The Quizbowl Resource Center

Mechanical Beasts

One version of this reaction creates Ethyl 2-oxocyclopentanecarboxylate from Diethyl hexanedioate. However, more importantly, if you're going to put a bunch of very-difficult-to-buzz-on biochem clues, please don't just copy clues straight from wikipedia . Not cool. Hey, man, given his nomenclature ...

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I continue to think that any efforts to appease players/teams who don't contribute to the circuit are ultimately not a good use of the circuit's resources. The D2 players who complained about the D2 SCT being too easy are probably pretty good contributors in terms of packet writing and such. There ...

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See, this is the James Johnson sentiment alive and well. This one was technically making a legitimate argument, but instead just made everyone think about how dumb James Johnson's ideas were. It'd be approximately like comparing the average intelligent republican to Sarah Palin, and thus it aims to...

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See, this is the James Johnson sentiment alive and well. This one was technically making a legitimate argument, but instead just made everyone think about how dumb James Johnson's ideas were. It'd be approximately like comparing the average intelligent republican to Sarah Palin, and thus it aims to...

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For reference Oh, eww, the grammar/block writing is bad enough that the content almost seems less objectionable by comparison. But yeah, comparing my suggestion that it's okay to spend one year in D2 when you're a freshman who's in his first year on pyramidal questions to anything he said is probab...

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Leucippe and Clitophon wrote:Andrew is confusing local extrema for global extrema, or perhaps the question is not clear enough.

Yeah, that's quite unclear, because all that means is "any polynomial of odd degree," and that's pretty weak.

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The \"wisted" this is a 3-dimensional parametric curve. Casus irreducibilis refers to the situation when the roots of a polynomial of this type are all real but require the use of complex numbers to solve for. Their roots can be found with * Cardano's formula, but the fact that the roots ...

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We are not, in the present, ready to compete with teams who combine for more years of college quiz bowl experience than number of years I've been alive. See, this is the James Johnson sentiment alive and well. (He proposed having a separate graduate division.) You have been alive eighteen years, gi...

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EDIT: So yeah. At your site, 11.8% of tossups were powered, and the average bonus conversion was around 14.7. That's right around NAQT's goal and maybe even a little lower. Nope. You're double-counting total number of TUH. 23.6% of tossups were powered. Around 25% has been my goal for as long as I'...

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My second point is that having distributions with numbers not divisible by .5 in them (i.e. .6/.6 Geo) is undesirable, because then the number of questions in that category varies from round to round (whereas .5/.5 Geo will always come up once per round). I don't think the variability of sets shoul...

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Also, acetals should be acceptable for ketals, as in the IUPAC notation ketals are considered a subset of acetals and saying acetals would demonstrate knowledge. I disambiguated that one by specifically saying what carbon is bonded to (two O-alkyl groups and two carbons/alkyl groups). So I guess I ...

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These compounds react with DABCO [DAB-koh] and electron-poor {alkene}s to give allylic [uh-LIH-lik] alcohols in the {Baylis-Hillman reaction}. An alkene or {alkyne} forms 1,3-diols or allylic alcohols upon reaction with one of these compounds in the {Prins reaction}. Pyridinium [PIH-rih-DIN-ee-um] ...

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Everyone who would characterize himself as a "top highschool player," no matter the region, should know some leadins at a sectional tournament on DII questions. The point of leadins is for some people to be buzzing on them and others not to be; you can't have that if zero people think &quo...

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NAQT has recently been informed that an adult-themed entertainment convention will also be at the hotel the weekend of the ICT. The hotel has ensured that the other event will take place on a level of the hotel that no one associated with our tournament will be on, their events will have security t...

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Sure, using tons of clues decreases the probability of an early buzzer race by some percentage. But I think that's a worse solution to this problem than just advising people to learn about the answer and try to be as diligent as they can while writing a tossup. Using tons of clues because you're no...

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But Weiner's repeated claims that it was only one question has necessitated that I list every buzzer race in tournaments I've played recently. If by my "repeated claims" as to how many buzzer races you were involved in at BARGE, you mean "I have never made any claim in any direction ...

