BISB Specific Question Discussion

[relaxationutopia]

Me, and you're welcome.

1. Evaluate each of the following functions for an input of one, for 10 points each:
[10] What is the natural logarithm of one? Any natural number raised to this power equals one.
ANSWER: zero [0]
[10] What is the arctangent of one? Express your answer in radians and over the range of negative pi over two to positive pi over two.
ANSWER: pi over four [or one-fourth pi; or pi divided by four; or equivalent mathematical expressions]
[10] What is the Riemann zeta function of one? It equals the sum, as n ranges from one to positive infinity, of one over n.
ANSWER: infinity [or undefined; or the series diverges; or people waving their arms indicating that the answer is too big for numbers to adequately describe]

I'm curious as to what people thought about this bonus; I was going for something a little bit different here, and though I know the powers-that-be frown upon math-comp (justly, for the most part), I think there's a legitimate reason to have bonuses like this that don't actually require any specific calculation while still testing basic algebra/trigonometry/calculus concepts. I think it rewards people who have actually, say, seen a harmonic series in a calculus class. I don't think you can really succeed with this type of bonus at any difficulty beyond regular HS, but I think it fit in nicely with the math distribution here, which I really tried to tailor toward things that I've learned in my math classes, and not ask about stuff like graph theory or geometry theorems that nobody actually learns about in HS.

Our team didn't get read this bonus but here are my thoughts:

[10] What is the natural logarithm of one? Any natural number raised to this power equals one.
ANSWER: zero [0]

This is an definitely the easy part and anyone who takes a math class in HS should get this.

[10] What is the arctangent of one? Express your answer in radians and over the range of negative pi over two to positive pi over two.
ANSWER: pi over four [or one-fourth pi; or pi divided by four; or equivalent mathematical expressions]

Yep, this tests basic trig nicely. An interesting change would to ask for the general solution, or the non-principal value.

[10] What is the Riemann zeta function of one? It equals the sum, as n ranges from one to positive infinity, of one over n.
ANSWER: infinity [or undefined; or the series diverges; or people waving their arms indicating that the answer is too big for numbers to adequately describe]

Riemann zeta function is not really helpful here for most teams. When we were playing Dunbar, what happened was they heard Riemann zeta function they said: "I don't what the zeta function is so I give up." This caused them to not hear the second part of the bonus. I am sure that had they heard the second part, they would have gotten it.

The only reason I know about the Riemann zeta function was because one of the seven millennium problems dealt with it, so it was more like an "interesting" facet of mathematics. Otherwise Riemann zeta is just a p-series generalized, which was a big part of BC calc.

"which I really tried to tailor toward things that I've learned in my math classes, and not ask about stuff like graph theory or geometry theorems that nobody actually learns about in HS."

I have to agree with this statement. Although I've qualified USAJMO in middle and high school, I rarely know the names of the theorems I use; rather I just use them when necessary. I have heard "graphs" tossed up in occasionally, but I doubt many people actually use them. To be honest, the HS mathematics curriculum is way too limited for interesting questions to be written on. Although some students may have the opportunity to take Multivariate Calc or Linear Algebra courses in their schools, the vast majority don't have any way of taking them and that is unfair for them. AP Statistics seems to be a subject that is not often touched by QB but definitely more students have taken it than say, graph theory. Another observation is that teams seem to always believe that the answer will be either zero, infinity, one, or a fraction of pi on computational bonuses.

If QB must have computational math, it is better to have them as bonuses rather than tossups. Although computational math helps me get more powers, it also causes me to get more negs than others. The paradox with QB is that either it must be challenging yet convertible; with math, this is difficult to achieve.

[relaxationutopia]

Yes, I think the 1984 bonus was hard, but I justified it with the fact that pretty much everybody's read it, so it can probably survive having two pretty hard parts. One of my pet peeves with much literature in HS quizbowl nowadays is how unbalanced bonuses can be. A bonus that goes Winston/1984/Orwell is not equivalent to a bonus that goes, like, Swann/Remembrance of Things Past/Proust, because a large number of people have read Orwell and not Proust. I think this bonus probably overshot its mark, but at the same time, I'd be interested to see if conversion stats were actually any lower for it than the rest of the literature. Also, 2+2=5 is extremely memorable, even if you haven't read the book.

On that bonus, the part we missed was "the book" but that was because I said "Oligarchical collectivism" instead of the full title. I didn't know that I could have just said "book from 1984" because I assumed it must have a name.
Would accepting partial answers in these situations be better?

[heterodyne]

On that bonus, the part we missed was "the book" but that was because I said "Oligarchical collectivism" instead of the full title. I didn't know that I could have just said "book from 1984" because I assumed it must have a name.
Would accepting partial answers in these situations be better?

The problem with that is that it is asking for a title; oligarchical collectivism is a philosophy. Accepting oligarchical collectivism would be like accepting justice for A Theory of Justice. I don't know if book from 1984 would have been accepted. I know that The Book from 1984 was accepted, because it was accepted in our room.

[relaxationutopia]

The bonus part was testing whether you knew it is "the book from 1984" so knowing that it (1) was the book from 1984 and (2) had "Oligarchical Collectivism" in its title should be acceptable. A Theory of Justice is a realistic work and for that question, the answer "book that Rawls wrote" cannot be accepted.

There was an issue on court-packing scheme mentioned in another thread; people knew it was "FDR's court packing scheme" but forgot the name for it. They didn't know that "FDR Court Packing Scheme" was acceptable as an answer.

[heterodyne]

I think the problem is that The Book is used as a title in 1984. Just saying The Book would have been accepted, and "from 1984" is just extra information. It's not testing if you knew that there was a book in 1984, it is testing if you know that the book in 1984 is simply called The Book through much of 1984. The problem with this, of course, is that it is impossible to distinguish between someone saying "the book from 1984" and "The Book, from 1984". Perhaps "The Book from 1984" should not have been accepted?

I do remember the court packing part, but that is slightly different in that NOBODY calls it Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 and that would be too hard for the field, but FDR's court packing plan isn't too hard. The best choice would probably have been to eliminate these answerlines to avoid weird ambiguity problems.

[adamsil]

It sounds to me that if I put a descriptor along the lines of, "Title or common description acceptable..." before the start of this bonus prompt, things would go more swimmingly?

[heterodyne]

It sounds to me that if I put a descriptor along the lines of, "Title or common description acceptable..." before the start of this bonus prompt, things would go more swimmingly?

Yeah, I think that would work.

[The Stately Rhododendron]

Bonus 1c on round 10 is ridiculous. It says that Greg Abbot will win TX-Gov in 2014 unless Julian Castro has a say. This is ridiculous because a: Julian Castro has said he won't run and b: There's no factual evidence to say that Castro would actually pose a threat (or at least a larger one than Wendy Davis, the candidate already running).

[adamsil]

Yeah--sorry about that. I did my best to modern-ify the current events (which was written in June and July) over winter break, and I'm sorry this one got through. (To be perfectly honest--I didn't know that Castro had said no, and when I wrote the question, he was on a list of potential candidates). Hopefully it didn't cause anyone to miss the bonus part.

[The Stately Rhododendron]

Round 1, TU 5 (Brazil CE) might have an error, it states that Andre Barros is the leader of the UAB, but (after googling him), the only article I found (http://www.dw.de/rio-de-janeiro-lawyer- ... a-16921971) says he's a member of the OAB.