ImmaculateDeception wrote:I have to ask this, because it keeps coming up and I'm curious. What is "tuning out?" Is that "people stoping paying attention during questions?" If so, then anyone who's "tuning out" is being worst kind of candy-ass quitter and doesn't deserve any points. Also, since they're not absorbing any new clues, they're not going to get any better. In short, they're bad at quizbowl and will be so forever.
In short, "tuning out" for any reason looks to me like just quitting, plain and simple. You're going to have to look somewhere else for sympathy for people who do that.
MaS
I say, rather, that I am merely wondering what a commonly-used term means and stating that, if it means what I think it does, then the practice it represents is reprehensible; the cessation of such a practice is in the interest of both ACF and its customers.DanGreenstein wrote:comment... that do[es] not even consider the possibility that the customer might come first.
yoda4554 wrote:(Incidentally, for whatever it's worth Ray, being as "Adonais" is the 3rd-5th best-known poem from the 3rd-5th best-known Romantic poet, I don't think your particular example's a good one. Note that "Tintern Abbey" and "Kubla Khan," the best-known poems of slightly better-known Romantic poets, did make appearances. If you had an "Ozymandias" tossup, the point'd be stronger.)
Well, then, perhaps you could also kindly explain the expurgation of this question that I also submitted to ACF fall 2005:
If anyone would like to know why their questions were cut, please email us at acffeedback@gmail.com and we'll be happy to tell you.
yoda4554 wrote: I would not be surprised if many of them decide that getting good enough at the game simply isn't worth the time that they could spend, say, drinking.
yoda4554 wrote:I remember reading or hearing a comment once that as one gets better at quiz bowl, one forgets that it is primarily a game and not a test. That is, most people play it because they find it fun to hit a buzzer and hear someone say "Correct" rather than out of a desire to validate themselves by demonstrating ultimate superiority at the arbitrary set of skills involved in quiz bowl.
yoda4554 wrote:(Stuff about how very few people get anything before the giveaway, it's too hard to try and focus on a game, etc.)
ezubaric wrote:would perhaps a system where ACF solicited 6/6 questions (three questions each from a team of four) at a rather early stage work better?
grapesmoker wrote:However, one of the goals of this tournament is to get people to write.
recfreq wrote:(I also requested that my replaced questions be left in the packet for people to read after the tourney, but I don't know what ever happened with that--but no, I'm not bitter.)
Bruce wrote:I'm not sure I would ever feel "My questions are likely to be thrown out or merged, so I'll write crappy questions", but perhaps I function differently from others. What I -would- think, however, is "These editors are getting thousands of questions from all across the country which they will combine into a single set. Surely, if my questions are of a lesser quality that that of which I am capable, the tournament will not suffer, because they will clearly have enough good questions for 14+ rounds of quality. With such an intake, it is a mathematical certainty, even at a low incidence of good questions among the submissions."
Bruce wrote:Especially with a program so able to throw away money on late or no-packet penalties as Chicago, that might become more common. I don't see how it could really be averted.
recfreq wrote:1st of all, no one is insinuating that there's anything sinister going on, and a list of my rejected questions was only used to reveal its cardinality. 2nd of all, I don't need to receive an argument on behalf of ACF as previously posted, just a list of questions rejected and outcomes, something as short as "repeat" or "difficulty level" or o/w one word/one phrase answers would suffice. Thanks you very much for doing this, as I generally haven't gotten much in this type of feedback in the past despite emailing tournament directors (not exclusive to ACF). If you find that all the questions were too difficult, that's fine, I'll be sure to submit a packet full of Wagners and Einsteins next time, and perhaps I'll be closer to ACF expectations the next time around (if I chose to play this again).
recfreq wrote:May be it's just b/c I can't get over having my Choral Sym TU chopped, but I just want to declare that I'd rather change people's questions rather than replace them whenever possible while editing questions. I think some people put a lot of work into those questions. For example, if you look at my original packet, you'll find that every question was of that high level of commitment. If people don't like them all, that's fine, but I generally don't "take questions off," even though only 20/20 have the potential of making it into the packet. I think it's fairly evident from a 1st read whether a question took a lot of work to write. (Just compared my packet with some of other packets you received.) I just wanted to persuade editors from taking these particular questions out quickly to be replaced, but instead, see if they can be worked into the packet. This is especially crucial since every submitted question can no longer be used in the future, so you miss out on the opportunity for them to be heard, despite the work.
recfreq wrote:Although I do wonder why Raskolnikov and Bertram couldn't both make good TUs, and why both Saint Joan (with an obvious giveaway) and My Antonia couldn't both make gettable questions, I realize that there's a lot that editors have to deal with, and for that I'm very grateful. So perhaps I'll drop the subjects right here and move on to discussing the questions (one problem is that the questions are all so good, there's nothing much to discuss on that front).
