Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

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Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by wordsinblood »

Hello.

The Richard Montgomery High School Quizbowl team is excited to announce that our housewrite, HERMES, is available for mirrors starting in September, for the duration of the 2014-2015 season.

The set was written and head-edited by myself and Trinish Chatterjee, with considerable contribution from Gabe Guedes and assistance from other members of the RM A and B teams (all rising seniors with 3 years of quizbowl experience). Our aim was slightly harder than "regular" difficulty (comparable to Prison Bowl or *GSAC XXI). We are charging $10 per team that attends your tournament.

We have thirteen packets each with 21 tossups and 20 bonuses. Tossups are powermarked and 5-6 lines TNR 10, while each bonus part is generally 2 lines TNR 10. The tiebreaker tossup will be either lit, history or science. The rest of the questions are distributed as follows:

*UPDATED HERMES Distribution
4/4 Literature (25% American, 25% European, 25% British, 15% World, 10% Misc.)
4/4 History (25% American, 25% European, 10% World, 10% Ancient, 30% Misc.)
4/4 Science (25% Biology, 25% Chemistry, 25% Physics, 6.25% Computer Science, 6.25% Math, 12.5% Other)
3/3 Fine Arts (40% Visual Art, 40% Music, 20% Other)
1/1 Religion (emphasis on the big THREE Abrahamic religions)
1/1 Myth (40% Greco-Roman, 20% Norse, 40% Other)
1/1 Geography (of which .5/.5 will have an interdisciplinary emphasis)
.5/.5 Social Science (emphasis on psychology, but also incl. economics and anthropology)
.5/.5 Philosophy
.5/.5 Current Events
.5/.5 Trash/Sports

Potential mirror hosts are free to ask for a sample of our questions (to gauge quality or difficulty). Contact us at hermesmirrors AT gmail DOT com if you are interested in mirroring this set or if you have any additional questions.

Confirmed Mirrors (as of *1-Mar):
1-November - ACE at Arcadia HS (Arcadia, Cali)
17-January - Cavalier Challenge at Dorman HS
24-January - ATTACK at Centennial HS (Roswell, GA)
31-January - Huskie Bowl at Northern Illinois University
7-March - Yellow Jacket Invitational at Sidney HS (Sidney, OH)
28-March - HERMES at Richard Montgomery (Rockville, MD) (Main-site)
Last edited by wordsinblood on Sun Mar 01, 2015 12:19 pm, edited 9 times in total.
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by i never see pigeons in wheeling »

wordsinblood wrote:Our aim was slightly harder than "regular" difficulty (comparable to Prison Bowl, GSAC XX, a bit easier than BELLoco). We are charging $10 per team that attends your tournament.
I'll go ahead and point out that according to last year's Morlan adjustments (http://hsqbrank.com/2013-2014-stat-adjustments/), Prison Bowl and GSAC were both on the harder side of regular difficulty while BELLOCO was easier.
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by naturalistic phallacy »

I'd highly recommend reducing the amount of social science if you plan on writing a set that is accessible to more than the top five teams in the country. Writing social science at a high school level is incredibly difficult, and you should take into account the possible reduction in question and set quality if you plan on gaining any sort of PACE certification.

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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by Schmidt Sting Pain Index »

wordsinblood wrote:
HERMES Distribution
4/4 Literature (25% American, 25% European, 25% British, 15% World, 10% Misc.)
4/4 History (25% American, 25% European, 10% World, 10% Ancient, 30% Misc.)
4/4 Science (25% Biology, 25% Chemistry, 25% Physics, 12.5% Computer Science, 12.5% Other)
3/3 Fine Arts (40% Visual Art, 40% Music, 20% Other)
1/1 Religion (emphasis on the big THREE Abrahamic religions)
1/1 Myth (40% Greco-Roman, 20% Norse, 40% Other)
1/1 Social Science (emphasis on psychology, but also incl. economics and anthropology)
.5/.5 Geography
.5/.5 Trash/Sports/Current Events
This adds up to 19 tossups (missing philosophy it seems?). :lol:
TWO-TIME HSNCT PARTICIPANT
TWO-TIME NSC PARTICIPANT
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by wordsinblood »

