The Quizbowl Resource Center

EDIT EDIT: I've just been reminded that the company logo is literally just the letters "NAQT" with the full name in tiny print below it, which seems less than inspiring to be quite honest. To be fair, NAQT does have some really excellent logos for their individual tournaments, which they use in all...

Legendre polynomials have this property since the inner product of two of them is proportional to a Kronecker delta function. Vectors must be linearly independent if they mutually have this property. The Gram-Schmidt process finds vectors that have this property, possibly (*) normalized. Two vector...

As a moderator, I noticed that this set had a much higher frequency of copyediting issues that interfered with my ability to read -- there was an omitted preposition/article, an instance of "the that" or something like that, or something along those lines almost every round, and sometimes several t...

You should also tune the strategy to the rule set you are playing. More specifically: if the format you are using has timed rounds, that will impact your strategy. Although I've never played in a format or scenario in which doing so would be relevant, I've heard of players performing "clock-killing...

PACE would like to congratulate the winners of the 2019 Benjamin Cooper Awards: The Benjamin Cooper Academic Ambassador Award will be presented to the founders of the Las Vegas Quiz Bowl Alliance, Matt Albert, Justin Sharp, and Paul Villaluz, for their work starting a pyramidal quiz bowl circuit in ...

I think for the large proportion of teams, an ironclad instruction of "Don't vulture!" is going to do a better job of preventing teams from punting away points than anything more complicated. Yes, there are times that it can result in confusion, but I see veterans do this because they're showing off...

After further review, Joe Brosch was the name I was trying to come up with, but he was also caught in the investigation brought on by Josh Alman's actions. Above post edited.

Yeah, I think winning ICT versus not even making top bracket at states is dramatically different. Also, did the Andy Watkins story emerge because people looked at the stats again, or did it emerge because NAQT found actual evidence that was a smoking gun? To the best of my memory, Watkins was origi...

As I'm using this for the QANTA League, I find it as a useful resource and a fun game. A couple observations/questions, though: * Is it intentional that the answer is not provided after each question? * Is there a possibility to insert a "pause" feature between questions? If something came up while ...

Minor error with the stats, but Tracy Mirkin should be listed as DII (which I think means he ought to have been recognized as a DII top scorer, but alas.) This was fixed in the later stages and in the combined version of the stats. I'm not sure how many places were recognized at each level, but Tra...

The one CBI NCT I played in (1993) and the two I staffed (1995-96) used a full round robin for the sixteen teams, and a best-of-three final for the top two teams. So at some point, they figured out that the format sucked, and they implemented a format that was much more reasonable. 1991 was the fir...

Also - the preliminary set for this tournament will be made public on quizbowlpackets. Was this written by you (or a group involving you) in the style of NHBB? Because if, as seemed to be the case from the original postings, this was using old NHBB questions, #1 don't do that period, and #2 you abs...

Essentially, this is the classic "pick 2 out of 3" situation: * Large ACF Nationals, with more than 40 teams * Championship bracket with 10+ teams playing a full round-robin * Tournament of a length that writers and editors can produce at a high quality; that moderators can read without losing their...

Columbia won with a 260-165 victory over Chicago A in a one-game final. Minnesota A was third place overall. For undergraduate, Berkeley A defeated Michigan State 260-210 in a one-game final. Illinois A was third place. Harvard B defeated Minnesota B 170-155 in the first game of an advantaged final ...

We are aware that MIT is UG and Minnesota-B is D-2. That will be fixed in the next draft.

I misread the schedule. At some point I heard something about super playoffs as well and this appears to be untrue. There are superplayoffs per my understanding, they just occur for every bracket like at ICT. I'll go out on a limb and say the word "superplayoffs" has exhausted its utility in quiz b...

I would think 6x6 -> 3x12 is much preferable to the reverse, because it will allow the rebracket to happen at lunchtime, and because it allows more TOP. TEAMS. to play directly against each other. Considering the inherent variability with NAQT format (timed / distro by set / trash / general knowled...

I would think 6x6 -> 3x12 is much preferable to the reverse, because it will allow the rebracket to happen at lunchtime, and because it allows more TOP. TEAMS. to play directly against each other.

Just wanna put it out there that if you are not a member of the board staff, you should not be spending the bulk of your post telling someone you don't like the manner in which they are complaining about a quiz bowl thing. It is right at the top of the board rules: As a result of the above, and of t...

10-5, 10-5, 10-5 Three part bonus, but each part had a hard clue and an easy clue. If you got it off the hard clue, you got 10 points. If you missed it off the hard clue, they read you the easy clue and you got only 5 points. This could also be done in two waves, either 15-10 or 15-5. I seem to rec...

The delay at the beginning at the tournament wasn't that big of an issue to me, it happens on occasion, but there was a major delay after lunch. The QBWiki page said it was during the morning rounds, but to my recollection it was prior to Round 6. We waited for our match with Dunbar to start for a ...

I've received a few nominations, but there's about a week left to submit more.

Cheynem wrote: ↑
Sat Mar 23, 2019 9:34 am
I will write a packet that will appeal to the folks with bad musical taste such as myself, those who like bands such as Savage Garden, Wilson Phillips, and One Direction.

Hold on, I want you to know that those bands are just perfect.

FWIW, August 3 was just announced as the weekend of Chicago Open, so that's probably not a great option.

