 6; or other equivalents; prompt on “Sinfonia Semplice” or “Simple Symphony” before “Le Midi”; prompt on partial answer]

You can thank Rob Carson and Robin Heinonen for the tossups on Oboe and Shostakovich, respectively.

[Kenneth Widmerpool]

That clue about Le midi and Le soir could have been worded differently to prevent people from going in with seventh or eighth symphonies after hearing those names.

[Muriel Axon]

Also I felt this tournament used more opera tossups to fit the 3/3 Fine Arts requirements than most question sets and felt there were less architecture/sculpture/other tossups. Another comment regarding this and I guess the ACF distribution in general, but in my personal opinion I feel 3/3 fine arts is a little heavy (Puts up flame shield ). Mostly because I feel like 3/3 fine arts takes away from the social science questions. Not saying Fine Art's isn't an important category cause it is. But I think the SS's are as well and they cover way too many fields (anthro, law, econ, psych, sociology, etc). I guess I would just much rather see 2.5/2.5 fine art and 1.5/1.5 Social Science. Of course this is just a personal opinion from another newbie in his first year of playing competitive college qb and maybe not something heavily shared by the pros out there.

I don't know what you mean. Your reason for thinking 3/3 fine arts is a bit heavy is because it takes away from social science? You could make the same argument about any subject: "I don't think we should have 4/4 literature because it takes away from social science!" "4/4 history is too much! Can't we have more social science?" (or whatever the real distribution is, I don't know)

I understand your point about social science, and in my opinion it is underrepresented for a part of the distribution that covers so many different and important subjects (although to be fair, it has some overlap with history and philosophy). I just don't get why fine arts, in particular, is antagonistic to social science. Do you have any particular reason to claim fine arts is overrepresented, or do you just not like it?

EDIT: Sorry if my tone is a bit harsh here. I know you're fairly new to quiz bowl, and I'm not trying to scare you off.

[JLai]

Actually I really enjoy fine arts questions. Anyway my main point was not that fine arts is overrepresented so much as I feel Social Science is underrepresented. I was simply just looking for a category where I could replace some tossup/bonuses from that part of the distribution with SS questions. I don't think taking away from lit/hist/sci are live options here. And I think we need 3/3 RMP as well. So I guess I just singled out 3/3 Fine arts because I thought since we already have 1/1 visual art and 1/1/ audio art, it would be easier to either get rid of that 1 extra fine art tossup or bonus.

But I guess there are other solutions to this such as taking away from the trash/CE/geo part of the distribution and I'd be down with that too (Though our teams actually loves these questions ).

[An Intergalactic Puzzlepalooza]

My memory of a lot of individual things having faded a little in the past 2 weeks since I played it, I'm going to withhold individual question comments until the set is actually posted.

The main thing I do remember, however, is that the religion distribution felt like a list: We must have 1 Jainism tossup, 1 Sikhism tossup, 1 Baha'i tossup, 1 Rastafari tossup, etc. I'm pretty sure I actually frauded (I'm pretty sure I'm using that word correctly) the Baha'i tossup solely because I had picked up on that.

Overall, the set was incredibly well written, to the point at which I could play it without Joey despite my total lack of Literature and Fine Arts competency.

[Chimango Caracara]

The main thing I do remember, however, is that the religion distribution felt like a list: We must have 1 Jainism tossup, 1 Sikhism tossup, 1 Baha'i tossup, 1 Rastafari tossup, etc. I'm pretty sure I actually frauded (I'm pretty sure I'm using that word correctly) the Baha'i tossup solely because I had picked up on that.

I agree. I frauded the Jainism tossup because Sikhism had already been mentioned in a bonus and it was obviously about a non-crazy Asian religion that was not Buddhism. The Wittig reaction tossup was also fraudable because it seems to be the only reaction that is tossed up at this level. My thought process for much of the tournament was primarily concerned with determining what was "easy" enough to be an answerline on any given question. This backfired on the Beer's Law tossup, which I knew from the first line but waited to buzz on because I thought it was something that couldn't possibly be asked at this level.

I don't know if this is really a "fixable" issue but I think the questions that were done best were the ones with a large number of answer spaces- e.g. "this movement" or "one ruler with this name."

I felt like Greek mythology was overrepresented.

As mentioned in another thread, I liked that there were somewhat diverse biology questions, although I thought bonus variability was of particular issue here (apical meristem vs. counting cells).

I liked the bonus part on Julius "Mwalimu" Nyerere!

[touchpack]

The Wittig reaction tossup was also fraudable because it seems to be the only reaction that is tossed up at this level.

You can toss up Diels-Alder at this difficulty too! (although yes, at low difficulty levels tossups on specific chemical reactions tend to be hard) Unless a bunch of rooms saw 1st/2nd line buzzes guessing the Wittig reaction I don't really see this as a problem.

Also, I enjoyed the special relativity tossup that lead in with exactly what I had been doing in my research Friday before we left.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! That leadin was written off of what I had been studying in class--I'm glad to see it was useful to someone.