List of Fighting Spirit characters wrote:I'll go ahead and point out that according to last year's Morlan adjustments (http://hsqbrank.com/2013-2014-stat-adjustments/), Prison Bowl and GSAC were both on the harder side of regular difficulty while BELLOCO was easier.
Since BELLoco has not been posted online, our reference to that set was made based on our memory of reading it at our house tournament this past March. We probably personally remember the set being harder than it actually was. However, since we were able to look past GSAC and Prison Bowl posted online, we believe our comparison to these two sets is still fairly accurate.
Schmidt Sting Pain Index wrote:This adds up to 19 tossups (missing philosophy it seems?)
Thanks, Varun, for pointing out this glaring oversight. I will edit the original post to add 1/1 philosophy.
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Schmidt Sting Pain Index wrote:
wordsinblood wrote:
HERMES Distribution
4/4 Literature (25% American, 25% European, 25% British, 15% World, 10% Misc.)
4/4 History (25% American, 25% European, 10% World, 10% Ancient, 30% Misc.)
4/4 Science (25% Biology, 25% Chemistry, 25% Physics, 12.5% Computer Science, 12.5% Other)
3/3 Fine Arts (40% Visual Art, 40% Music, 20% Other)
1/1 Religion (emphasis on the big THREE Abrahamic religions)
1/1 Myth (40% Greco-Roman, 20% Norse, 40% Other)
1/1 Social Science (emphasis on psychology, but also incl. economics and anthropology)
.5/.5 Geography
.5/.5 Trash/Sports/Current Events
This adds up to 19 tossups (missing philosophy it seems?). :lol:
1/1 philosophy: also a terrible idea for high school.
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by Lightinfa »

List of Fighting Spirit characters wrote:
wordsinblood wrote:Our aim was slightly harder than "regular" difficulty (comparable to Prison Bowl, GSAC XX, a bit easier than BELLoco). We are charging $10 per team that attends your tournament.
I'll go ahead and point out that according to last year's Morlan adjustments (http://hsqbrank.com/2013-2014-stat-adjustments/), Prison Bowl and GSAC were both on the harder side of regular difficulty while BELLOCO was easier.
That's GSAC XXI; GSAC XX was easier - http://hsqbrank.com/stat-adjustments-for-2013-2013/
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by Irreligion in Bangladesh »

Not to mention thirteen computer science questions and thirteen TOTAL math, astronomy, earth science, and other questions. It sounds like the set is already pretty much written, but if there's time to fiddle with some of these things, you may want to.

Advertising a set as slightly harder than regular difficulty is one thing -- writing a distribution to specifically miss the strike zone of "what non-elite teams can answer" is another. My team's in a rebuilding year -- if this gets mirrored in Chicago, I won't be taking my team to it unless early mirrors report that the questions are too well-written to miss. We'll save the money and play it in practice.
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by Pushkin's Beard »

in on these shenanigans wrote:Not to mention thirteen computer science questions and thirteen TOTAL math, astronomy, earth science, and other questions...Advertising a set as slightly harder than regular difficulty is one thing -- writing a distribution to specifically miss the strike zone of "what non-elite teams can answer" is another.
Are astronomy and earth science the "strike zone of 'what non-elite teams can answer'"? I know that my team has trouble even getting 10s on both of those subjects While I think the math distro is pretty low for a high school set (and the comp sci a little high) I don't think that replacing other questions with astronomy and earth science would be the best way to help "non-elite teams." Unless by earth science you mean environmental science (which, unlike earth science and astronomy, most high schools have serious courses on), I don't see any reason to criticize them for not including more. Of course thats just me, my team, and my observations from when earth science and astronomy come up at tournaments I've been to.

I actually think the distro is pretty good even though the SS and philo bonus answer lines may make the tossups harder than they could have otherwise been. I believe RM will probably do a good job with it and recognize what are reasonable things to tossup and what are not.
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by Cody »

Pushkin's Beard wrote:Are astronomy and earth science the "strike zone of 'what non-elite teams can answer'"? I know that my team has trouble even getting 10s on both of those subjects While I think the math distro is pretty low for a high school set (and the comp sci a little high) I don't think that replacing other questions with astronomy and earth science would be the best way to help "non-elite teams." Unless by earth science you mean environmental science (which, unlike earth science and astronomy, most high schools have serious courses on), I don't see any reason to criticize them for not including more. Of course thats just me, my team, and my observations from when earth science and astronomy come up at tournaments I've been to.
Computer science is by orders of magnitude the hardest other science at the HS level. For example, last year in a 14-packet VHSL set (30 tossups, 20 directed rounds), doing just 7 computer science tossups and 7 directed round parts – including computer technology stuff that strays far from CS – was extremely hard (as it has always been). That's not considering the ~12 other answerlines you'd need to fill out 3-part bonuses for this set. Of course, even the easiest computer science answers go dead in most game rooms because very few people know anything about CS in high school.