I, too, was once a person with the opinion "Yeah, CBI sucks as a quiz bowl competition, but eh what the hell." There was still the game-show-clock rules where you had to beat the clock not only to buzz in for a tossup, but also to give answers to bonuses (NAQT had by then progressed so far as to let...

One of the reasons for NSC scoring rules is that NSC used to use a four-quarter format in which the maximum number of points a team could get in a match was 1000. To allow for historical comparisons, PACE kept a scoring system that kept that number at 1000. I have no idea whether that will change a...

I think that having more difficult questions in later packets (i.e. "the playoffs") is a bad idea because many sites will have different schedules, resulting in different packets being in the playoffs. It makes absolutely no sense to have a more difficult packet in the sixth round of prelims if you...

ACF Nationals also needed to come up with a new TD, with even less lead time before the tournament. Once the academic year was winding down and everyone was able to take a deep breath from three months of chaotic catch-up, item #1 on the agenda for the QB community was making sure that so many separ...

So, now that some of the regional tournaments have purportedly happened, does anyone on here know anything about the structure and organization of this thing?

I am pleased to announce that The Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence is now accepting nominations for the 2019 Benjamin Cooper Academic Ambassador Awards. The Cooper awards, which recognize those who contribute to the “spirit and honor of quizbowl competition,” will be presented at the ...

I wonder if the powers/game model might work better with multiplicative adjustments rather than additive. Hi Mr. Pinyan, we actually briefly tried doing this, but it was killed very quickly due to anomalous results. Making power adjustments multiplicative completely devalues PPB, making the ranking...

I wonder if the powers/game model might work better with multiplicative adjustments rather than additive. As it stands, a team gets a massive boost for playing a hard set, even if they do relatively poorly on it. On EFT, for instance, the adjustment of +6 Pw/Gm represents about 38 Groger points for ...

I also think there may be a bit of a gap between "the quality of moderator I expect at a national championship my team is paying $100+ a person for" and "this person should never be allowed to read quiz bowl questions again".

This sounds like an interesting idea along the lines of the old Goldfish tournaments.

Having played the sample questions, I might encourage you to create a keyboard control for buzzing and submitting answers, if that's feasible.

Round 12, Bonus 11a may be the funniest answer line I've ever heard in competition.

Just as a note, especially since new users' posts have to be approved before they show up, it is definitely recommended that teams which have to cancel or reduce their participation in a tournament on short notice not do so on the forum, but rather by directly contacting the host, to ensure that the...

I've been to a number of tournaments that used online scoresheets, and they certainly can be beneficial. Princeton generally has a separate file for each room's games, to make sure they don't run into the size limit. I will reiterate that if you're going to use such a system, you need absolutely bul...

I get that this is a preliminary announcement, but there are way more details that I'd need to know before I spread this announcement to my students and colleagues. What is the format of the regional qualifiers and the national championship? The website says there is "no fee to sponsor students for ...

Have you tried asking the tournament head editor for exemption privately before? I have found that they are usually okay with it as long as it makes the field better. There have been some recent incidents where Person A has assumed that a certain action that goes against publicly-stated rules is cl...

Final Comments : We will do our utmost to ensure that the tournament will be run much more smoothly than last year's tournament. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions relating to the tournament! If you're coming from out-of-town, I'll be more than happy to provide suggestion...

I'm also in that desperate situation of needing teammates. If any of the incomplete teams would like to sign me on, or other free agents want to band together, please get in touch!

mrkirkmath wrote:Is the 2019 HSNCT actually from the 24th (Thursday) to 26th (Saturday), or is that an off by one error?

The 24th is a Thursday this year (aka today), but it will be a Friday next year.

The board staff has the power to edit out information they don't see fit to have on their website, and while I strive to exercise my own reasoned judgement about how much the information I have needs to be filtered, if they differ with my judgement it would also set a good precedent were they to de...

PACE is proud to announce the results of this year's Cooper Award balloting. There were numerous strong nominees for both awards, and we thank all who submitted a nomination for their contributions. Here are this year's Cooper Award winners: The Academic Ambassador Award will be presented to Chad Ku...

~~I'll throw my hat in the ring as a free agent as well. My areas of knowledge are sports and recent music.~~ I've decided I won't be playing ACRONYM this year.

The playoff stats still don't include the carry-over games, so I'm wondering what the final standings were for the rest of the teams.

At the time we left, there appeared to be a 3-way tie for the second spot in the final; was that played off?

Cherrybell Miramonte wrote:Considering the far more substantive concerns with the game that were laid out in this thread, this seems very much not a hill worth dying on.

Who else expected that link to go to the haircut thread?

On the one hand: those kind of instructions are not-infrequently passed along to moderators. However, moderators at quiz bowl tournaments have not yet been replaced by R. Robot Hentzel, so they do sometimes make mistakes. On the other hand: there are enough things that vary between major quiz bowl t...

...what will be the resolution if a player buzzes out but then loses points due to a protest (either because their answer was later ruled unacceptable or an opponent's prior answer was accepted)? If the points are under protest, the player will not "buzz out." The player will keep playing until the...

Given these snippets from the IPNCT format guidelines... D-2-c. Protests will be resolved according to the same principles as in standard NAQT play (e.g., earned points are added, unearned points are removed , missed opportunities to score points are played, gameplay that shouldnʹt have happened is ...

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