The Quizbowl Resource Center

jbarnes112358

Yes, the card system worked beautifully, especially with 32 teams (and 16 in the consolation bracket). It works especially nicely for powers of two, appealing to my mathematical sensibilities of order and symmetry. Also, having the schedule on the card made it easy to see where you are supposed to p...

jbarnes112358

I actually have the missing scoresheet with me as I decided to bring them home to organize and to peruse, the the old school paper lover that I am. Round 4: State College A 450 - James Monroe 200 SC-A: Blackbird 10, Bennie 75, B-52 -5, Super Fortress 40 ....SC-A bonus conversion = 330/13 = 25.385 JM...

jbarnes112358

I would certainly be open to changing this rule for future Maggie Walker tournaments, especially since our moderators are not consistently following it anyway. I personally like to reveal answers to bonus parts because it is more conducive to players learning from what they miss, as well as reasons ...

jbarnes112358

I have enjoyed college-level quizbowl math. Unfortunately, in Illinois, it would be unacceptable because it would go dead in every single room. I believe that if people start putting more non-computational math questions in tournaments, players will start learning math topics, even some that don't ...

jbarnes112358

Who won the final playoff games? What were the final rankings? I was pleased by how well our team did against what was undoubtedly the strongest field we have faced all year. Our team was really firing on all cylinders with a balanced scoring performance. Losing that heartbreaker to Charter in the f...

jbarnes112358

I'm pretty sure TJ A beat MW C. You might want to check that score sheet.

jbarnes112358

In other news, what happened with Charter? I heard there was some tension between the players involved, but still. I am not sure what "happened" in their first loss, but in the semifinal game against us it was simply a matter of four Charter negs to our zero negs and some questions we lik...

jbarnes112358

Yes, nice job, Will, in your directorial debut. There were a few delays, but some of that was due to teams arriving late and whatnot. You mustered some excellent, experienced readers; and it is refreshing when tournaments get their stats up in real-time like that, instead of waiting days, weeks, or ...

jbarnes112358

gabjoh wrote:I sent out our spreadsheets to you at, according to my calculations, 11 PM on the Tuesday. Apparently that did not go through. So, I have posted them on Google Docs as public spreadsheets.

That is a good way to do it. Thanks for the tip. Google wins again.

jbarnes112358

Maggie Walker sent in their data last Wed. Please check to see if you have it. If not I can resend it tomorrow. You should probably check your spam folder or ask Dr. Barnes to resubmit. Correct. I tried to send it several times and a couple of different ways, with and without an attachment. But, Mr...

jbarnes112358

I am not a big fan of timed rounds, but I understand the rationale for keeping an efficient schedule. I was wondering how people would feel about having 10 minute halves instead of 9. That would only add 24 minutes to the day. (which could be made by starting the tournament in a more timely manner.)...

jbarnes112358

Maggie Walker sent in their data last Wed. Please check to see if you have it. If not I can resend it tomorrow.

jbarnes112358

hwhite wrote:And in addition, Charter, Dorman, GDS, and State College each received berths to the PACE NSC. Good job guys!

According to this, the top 8 qualify for PACE NSC.

jbarnes112358

hwhite wrote:Y'know, I've always wondered what would happen if Charter runs out of letters for team designations...

After the letter Z they could start with the Greek letters. That's what is done with hurricanes.

jbarnes112358

Congratulations to Keith and Co. for pulling off the weird bracketing system. Except for a bit of confusion near the end about who was playing whom, it all worked out and the right two teams made it into the finals. I was impressed by the quality of several teams. All the teams that made the final e...

jbarnes112358

segregold wrote: To speed things up, we'll be doing timed games with 18-minute halves.