The vast majority of [middle/high] schools offer some sort of earth science as it's part of the science curriculum in basically all the states. Most schools do not have a course on environmental science, though that is certainly included in earth science. Perhaps no one on your team has taken such a course, but that is not the case for the general population of high school quizbowl students. (For example, in Virginia, earth science is normally intended for 9th grade, so a decent percentage of students skip it for biology – though they've usually had other courses in the vein of earth science beforehand)

Upping CS at the expense of the other sciences is absolutely guaranteed to make your set harder than it should be and there's no way around that. The same goes for 1/1 social science – even if it is mostly psychology, which is definitely the right move – and philosophy.
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by Corry »

Pushkin's Beard wrote:Are astronomy and earth science the "strike zone of 'what non-elite teams can answer'"? I know that my team has trouble even getting 10s on both of those subjects While I think the math distro is pretty low for a high school set (and the comp sci a little high) I don't think that replacing other questions with astronomy and earth science would be the best way to help "non-elite teams." Unless by earth science you mean environmental science (which, unlike earth science and astronomy, most high schools have serious courses on), I don't see any reason to criticize them for not including more. Of course thats just me, my team, and my observations from when earth science and astronomy come up at tournaments I've been to.

I actually think the distro is pretty good even though the SS and philo bonus answer lines may make the tossups harder than they could have otherwise been. I believe RM will probably do a good job with it and recognize what are reasonable things to tossup and what are not.
I don't actually know science, but from my observations of Arcadia's past teams, astronomy is usually the easiest "minor" science category for most players. It's one of the more accessible ones, for sure.

I don't know about earth science, although my brother is an earth science god, so that probably skews my perspective a bit.

Either way, there is definitely too much computer science in this distribution.
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Post by Pushkin's Beard »

Cody wrote:
Pushkin's Beard wrote:Are astronomy and earth science the "strike zone of 'what non-elite teams can answer'"? I know that my team has trouble even getting 10s on both of those subjects While I think the math distro is pretty low for a high school set (and the comp sci a little high) I don't think that replacing other questions with astronomy and earth science would be the best way to help "non-elite teams." Unless by earth science you mean environmental science (which, unlike earth science and astronomy, most high schools have serious courses on), I don't see any reason to criticize them for not including more. Of course thats just me, my team, and my observations from when earth science and astronomy come up at tournaments I've been to.
Computer science is by orders of magnitude the hardest other science at the HS level. For example, last year in a 14-packet VHSL set (30 tossups, 20 directed rounds), doing just 7 computer science tossups and 7 directed round parts – including computer technology stuff that strays far from CS – was extremely hard (as it has always been). That's not considering the ~12 other answerlines you'd need to fill out 3-part bonuses for this set. Of course, even the easiest computer science answers go dead in most game rooms because very few people know anything about CS in high school.
I agree the comp sci is too high ("and the comp sci a little high"). I don't do comp sci and I know that 1/1 definitely is too much.
Cody wrote:The vast majority of [middle/high] schools offer some sort of earth science as it's part of the science curriculum in basically all the states. Most schools do not have a course on environmental science, though that is certainly included in earth science. Perhaps no one on your team has taken such a course, but that is not the case for the general population of high school quizbowl students.
Okay well looking at various earth science syllabi and this page I see that earth science tends to encompass a lot of environmental science and does not include annoying (to me) geological period stuff. My problem generally is only with tossups about things that you NEVER talk about in school. Things like geological periods, constellations, random star crap that always comes up when the astronomy distro is too high, constitute the stuff I feel gets overasked for no reason other than the fact that they are already established in the canon. I concede that many schools offer environmental science as part of an earth science course. I was just going off the fact that there is an AP Enviro but no AP Earth Science along with how GDS, Sidwell, Maret, Ladue School District, and Montgomery County all offer Environmental science courses but no earth science courses.
Cody wrote:(For example, in Virginia, earth science is normally intended for 9th grade, so a decent percentage of students skip it for biology – though they've usually had other courses in the vein of earth science beforehand)
For just that reason I feel that, because most people tend to stick to the three main subjects (Bio, Chem, Physics) and everyone takes math, questions should have significantly more math than astronomy and earth science.
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by vinteuil »

APES is basically an earth science course. At the low levels, it makes no sense to teach "environmental science" without a big chunk of earth science.

Also, your argument that astronomy isn't taught in high schools could just as well be applied to a good chunk of the literature distribution—people do actually learn things outside of school!.
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by naturalistic phallacy »

naturalistic phallacy wrote:I'd highly recommend reducing the amount of social science if you plan on writing a set that is accessible to more than the top five teams in the country. Writing social science at a high school level is incredibly difficult, and you should take into account the possible reduction in question and set quality if you plan on gaining any sort of PACE certification.

