The Quizbowl Resource Center

Muriel Axon

[10] If you practice ahimsa and are a good enough Jain, your soul obtains true knowledge of the Universe. This Sanskrit word is used to indicate such omniscient souls, including those of the Tirthankaras. ANSWER: arihant [or jina] "Kevali" should be accepted here -- the state of omniscien...

Muriel Axon

It sounded like the bonus part on "phylogenies" said that they're most commonly created through maximum parsimony, which probably hasn't been true among published phylogenies since the 1990s. (An infamous editorial in the journal Cladistics -- published by the Willi Hennig Society, which i...

Muriel Axon

We are planning to run Eyes That Do Not See at lunch on Saturday, and we (or rather, someone) will figure out lunch delivery such that players can eat and play at the same time. I'm not aware of any other academic side events that will be ready by the mirror date. Erik Nelson contacted us about whet...

Muriel Axon

However, the main argument for this OP was trying to include more Bollywood movies in the trash distribution, as I don't know much about Indian art film in the first place. The other thing that was also on my mind yesterday was the India film tossup at NSC that included Lagaan along with Apu Trilog...

Muriel Axon

We are pleased to announce a mirror of PIANO / Minnesota Open on the Minneapolis campus of University of Minnesota on March 30, 2019. The exact building has yet to be determined, but it's likely to be Blegen Hall. PIANO is an open tournament, which means that anyone can register and teams can compri...

Muriel Axon

Re: Rob's comment -- yes, I just attempted to get in touch with Macalester and St. Thomas teams to see if booking rooms is free for them on Sundays; but it may well be that people are willing to pay $10-15 extra (total, across all side events) to be spared the inconvenience of going to a different v...

Muriel Axon

A lot of quiz bowl players talk about the relationship between the sort of atomized facts one might learn from flashcarding or packet study and the more synoptic perspective that constitutes 'real knowledge,' as valued in academia. I found this article to offer an interesting perspective.

Muriel Axon

That is a good question. The UMN team has to pay for Sunday rooms, which means it's often a poor financial decision for us to host Sunday side events. I'll talk it over with our board; perhaps we can find an alternate venue for side events. (To be honest, I'm also out-of-the-loop to the extent that ...

Muriel Axon

Sorry everyone! We've decided on March 30 and I just have to put up the announcement (Internet access currently spotty). Thanks for your patience.

Muriel Axon

Given that UMN can likely field around two house teams, I doubt we will cancel the mirror. The date is still to be decided.

Muriel Axon

Sorry, I managed to replace the old link with...itself. Here's the proper link!

Muriel Axon

The bottom line is that without a strong showing of support for a Minnesota mirror -- whether underlain by a formal rule directing teams there or not -- it just won't happen. I encourage people who would be likely to play a UMN mirror to list their names or their teams on this spreadsheet . The main...

Muriel Axon

I'm initiating a conversation about this with our club leadership and with Sam. At this point, I'm speaking for nobody but myself. I'm not too invested in having a Minnesota mirror -- although of course Sam and I would both like to see our questions in play. My take is that: 1. Various folks are rig...

Muriel Axon

I think people are complaining too much about packet 'feng shui.' There are two issues here: (1) Editors only have a certain amount of time, and given more time, the editors of this set should have prioritized proofreading over making sure "metaphysics" and "metaphysical poets" d...

Muriel Axon

I thought the clue about peat being a great carbon sink was sort of strange/unhelpful (also in general that tu seemed a bit hard for the difficulty) This clue was worded a bit funny, but the fact that peat decomposes slowly -- and thus, stores a lot of carbon -- is perhaps The One Thing You Should ...

Muriel Axon

Nathan is presumably using a single team name as shorthand for a packet that combines submissions from multiple teams, as well as questions written by editors. (This makes more sense if you can see the packet headers and file names.)

Muriel Axon

I appreciated that both difficulty and tossup length seemed well-controlled -- these both require considerable discipline. I think players at the UMN site appreciated that care and enjoyed the set. As others have mentioned, I think more attention to detail would have paid off, but I also think the s...

Muriel Axon

From the TU on spheres (Eds. 1): "the solid that gives the largest surface area for a given volume" is the exact opposite of the truth. A question mentions the "pyridinium atom," which I assume means "pyridinium ion." The centaurs bonus spells "lapiths" as &qu...

Muriel Axon

Found the correct score to that round 9 game -- the stats above should now be (more) correct. Please PM or email me with further corrections!

Muriel Axon

I've uploaded stats . I'm guessing the score in game 9 between Greater East Naperville Co-Prosperity Sphere and I Fell During Bite the Box and Now I Have This Scab Team is incorrect, so if any of the participants in that game have the real score, let me know. Otherwise, it will take me a while to ch...

Muriel Axon

All three side events will be on Sunday. SNICK will be first. Please sign up soon!

Muriel Axon

The good thing about promoting non-Western art as a part of the art distribution is that it creates space for these works to be asked about as art, as Andrew suggests. Many times, I've stuffed questions about music (Western and non-Western) that isn't part of the classical or jazz traditions into &q...

Muriel Axon

Update: I'm putting up team formation spreadsheets for potential mirrors of SNICK, WORLDSTAR , and Words and Objects . Please sign up if you're interested. If we don't have at least four teams for each event, we may switch to a shoot-out format, if that's okay with the writers of each respective set...

Muriel Axon

I found the non-Western auditory art to be uniformly very good. I also appreciate the attention to balance over time and space of the non-Western art in general. I felt like the increase in non-Western art was worth the commensurate decrease in attention to painting and Western classical music, alth...

