2024 ACF Regionals Discussion

[ErikC]

I had bigger issues with the clue selection and execution. Some of the question, like, the Being and Nothingness bonus, for example, felt really phoned in. I feel like I've heard that exact same bonus with facticity as a hard part like a dozen times before. I wasn't a huge fan of the Popper tossup, because it did the classic thing where we spend most of the early clues talking about things people rarely read anymore. I thought the Bertrand Russell tossup was delightful, but I feel like it would have been suited to Other Ac, because it really doesn't engage with any of his philosophical work. The J.S.

Criticism noted for the Popper tossup and Sartre bonus. I do see your point about the Russell tossup - I leaned into his political work, but some of the clues ended up pretty removed from actual philosophical writing.

Regarding the concepts vs thinkers, I used a lot of submissions on thinkers, so it was a bit of a quirk of this particular group of questions. There were less concept tossups than I'd expect from a tournament, I agree on that.

[Fisher]

Olga Tokarczuk, contra earlier posts in this thread, certainly still seems like a fine medium part with 57% conversion; I wonder how much of the perception of her as "surely an easy part" comes from emphasis on Nobel Prize winners in many other trivia formats. Another such winner, Abdulrazak Gurnah, rang in at 46%.

Fair enough! Quite happy to admit I was wrong on the basis of those stats. You may be correct about me thinking this coming from experience of other forms of quiz, but in my experience Tokarczuk is still much better known in quizbowl circles than in e.g. OQL or what have you.

[cwasims]

A few thoughts on my categories based on the detailed stats:

I was overall quite happy with how both of my categories played, with pretty reasonable get rates (both at 87%), buzzpoints, and bonus conversion. Neg rates varied pretty widely from memory with a 0% neg rate to a fairly-surprising 47% neg rate on Los Angeles (I guess people reflex-buzzed Schoenberg -> Vienna?) but overall most tossups seemed to elicit a pretty normal neg rate.

In classical music, the questions on individual works seemed to play pretty well in some cases: I was quite happy with the very smooth distribution on both Salome and Mahler's 1st symphony, especially given that there is not an overwhelming number of past tossups on either of these answer lines. On the other hand, tossups cluing from "deeper" clues about famous composers, like Haydn symphonies (which clued largely from the Paris symphonies) and piano sonatas (clued largely from Schubert) seemed to not elicit many early buzzes. I suspect this may be because the large output of the Classical-era composers means that even pretty famous pieces have been clued comparatively infrequently, especially if there are more obvious choices (the London symphonies or Beethoven piano sonatas, in each of these two cases). The lutes tossup may have been too novel/unusual of an answer line and did not play well - that question should probably have moved into European clues at least a line earlier.

The classical music bonuses generally played well, with quite a few hitting very close to the 90/50/10 ideal. The easy parts possibly could have been made slightly harder as a 94% overall get rate was among the highest of any category; that being said, I was glad that none of them played particularly difficult. Organum played as a hard at this level, which was probably the only real surprise for me.

In social science the lead-ins and second lines seemed to generally be too difficult overall and garnered few buzzes (although the middle clues seem to have played well). This was not too surprising to me; social science is one of the most disparate 1/1s and there are relatively few deep experts on these topics. Some of the topics, like common law, mothers in anthropology, and the Neolithic Revolution were also pretty novel, with few or any of these conceits having been tried before. Difference-in-differences unsurprisingly played as one of the most difficult of the set with 41% conversion, although it still generated a pretty good buzz distribution.

The bonuses in this category were less successful, even though the aggregate conversion rates were still fine. Particularly bad was the Needham/Landes/coal bonus where Needham (shockingly to me) only got 5% conversion and Landes 0%. The bonus parts on markups (inspired by seeing Kunal Sangani's job market talk), strain theory and the A-not-B error also got 0% conversion, more surprisingly in the latter two cases. A few bonuses, like the one centered on Afrobarometer and Latinobarómetro, may have also been a bit too random in topic choice, leading to confusion, although conversion numbers were OK.

An overall remark is that I was glad to see lots of buzzes on the pre-FTP in a lot of my tossups across both categories: I hope this means that the set was effectively able to distinguish teams across various skill levels. This I think should be the ideal for a set like Regionals is may still be played by less-experienced teams seeking to try their hand at the flagship 3-dot difficulty event of the year.

[ErikC]

The detailed stats provided a few insights:

The overall %s for other history was a bit deceiving, as it seemed that bonuses are more traditional "other" history topics like Rome had pretty good conversion (contrast praetor as a medium part with 63% conversion with the Shang dynasty medium part getting 29%). In general, I think overestimated most teams on ancient history topics outside of classics, with medium parts like Vercingtorix (which I originally had as an easy) playing much easier than intended.

Philosophy tossups played a bit harder than I'd expect - several thinkers received less than 80% conversion despite being a fairly regular topic for a regionals answerline. Perhaps philosophy has always played a bit harder than other subjects and we can only see this with advanced stats, or perhaps there were too many tossups on individual thinkers that are on the tough end for the field.

Across all three of my categories, I'm noticing many instances where the first two lines of a tossup did not receive a buzz. While some of this may be from a small sample size, I do wonder if our lead-ins at still too hard, similar to what Chris noted above.

[Good Goblin Housekeeping]

The detailed stats provided a few insights:

The overall %s for other history was a bit deceiving, as it seemed that bonuses are more traditional "other" history topics like Rome had pretty good conversion (contrast praetor as a medium part with 63% conversion with the Shang dynasty medium part getting 29%). In general, I think overestimated most teams on ancient history topics outside of classics, with medium parts like Vercingtorix (which I originally had as an easy) playing much easier than intended.

Philosophy tossups played a bit harder than I'd expect - several thinkers received less than 80% conversion despite being a fairly regular topic for a regionals answerline. Perhaps philosophy has always played a bit harder than other subjects and we can only see this with advanced stats, or perhaps there were too many tossups on individual thinkers that are on the tough end for the field.

Across all three of my categories, I'm noticing many instances where the first two lines of a tossup did not receive a buzz. While some of this may be from a small sample size, I do wonder if our lead-ins at still too hard, similar to what Chris noted above.

Without speculating too much (or looking at stuff) there's probably a few things worth considering including but not limited to at least one matt jackson sized hole in the stats