EDIT: hot dogs are distracting
I will add that this is me speaking as me. This in no way an official PACE statement nor a reflection on any possible future certification status of HERMES or other tournaments.

With that out of the way, I stand by everything I said. A distribution so heavy on "non-core" topics, especially social science and philosophy, is hardly "just a little above normal difficulty". Neither HSNCT nor NSC have 2/2; even many college tournaments lack 2/2 social science and philosophy (which is a shame for far different reasons). I've been on both sides of this argument before - I love social science and philosophy questions - but having written and edited many high school sets, I have learned that it's far too hard to consistently write an entire tournament's worth of quality, accessible tossups in those categories.
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by Irreligion in Bangladesh »

My "other science" preferences manifest themselves in the SCOP distribution -- we do 1/1 of each of the big 3, then 1/1 math and 1/1 astro & earth science combined in each packet. CS, if it makes it in, fits in as a math question.

When I write SCOP's earth science, I look at it as a way to talk about general scientific principles, concepts, and topics that middle school science classes often have occasion to play with when they teach, well, general scientific principles.

To give an example of how broad earth science can get, SCOP 4 (last year) had Earth Science tossups on mantle, volcanoes, granite, clouds, fog, glaciers, and sulfur. You can talk about geology, meteorology, hydrology, environmental science, just to start the list. Sure, you can do almanacky things like the geologic time scale and climate designations and boring things like that -- but in 4 (soon to be 5) years of SCOP, I'll say that we haven't resorted to boring clues. :)

SCOP has *never* tossed up a computer science topic -- we've never had reason to because there's so much math that's accessible instead. Through SCOP 4, we've had 2 CS bonuses -- that's one bonus every other year -- and the easy part of one of those bonuses was "exponentiation."


The reason I hold earth science up as an important part of a good high school science distribution is its breadth. Take one look at the answer lines that SCOP 4 had -- just imagine where you can go from there. There are probably a hundred different Earth Science things you could toss up and get 95% or better conversion before you had to start stretching the canon. Very few categories can compare with earth science when it comes to the sheer "I have heard of that thing!" quality of most of those answer lines, and that's a huge part of the battle in writing accessible quizbowl. The hardest thing, I've found, in writing earth science is making sure your early and middle clues are unique, helpful, and not too obscure. Computer science seems to be the opposite -- the topics lend themselves well to good early and middle clues, but the topic itself isn't familiar to laypeople. CS just doesn't lend itself well to broadly accessible answer lines, and unless that changes, it should be marginalized in high school quizbowl.

naturalistic phallacy wrote:Neither HSNCT nor NSC have 2/2; even many college tournaments lack 2/2 social science and philosophy.
I'm pleasantly surprised to learn that NSC doesn't jump to 2/2 P&SS. I get that NSC has way more than 13 packets, but that should still be a clear indication that 13/13 philosophy at regular (or even "regular-plus") difficulty is a poor idea.
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by Steeve Ho You Fat »

Pushkin's Beard wrote:
Cody wrote:The vast majority of [middle/high] schools offer some sort of earth science as it's part of the science curriculum in basically all the states. Most schools do not have a course on environmental science, though that is certainly included in earth science. Perhaps no one on your team has taken such a course, but that is not the case for the general population of high school quizbowl students.
Okay well looking at various earth science syllabi and this page I see that earth science tends to encompass a lot of environmental science and does not include annoying (to me) geological period stuff. My problem generally is only with tossups about things that you NEVER talk about in school. Things like geological periods, constellations, random star crap that always comes up when the astronomy distro is too high, constitute the stuff I feel gets overasked for no reason other than the fact that they are already established in the canon. I concede that many schools offer environmental science as part of an earth science course. I was just going off the fact that there is an AP Enviro but no AP Earth Science along with how GDS, Sidwell, Maret, Ladue School District, and Montgomery County all offer Environmental science courses but no earth science courses.
You've offered a number of examples of things that lazy question writers write about to fill the earth science distribution. Constellation, individual star, and geological time period questions almost always play poorly and should almost never be written. This doesn't mean that you can't come up with other, appropriate answers, such as geologic processes or astronomical events or objects to fill a decent distribution. Probably not enough to have 1/1 in a high school tournament, but certainly many more than you can for computer science.
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by Les Remparts de Seville »

So me and Farah have decided that we definitely are changing the distro, especially in those categories discussed. Farah will be posting the details and comments soon!

I myself just want to add that I really agree with this point:
vinteuil wrote:Also, your argument that astronomy isn't taught in high schools could just as well be applied to a good chunk of the literature distribution—people do actually learn things outside of school!.
A large amount of standard quizbowl topics such as literature, mythology, and composer-oriented music history are not taught in schools to the extent that one would have to know them to be successful at quizbowl. In the same way, subjects like psychology and philosophy in my opinion shouldn't necessarily be shunned because high-school curricula are not in depth or expansive enough.