Muriel Axon

Contrary to my claim that we'll host side events not taking place at the Illinois event, we've had interest in mirrors of SNICK, WORLDSTAR, and Words and Objects, most likely on Sunday following the tournament.

Muriel Axon

UMN Quizbowl is pleased to announce an open mirror of NASAT on Saturday, August 18. Details about the set can be found here . The tournament will have an initial field cap of twelve teams, pending recruitment of qualified staffers. The entry fee with be $90 per team, with $10 discounts for: (1) each...

Muriel Axon

Aaron's Rod wrote:
AKKOLADE wrote:Minnesota will be hosting their mirror on August 18.
It's worth noting that this is a week after another open event at Illinois.

Sorry, I never got back to this. Are you suggesting that these two events would be too close together?

Muriel Axon

kammajos000 wrote:I don't want to toot my own horn here, but I think I should be at least top 6.

Thank you for coming to vote for Joe Kammann... one of the top 30 players of our time. At least!

Muriel Axon

The Bollinger-Hirsch team predictably eviscerated the me-Asher-Punyamurtula team in a head-to-head match, after which we elected not to play a final. Big thanks to the writers!

Muriel Axon

William Franklin is a leading proponent of using the non-lethal guard variety of these super-machines as “a part of integrated sheep protection.” Unfortunately, one prototype of this product, Hemiauchenia, didn't do so great in the North American market. As of 2011, the most advanced single domain ...

Muriel Axon

theMoMA wrote:(I also find Shan's claim that the Haldane question was "kind of dull" to be contradicted by the video record of his obvious amusement at the clue about Haldane's copious consumption of baking soda.)

I concede that that was an amusing clue.

Muriel Axon

For what it's worth, I think there's a place for a bit of pop science, if it's not overwhelming, and certainly for science history. I appreciate the bits of science history scattered through this tournament, as in the tossup on Airy and others. I didn't find the Haldane question objectionable, altho...

Muriel Axon

In the North circuit: While we're talking about things related to Minnesota and Penn (thanks for the shout-out, Alex!), one notable upset was a Wayzata team ("Thinkery") beating a UMN A team with me and Sam Bailey by more than 100 points (330 -- 210) at Penn Bowl. I'll post about my favori...

Muriel Axon

Are college mirrors intended to be closed, or can they be open?

Muriel Axon

I think Sam did a good job of articulating what I really liked about this tournament. I've been thinking about this in the context of philosophy, since I was asked for feedback about that subject, but I think it's true across subjects that a lot of questions clued interesting and important things in...

Muriel Axon

Ryan, your chart is a very interesting way to organize this discussion and I think it’s largely correct. I do think that it overranks Isaac (sorry Isaac) for his NAQT ability, at the expense of players like Kenji and Caleb who are much stronger ACF players (remember, ACF is the dominant format, eve...

Muriel Axon

I don't have any particular questions/subjects to comment on at the moment, but this was my favorite ACF Nationals that I've played. Thank you to the editors! If Nationals is ever again held at MIT or any similarly labyrinthine campus, I would recommend printing a map and attaching it to the schedul...

Muriel Axon

Can I see the tossup on frequentist statistics? I heard (or misheard) it as saying that credible intervals are used in frequentist statistics, when in fact they are used in Bayesian statistics.

Muriel Axon

Could I please see the bonus where the middle part (if I remember correctly) (at least, it was the second of the three parts) was "holotype"? The answer we gave was "type specimen" which was evidently not deemed acceptable or promptable. Seconded! I've worked with museum specime...

Muriel Axon

jmarvin_ wrote:

archaeology tossup on turkey

another archaeology tossup, not about turkey, which everyone negs with turkey

this -- but, like, the bird

Muriel Axon

Bensonfan23 wrote:The post-zygotic barriers bonus seemed notably difficult, and gastrulation is probably too hard of an easy part for this level.

I assumed the easy part was the part that said "name this guy who co-discovered natural selection."

Muriel Axon

Congratulations to Wayzata, who cleared the field!

Muriel Axon

This is a great idea! I just submitted four pages worth of questions.

Muriel Axon

I found this tournament quite readable in comparison to many others. Nice work!

Muriel Axon

The tossup on migration was a great idea and pulled from good clues. However, it should accept dispersal, which is essentially synonymous with migration. (The main difference is that migration usually implies that individuals move; dispersal can also include movement by seeds or other propagules. Bu...

Muriel Axon

Paul Kirk-Davidoff is quite good, though it seems like his specialties are things like African and Middle Eastern film, which don't come up too often.

Muriel Axon

All the (Senegalese) people interviewed in the Ousmane Sembene documentary I watched a few weeks ago seemed to pronoune Thiaroye as "tya-ROY."

Muriel Axon

Adam's pottery wheel question is superb! It's curious to me how many of these responses seem like nothing special today. The "diols" question, the tossup on "finishing the Unfinished Symphony," the various Gatsby things -- these questions are all good,* but I never really gave (o...

Muriel Axon

[10] The phenomenon that rare species are common can be explained by this theory, which is often called the “null hypothesis” of evolution, since it contends that evolutionary changes are caused by random genetic drift rather than natural selection. ANSWER: neutral theory of molecular evolution Neu...

Muriel Axon

Since ecology / evolution is my hobbyhorse: - I liked the bonus on urban environmental sciences! - Could I see the bonus on species abundance distributions? It felt like the part on "neutral" conflated two related, but distinct ideas, and the part on Fisher's log-series was definitely a de...

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