Is this correct?

jbarnes112358

As a new member of the VHSL Advisory Committee, I brought up the possibility of using a round-robin at the last annual meeting and it seemed favorably received. The one concern expressed involved how to break ties. I don't necessarily think they want to read very many extra rounds due to putting so ...

jbarnes112358

Yeah. I don't remember ever seeing such a strong field in a tournament so early in the year. And, I expect to see the field get even stronger. And it certainly did. I was kind of expecting Charter to take an interest in joining the party. It is going to be tough trying to qualify for nationals at t...

jbarnes112358

So how is State College looking? They always seem to come through with a highly competitive team.

jbarnes112358

ClemsonQB wrote:Wow, I count exactly 0 A-teams not among the top 21 in the preseason poll with 6 in the top eleven. Needless to say, this is a very strong field.

Yeah. I don't remember ever seeing such a strong field in a tournament so early in the year. And, I expect to see the field get even stronger.

jbarnes112358

I wonder if a network of people with the knowledge and skill to write good questions would be willing to put in a bid for the MO contract pro bono publico . The group could charge, say, a nickel a round to undercut Questions Galore and all the other low quality question mills out there. Once coaches...

jbarnes112358

I I do certainly appreciate all of your comments. I feel I have learned a lot from the discussion. I will see if we can revisit this issue when we meet August 6. You have a positive, open-minded attitude, Mr. Gibbs. Hopefully, under your leadership, some reforms can be made that would relax the res...

jbarnes112358

I think some of you are misunderstanding the club sports rule - according to MSHSAA, if you are currently in your school's sports season, you are not allowed to play on any outside club team. This lies to every sport but swimming, as swimming is well known for running club teams all year long, conc...

jbarnes112358

I also think that unless there is a real need or reason to campaign about how fair or unfair the rules are, it's useless to put in a letter-writing campaign. If they don't see the need to change, external calls to change are fairly meaningless . It's like telling :chip: to improve the questions. On...

jbarnes112358

Dr. Barnes, before getting into legal hassles, and I have no clue how the MHSAA goes about amending rules and such, you could try going directly to the powers that be. You could simply attempt to appeal to their sense of fair play: Why would Missouri be the only state to place such an extreme limit...

jbarnes112358

Thanks for the responses. Perhaps a case against rule 13 could be made based on the fact that swimmers are allowed to compete in non-MSHSAA competitions.

jbarnes112358

Missouri is not like VHSL in that both private and public schools are members (the only caveat being that private schools are subject to population multipliers when they figure out classes). Quizbowl teams can not opt out of MSHSAA - if they do, and they go to tournaments and violate MSHSAA rules, ...

jbarnes112358

FWIW, the other rules seem pretty reasonable. Rules 10 through 13 all seem unreasonable to me as being arbitrarily restrictive. They put limits on teams that wish to achieve excellence on a national level. John Barnes Maggie Walker Governor's School All but 13 are improvements for the MSHSAA. Or di...

jbarnes112358

STPickrell wrote:
FWIW, the other rules seem pretty reasonable.

Rules 10 through 13 all seem unreasonable to me as being arbitrarily restrictive. They put limits on teams that wish to achieve excellence on a national level.

John Barnes
Maggie Walker Governor's School

jbarnes112358

FWIW, the other rules seem pretty reasonable. When you post stuff like this, it's why I don't trust your assurances that Virginia is a unique and beautiful snowflake where casting in quizbowl with football is somehow, magically, not going to result in what it's resulted in everywhere else. I had to...

jbarnes112358

There's a private school in my area that comes over to our parking lot on the day of our lottery (students are accepted by lottery) and puts flyers on the windshields of the visitors' cars while they're inside waiting on results. Brass. ACtually the word that comes to my mind isn't brass ..... more...

jbarnes112358

Mostly the survey is for internal purposes, but since I have data from the previous two years, I am inclined to making it public for comparison. The survey remains open until mid-July. Some sort of summary of the results would be interesting, but it would certainly be understandable if you wanted t...

jbarnes112358

Dr. Chuck, will you be publishing any of the results of your survey, or is it only for internal use by PACE?

jbarnes112358

I'm not terribly well-informed about the state of Virginia HS quizbowl compared to when I was part of the circuit, but the one team that I remember surprising me the most this past year was Collegiate. This past year's Collegiate team was probably the best non TJ/Gov team from this state that I've ...

jbarnes112358

Yes, I will deliver the plaque to Sarah who can deliver it to Mr.Roundtree.

jbarnes112358

So, how did it go? Did you have many attendees?

jbarnes112358

quizbowllee wrote:Lee Hen-ree.