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SirT wrote:I don't care what Andy Watkins thinks about anything

Likely wise.

SirT wrote:and have no clue why he decided to barge into this thread.

Oh?

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I was pointing out that people who support line length say there are never buzzer races on the first line and in fact this tournament was decided on such a question. I'll just point out, again, that said buzzer race was probably on a question of significant length given the rest of the questions in...

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setht wrote:reactivating some of the mostly-dormant good writers

Matt Keller! Come back to us, Matt Keller. I know you have a real job and writing for NAQT is a terrible way to make money in comparison, but I'm long past caring. We need you, Matt Keller!

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Now, I believe that fair formats ought to be used. But aren't

Blanford's Fringe-fingered Lizard wrote:the fairest format... will leave them happy over the average of a great number of instances

and

Blanford's Fringe-fingered Lizard wrote:most new teams won't want... preferential treatment.

both

Blanford's Fringe-fingered Lizard wrote:dangerous, unnecessary psychologizing of new teams

or what?

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No Electricity Required wrote:
Remember-the-Alamo-Remember-Goliad wrote:Can anyone indicate where the complete stats for HFT VI are?
Or, are they not posted/postable?
This is all that's been posted so far.

In the right column looks like morning and afternoon stats, all four links. What am I not seeing?

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bt_green_warbler wrote:It's possible Half Hollow Hills may have meant to claim IS #112A instead. When our servers are back up, we'll get in touch with them.

They do very often use an A set for their tournament, so you're right, it does seem likely.

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I don't think you're doing HSAPQ any favors by being "coy" about your desire for HSAPQ and all other sub-HFT-level events to cease existing because they are so illegitimate. Furthermore: I hope "you're not doing HSAPQ any favors by [a sentiment Ted's never expressed, or at least a wi...

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This tournament is/was not a “catalyst for New England quizbowl” but not because of set difficulty. It has nothing to do with Bruce Arthur’s original plan for HFT vs. Ted Gioia’s contemporary vision of HFT vs. Stephen Liu’s ability to edit HFT. Its because of a host of other reasons preventing quiz...

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magin wrote:I think he's reacting to the bonus on Roland Barthes, not the tossup length.

The death of 2008 Andy Watkins's idea of what to do to high school students, I think, is the key event here.

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I wonder if this is because potential hosts are rebelling against the perceived inappropriate difficulty of the tournament... Dallas just posted stats for 15 of the 34 teams. 2 of those teams have a ppb better than 12. Last year, HFT had the 3rd worst average and 4th worst median ppb of all the set...

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I wonder if this is because potential hosts are rebelling against the perceived inappropriate difficulty of the tournament... Dallas just posted stats for 15 of the 34 teams. 2 of those teams have a ppb better than 12. Last year, HFT had the 3rd worst average and 4th worst median ppb of all the set...

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Yeah, I'd love to get paid at some point as well, but I'm still 9 months ahead of when I was paid for Regionals 2010. We should probably direct all questions about getting paid to Rob because I don't know if publicly airing our grievances will really speed up the process. That's fair; I had tried t...

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Hey-- I just posted in the college area archives before realizing that that isn't actually an area that comes up in "view new posts," probably for good reason. Here's the point: in late April people were wondering where Regionals invoices were (including hosts). I haven't been paid for the...

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While we've been happy with not paying anything for the questions, I imagine that people would also appreciate invoices, assuming we're not the only ones who haven't received one. Wait, you mean for the tournament, right? Or has quizbowl gone back to the "sell questions to the attending teams&...

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Fred wrote:i hear this podcast is good at podcastin'

it sure is a podcast, Mike Sorice

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I will say I come from the school of thought that you should try to say things that are interesting, even if controversial, in these kinds of predictions, rather than the typical chorus of "good teams are good." They typical chorus is "I hear he's good at quizbowl." Yeah, that w...

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Wasn't the last time a Matt-directed tournament at Wash U... ACF Nationals 2009? What steps has PACE taken to ensure that the Wash U-Matt Weiner communication axis won't break down again, in particular when PACE is a tournament much larger (and with more stringent logistical requirements) than ACF?