Regarding liquid crystals: IIRC that was supposed to be a chemistry bonus? At least I'm familiar with LCs from a chemistry class, not a physics one. (you can also learn about them in low-level materials science classes)

[Ike]

The main thing I do remember, however, is that the religion distribution felt like a list: We must have 1 Jainism tossup, 1 Sikhism tossup, 1 Baha'i tossup, 1 Rastafari tossup, etc. I'm pretty sure I actually frauded (I'm pretty sure I'm using that word correctly) the Baha'i tossup solely because I had picked up on that.

Hey sorry about this. I really don't like playing minor religion bowl, but that was a LOT of what I was given, so I just edited each question into usability. I probably should have cut some of these and made the answer lines more diverse.

I felt like Greek mythology was overrepresented.

I tried aiming for a 1/0 or 0/1 per a packet, with some packets having more. I generally try including more of this topic than any other since its literary tradition is more likely to be encountered in an academic setting, is more convertible, etc.

[mtimmons]

Also, I enjoyed the special relativity tossup that lead in with exactly what I had been doing in my research Friday before we left.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! That leadin was written off of what I had been studying in class--I'm glad to see it was useful to someone.

I thought the lead-in on the special relativity question was too easy because it didn't seem to require any in-depth knowledge of special relativity although I could be misremembering. The rest of the physics tossups seemed pretty good though.

On the real numbers tossups I may have misheard the lead-in but from what I heard it was confusing because Lebesgue integration can both refer to the Lebesgue integral on the real line or to integrals over general measure spaces. If someone could post the tossup that might clear things up.

Although I was happy to hear the Oe tossup I agree with RyuAqua that it was not ideal because of the focus on lesser-known works. That mention of Mishima fairly early in the question also seems like it makes the tossup somewhat transparent as there are very few Japanese authors that are tossupable at this difficulty and of the same period as Mishima.

[Smuttynose Island]

Also, I enjoyed the special relativity tossup that lead in with exactly what I had been doing in my research Friday before we left.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! That leadin was written off of what I had been studying in class--I'm glad to see it was useful to someone.

I thought the lead-in on the special relativity question was too easy because it didn't seem to require any in-depth knowledge of special relativity although I could be misremembering. The rest of the physics tossups seemed pretty good though.

At this level, knowing that you have to redefine the dot product for it to be invariant under Special Relativity does in fact constitute "in-depth knowledge" as it actually requires the player to know a mathematical implication of SR that is not the Lorentz factor.

[mtimmons]

I thought the lead-in on the special relativity question was too easy because it didn't seem to require any in-depth knowledge of special relativity although I could be misremembering. The rest of the physics tossups seemed pretty good though.

At this level, knowing that you have to redefine the dot product for it to be invariant under Special Relativity does in fact constitute "in-depth knowledge" as it actually requires the player to know a mathematical implication of SR that is not the Lorentz factor.

When I heard the question I didn't know you had to redefine the dot product for special relativity but I put some kind of invariance and physics theory together to get special relativity.

[gaurav.kandlikar]

The Lebesgue measure assigns lengths to subsets of these, and these are both separated and formed by Dedekind cuts. Every monotone sequence of these converges if and only if it is bounded, and every sequence of these is Cauchy if and only if it is convergent. These contain no infinite or infinitesimal elements and satisfy the least upper bound property; consequently these form the only complete Archimedean ordered field. Georg Cantor used a diagonal argument to demonstrate the uncountability of these numbers that can be represented by infinite decimal expansions. For 10 points, name this set containing the algebraic and transcendental numbers, contrasted with the imaginary numbers.
ANSWER: real numbers [or reals, or R]

[nadph]

The Lebesgue measure assigns lengths to subsets of these,

As Max said, it seems that this can apply to Euclidean spaces as well.

[The Motley Eye]

Oh, and with respect to the bonus set that began _hurricane_

Can this one be posted, please?

[gaurav.kandlikar]

These storms originate over tropical depressions and can only form if surface water temperature is higher than 26.5 degrees Celsius. For 10 points each:
[10] Name these tropical storms with wind winds over 74 miles per hour (119 km per hour, for the British and Canadian folks) that revolve around an eye and are given names like Katrina.
ANSWER: hurricanes [accept typhoons, baqulros, or cyclones]
[10] Convective spirals of precipitating clouds surrounding the eye of the hurricane are given this name.
ANSWER: spiral rainbands
[10] This scale that will be modified in 2012 is used to measure the amount of damage and wind speed of hurricanes.
ANSWER: Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale

[Gautam]

I wrote the following questions for this tournament:

TU on capacitors - finals 1
Bonus on endogenous growth/real business cycle/samuelson - Finals 2
tossup on "money" - Eds 6
tossup on "trade" - Eds 8
tossup on "crude oil" - this was an econ-ish tossup. Mostly focused on how crude oil is traded. Eds 10
Bonus on Liquidity Trap/deflation/duration - Eds 12
Tu on Robert Browning - this was initially a TU on My Last Duchess, rewritten into Browning. - Finals 1

Let me know if you have anything to say on these. Pretty sure I rewrote some other questions, though I can't remember which ones.

Thanks,
GK

[Madagascar Serpent Eagle]

tossup on "crude oil" - this was an econ-ish tossup. Mostly focused on how crude oil is traded. Eds 10

I thought that one was really cool, although it may be because I have a slight obsession with crude oil.

[Cassian]

Any word on when this set will be posted?