You would actually be surprised at how many people try to make "Henry" three syllables. I have had DOZENS of people even misspell it as "Henery."

You mean like in the song?
Hear it here.

jbarnes112358

I would like to offer some advice based on my experiences with tournament hosting over the past decade. Some of it reiterates what Evan and others posted, but most of this advice is born from specific mistakes and problems from our past experience. Questions: If you choose to write your own question...

jbarnes112358

But seriously, try to attend a good house written tournament if you want to get the full experience of good quizbowl. Because, in my opinion, house written tournaments are usually better than IS-sets. Many house written tournaments are indeed better than IS-sets. But, it depends on the house doing ...

jbarnes112358

Ug, Ug, OOg, Ug-Oog Oh. Now I get it... I agree, which is why I mentioned the limited data, used a wide range, and used terms like "probably consistent with". I was using Byko's ranking of 34 which is also based on the limited record. i am also using their points and PPB stats (around 18)...

jbarnes112358

wowitsquinthaha wrote:
Dr. Barnes wrote:Their stats at those tournaments are probably consistent with a team in the top 30 to 50.
Uh...?

If there is a question here, please ask it. Otherwise, you sound like a caveman.

jbarnes112358

Every statement I make is completely misconstrued. I'm done. You won, I hope you're happy. For all your efforts, the flag: [/img] Sorry, Maggie, But, you must realize by now that any posts that try to legitimize :chip: 's tournament here will be severely rebuked. I am sure your former team is a sol...

jbarnes112358

At last season's tournament at Ocean Lakes, on an IS set, Maggie Walker A lost to Freeman A who then lost to Maggie Walker C. That same day, MW C lost to Freeman and MW A beat Freeman. Anything can happen. Weighting different formats would be an interesting idea, but it would have to be fairly comp...

jbarnes112358

Brace yourself. Once the updated results go in, they'll move even higher up. Sorry. Well, if you give them a win over Charter, then I suppose they would move up. But, it seems to be something of a problem with your algorithm if you weight all wins the same, no matter the format of the game played. ...

jbarnes112358

ReinsteinD wrote:Speaking of USAMO Proofs, congrats to Greg Gauthier for making Honorable Mention.

ditto for Palmer Mebane of Maggie Walker Governor's School A

jbarnes112358

In an entertaining addendum: when we were in Chip's room, he congratulated us on finishing 2nd in the Junior Nationals two weeks ago. He called his tournament the "Senior Division". Entertaining? Outrageous might be a better way to put it. I have little doubt that you have the best quizbo...

jbarnes112358

If this semantics game continues, I will be actively looking for a way for us to divorce the "college money" from "go to Chip nationals" that comes with the TV tournament. I don't understand. Are you contractually obliged to attend NAC? Can you refuse to go? Why can't the money ...

jbarnes112358

To those of you that insist that computation questions test mathematical knowledge of concepts, I will concede the point. However, most of the computation questions come down to who can multiply or do some other basic calculation fastest. True, you need some mathematical knowledge to know what to do...

jbarnes112358

Yeah sorry about this, this is completely my fault. I noticed Maggie Walker not get their plaque when called because they had already left and asked if I should bring them one of the remaining ones assuming they didn't get one. Sorry for the confusion. Thanks for thinking of us, Evan. You know my h...

jbarnes112358

So Is it Brookwood's plaque?

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