recfreq wrote:A final point: may be this seems such a big deal to me b/c I'm committed to my questions. Every question is an original, creative work, in my opinion. You may say that it's simply synthesizing info from disparate sources, but I'd argue that that's what some of the greatest works of writing have done, be it synthesizing source material or life experiences. So pls don't take my criticism to heart, b/c I just love writing questions too much. (Perhaps Jordan and others also feel this way.) (Perhaps this is also why I liked writing singles movies tournaments.) If I'd liked it less, perhaps I wouldn't mind seeing it taken out instead of being edited (I'm talking about removing all the clues vs. changing some of the clues.) That was my rationale for submitting substandard questions, b/c it's healthier to see your children kidnapped rather than your children devoured.
setht wrote:(I think this is also true of writers—no one really wants to write bad questions*)
* well, there was that one time, at the Chicago Theme Tournament.. sadly, that particular packet has been lost to posterity.
csrjjsmp wrote:Seth, what is the reason to support having a more well-known answer, if the knowledge being tested is identical? It seems to me that what you propose is just changing a few pronouns, and it's not clear to me how that will by itself make the question easier.
cvdwightw wrote:*Fear not! For I have contributed to a still-extant intentionally bad packet! Said packet was a parody of an unintentionally bad packet, submitted to a future edition of the tournament containing that packet.
csrjjsmp wrote:Seth, what is the reason to support having a more well-known answer, if the knowledge being tested is identical? It seems to me that what you propose is just changing a few pronouns, and it's not clear to me how that will by itself make the question easier.
Nathan wrote:"Thus, tossups on "Adonais" or "Oe" or "Saint Joan" or "Raskolnikov" or "Snows of Kilimanjaro"
These, as a set, are too hard for ACF Fall.
With that said, I think Snows of Kilimanjaro or even Raskolnikov would be fine so long as the other three were "easier."
recfreq wrote:19. Is "ordinary" really needed for differential equations? I said normal and regular before eating the neg, but perhaps you could just point out my ineptitude.
setht wrote:If I recall correctly the question started off with clues about the Lipschitz condition and Picard's existence theorem, which apply specifically to ODEs, not PDEs.
grapesmoker wrote:I think typically, the level of knowledge goes as [name of author]->[names of some of his books]->[names of characters in those books]. That said, I think Raskolnikov is sufficiently well-known to be ok, and a tossup on him would certainly be preferrable to a tossup on The Posessed at this level. I would have thought that Snows of Kilimanjaro is sufficiently well-known also. I read that in high school, and I imagine lots of people did too.
grapesmoker wrote:recfreq wrote:19. Is "ordinary" really needed for differential equations? I said normal and regular before eating the neg, but perhaps you could just point out my ineptitude.
The answer is yes. Every singe math class or text I've ever been to or read on the subject has been quite explicit in its differentiation between ordinary and partial differential equations. Also, neither regular nor normal are ever used to describe ODEs.
Sorry dude. I had to penalize my own team on that one, so don't feel like I'm picking on you.
ekwartler wrote:17) Tchaikovsky was the giveaway. Of course it = swan lake. Swan Lake is a tough thing to write about without getting overly technical, so if players almost automatically get it after the "giveaway," so be it.
18) That leadin might be a bit easy, but the question is not "who else gettable had periods?" it's "who else gettable had a serialist period?", the answer to which is "Stravinsky, Schoenberg," or at higher levels "Berg, Webern, Part," etc.
ValenciaQBowl wrote:Senor Litvak is correct when he reminds us (in another thread) that anecdotal evidence blows, but sadly a couple CC teams in Florida have been discouraged by their perception that ACF Fall is too hard for them.
Ray wrote:10. Adenine might be a bit hard; I wrote an adenine question for ACF regs last year, and there's very little you can manufacture other than structural clues before the thymine.
Ray also wrote:15. The PCR question sounded _a lot_ like Southern blot for the longest time. False positive? Perhaps I should have waited.
ACF wrote:One serious drawback to this method is its high sensitivity, as it tends to produce many false positives in an unclean lab. Used diagnostically in some introductory lab courses for the purposes of determining the orientation of an inserted gene, it is also used in site-directed mutagenesis and in quantitative measurement of a specific mRNA in tissue. Cooling is necessary for rehybridization and for attachment of the primers to the original or newly synthesized DNA strands, but near-boiling temperatures will still not denature a certain enzyme of Thermus aquaticus, commonly known as Taq [TACK]. FTP, name this technique developed for large scale amplification of DNA, first proposed by Kary Mullis in 1983.
csrjjsmp wrote:Regarding the adenine question, there was one clue that identified the answer as being studied by Chargaff. But as far as I know, Chargaff studied all 4 DNA bases, so this clue struck me as not very helpful. I think the SN2 question has an analogous problem with the "facilitated by a better leaving group" clue, which is once again true for all 4 nucleophilic reactions and doesn't really help narrow the range of possible answers.
what is the standard for CC/Florida circuit teams?
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