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Not that I cited any dumb arguments No, to clarify the above posters: your arguments were dumb. You didn't cite anyone else's dumb arguments. The 0.7 and all those sub-extra distributions still bug me in an OCD way. Maybe that's what's pissing me off :) If you phrased "religion" and "...

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Would this be any more insightful by being applied to regular season lineups? I feel like at opens most people are aware that the presence of superteams is going to cause people to play out of position, but I don't know if it's perhaps more interesting to note that "Hey, the third scorer at Di...

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I don't see a good point in comparing third scorers, for example. Unlike in baseball, where you really do need a second baseman, if Chicago C loses its third-most-valuable player it wouldn't pass on Matt Weiner to fill in. So, not to attack your inadvertent example, but the reason you're 1.91 standa...

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Well, this stat is an individual player stat but it does not attempt to be very team-independent. It tries to describe a player's total value contribution (by incorporating team PPB) and obviously if you're on a team where you can't answer tossups because your teammate negs all the science (or gets ...

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No Rules Westbrook wrote:regular

bet the burger king don't help

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gkandlikar wrote:
SirT wrote: 1/1 Biology
1/1 Physics
.54/.54 Chemistry
~.5/.5 Math/CS
~.5/.5 Earth Science
Um, what? 0 astro in the whole tournament? no general "engineering" or other minor stuff like stats, systems analysis, etc?

don't worry, man, there's .5/.5 trash to make up for it

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To be honest, I'm actually not entirely clear on the normative aspect of Jerry's argument--i.e., I don't know, and have never known, exactly why he thinks it is improper for quizbowl to ask about things that don't come up in the standard science curricula. I don't know what Jerry's reason was, but ...

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I think science history is a worthy subject generally but would not like it to occupy science space in the distribution. Obviously, it's a tough thing to choose "which of the twenty questions gets booted in favor of one on science history?" I think replacing trash with other academic (with...

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The only real variations on the undergrad side come when it's time to choose pure vs applied, but pure undergrads do the three subjects I listed above (often 2+ courses in each) It's also worth considering that pure and applied mathematics are alike mostly in name; I can't think of a similar distin...

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Sources like librarything.com I'm jumping in here because, while I'm neither as widely read as Jerry nor a lit major, I can certainly say that if there's a source not to use to determine what people actually read in a meaningful way, it's a site that aggregates everything its users read. Because 1)...

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BlueDevil95 wrote:
Mechanical Beasts wrote:
BlueDevil95 wrote:Dallas, any word if last year's HFT will be posted?
I'm fairly certain I sent the set to George, but I'll do so again just in case it was lost along the way (or if things broke like when Prison Bowl briefly went missing).
Any word on this?

I did!

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The twenty-post digression on Kanye is now here.

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I suppose I am not advocating powers to be eliminated, just that they should be worth no extra points. Why have powers if you get nothing for them? You get the satisfaction of a fantastic buzz without deriving a dumb gameshow-like benefit? What really matters is how many times you can beat good pla...

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I think 1) it's hard to say what's fun for everyone, so taking "sports questions are fun for Matt Duchan" to "sports questions are fun" is a leap; for that reason, I don't think decisions about what distributions should be increased and decreased should be made on the basis of wh...

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Ulster Clay Pigeon Shooting Association wrote:FWIW, I wouldn't be surprised if most, if not all, of the negs came off the Randall Cunningham clue, as he is better known as the QB for the Eagles post-Ron Jaworski.

Pretty well deserved, though. Given the year, Fran Tarkenton, and everything else, it's pretty far from a hose.

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Well, some high school seniors had barely started elementary school in 1998; I'd say that the power mark should probably have been before Moss, but definitely should be after Cunningham.

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I would recommend Atkins for all-round physical chemistry - pretty much everything with a name in the subject is in there. I would also recommend Clayden ahead of Maitland Jones for organic chemistry simply because it's a more fact-oriented textbook. Clayden was my organic textbook, but a lot of th...

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