Electronic Scorekeeping

[schen]

Lately, I've been scorekeeping my school's practices with a basic spreadsheet that I keep on Google Docs. It automatically totals the number of 15's, 10's and negs while also keeping track of running score, PPG and PPB. It seems to me that spreadsheets like these could be used to scorekeep at a tournament. They're neater, easier to use, and almost impossible to screw up with in terms of score. The only problems that I can see are that some buildings don't have a reliable wireless internet connection and that it's hard to conjure up X number of computers for a given tournament. Has anyone ever tried doing this?

[no ice]

I think these three scoresheets were all employed at some time. Would anyone recommend any one of those, or a different one, in particular?

[Jason Cheng]

I've used the Irvine High School (thanks Dana!) Google Drive spreadsheets for almost every single one of the tournaments I directed this year (8 or so), and it's been an enormous improvement. The most tedious part is having to make several copies for each room, but that's hardly an issue given the time saved printing out and processing paper scoresheets. If you're only looking to keep track of tossups, though, you'll have to adapt a little because the total score only sums up the TU+Bonus points for the first row. You'll also have to make some changes on your own if you want to incorporate bouncebacks. Be warned that copy-pasting cells on these sheets does mess up the formatting though.

UCSD has more or less stable wifi in every building, so I've never run into any particular issue of that nature--one time, a moderator did forget to bring a computer so they had to do things by hand, but that's pretty easy to adapt around when every other room is sending in instant, clearly-legible stats.

Whenever Coach Schultz from Arcadia can make it to a tournament in between his hectic track coaching schedule, he loads 14 or so copies of the Hunter College Excel spreadsheets onto his tablet and keeps score using that for his teams. If that's the kind of thing you're looking for, Schultz has been doing it for the last 3 years, and has praised this method every time I see him at a tournament nowadays. He saves the sheets for later use, and it seems to work well enough for his purposes.

[Santa Claus]

Irvine HS electronic scoresheets have also been used at every Arcadia tournament of the past year (not to mention every Irvine tournament), since we recently received a grant for a bunch of Chromebooks. If your school has access to wifi and laptops, there really is practically no downside to using electronic sheets.

Having all scoresheets on Google Docs means that the TD can keep track of all the rooms better; they can resolve protests or tell mods to hurry up without having to move from their chair. Runners become a thing of the past, and don't forget all the benefits of electronic sheets when it comes to score keeping (instant acess, no arithmetic errors, all fields always properly filled).

If you have the capability to use electronic scoresheets, I strongly recommend it.

[dtaylor4]

Last year, the Springfield Invitational used electronic scoresheets, as all of the scorekeepers were given school-owned MacBooks that were wirelessly networked to a printer in HQ.

If the resources and logistics are there, it can be a great boon. If not, it is not worth the trouble.

[UlyssesInvictus]

It seems like great tools are continually being created and then recreated as the threads disappear. Is there a sticky that can be made of all the free tools that people have created over time? These spreadsheets, Quinterest (and like the two other question databases I can't remember), the various online buzzers, Protobowl (yes, even Protobowl counts). Perhaps there's already one in the wiki? I suppose the software subforum sort of serves this role, but a single sticky with a collated list of links and brief descriptions would be enormously helpful. I imagine more diligent souls have already been compiling such lists--could someone even just post that list and a moderator could sticky it?

Besides clutter, I don't really see a reason not to have some kind of sticky like this.

EDIT: Disregard all that--there is a nicely updated page in the wiki! I do wonder if it's worth having the sticky anyways, because many people don't know about the wiki.
http://www.qbwiki.com/wiki/view/Quizbowl_software

EDIT 2: Upon closer examination, the wiki isn't as updated as would be optimal. I've requested an account so I can update the page, but it increases my convictions that a regularly updated sticky in the forums be created.