Of course, tossing up random stars or constellations as astronomy is a completely different issue altogether, since that's more about choosing good answerlines. While we did keep difficulty in mind when writing our .5/.5 Computer Science, we will be cutting down on this and on other categories significantly after considering everyone's input.
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by wordsinblood »

Thank you everyone for the feedback! Trinish and I definitely want this set to be more accessible that it currently appears. Sorry if this post is a bit long, but we've decided to incorporate most of the suggested changes, so I'd like to address each of them.

Of all of the suggestions, (we feel) philosophy falls farthest out of the realm of things that a high school education offers (assuming this is how to increase accessibility). Based on the resounding consensus that we have too much philosophy, we are cutting the distribution for that in half (.5/.5). The other .5/.5 will go toward CE, which will be separate from .5/.5 Trash/Sports.

When we included the .5/.5 CS, we had question quality in mind since each of us has a few comp sci courses under our belts. But obviously it doesn't matter if a tossup is well written if it's going to go dead in the majority of rooms. We hope to repent by splitting the 12.5% originally allocated for CS 50/50 between CS and math (there is little to no math currently).

The CS that remains in the set will likely be cherry-picked from the questions we already have written, since at least half of these have answerlines that will be obvious by the end, even to someone who doesn't comp sci (courtesy of Trinish!). Same goes for the easy parts of bonuses.

If it appeases anyone, what I call "earth science" is only a few questions all on topics I learned about in "Earth Space Systems" in 8th grade, and rehashed in AP Enviro this past year (maybe excepting one question that doesn't appear in a cursory glance of the actual APES curriculum). I didn't differentiate between "earth science" and "enviro" when writing the questions.

Alright, social science. While we decided on the other changes almost right away, we are still quite uncertain what to do about this. The options we are considering for where to reapportion the questions we take out of SS are:
  • add .5/.5 to CE (for 1/1 total): this is much more CE than we originally intended, but is also probably our best option right now
  • add .5/.5 to geo: too much geo? maybe it's just me, but it seems that the set would get harder not easier if we took out psych which people can and do take a class for (this argument also works to a lesser extent for econ) and replaced it with geo which is really not offered as a class/not taught extensively in other classes in schools, and which Americans are notoriously bad at (also this, less reliable but more recent and humorous).
  • compromise on the above and have .75/.75 geo and .75/.75 social science: does this still constitute too much social science? does it create the a new geo problem? if no to both, then this too is a decent option.
  • add a new .5/.5 of cross-disciplinary questions: okay this was proposed, promptly discarded, and then warily resurrected. neither of us really has experience writing them and I'm not sure they're the most pleasurable or accessible questions to play (they could be, I just have no idea). Any thoughts on this in particular? Unless someone let's us know otherwise, this will probably stay behind keeping 1/1 SS in our list of options.
TL; DR~ We hope you like the new changes and think that they will increase accessibility. Also, please let us know what you think we should do with social science.
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by Corry »

wordsinblood wrote:
  • add .5/.5 to geo: too much geo? maybe it's just me, but it seems that the set would get harder not easier if we took out psych which people can and do take a class for (this argument also works to a lesser extent for econ) and replaced it with geo which is really not offered as a class/not taught extensively in other classes in schools, and which Americans are notoriously bad at (also this, less reliable but more recent and humorous).
Apparently the cool kids don't put 1/1 geography in their distros anymore, but in my opinion, it's actually one of the most accessible subjects you can write for a high school tournament (at least, compared to most social sciences). The number of "accessible" answer lines available is HUGE. Whether or not you've ever "studied" geography in your life, the final conversion rates for geo tossups are usually quite high: you'd have to mess up pretty hard to miss "FTP, name this state whose cities include Las Vegas" or "FTP, name this African river, the longest in the world". It's only when high school housewrites try to get ambitious and start tossing up the geography of Cameroon that things get messy.

Now, writing interesting geography is an altogether different matter, though I think Matt Jackson offers some pretty good pointers here. I personally like to tie in some history and other interdisciplinary stuff when writing geography for NAQT, for instance.

In contrast, even today, I'm not sure I could convert all of the psychology questions in a standard high school set, despite psychology generally being considered to be the most accessible of the social sciences (though to be fair, I suck).
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by Irreligion in Bangladesh »

Like Corry says, geography is comically accessible -- it is to history what earth science is to science. It doesn't do the same job as an actual history question, but in a geography question, you can talk generally about interesting things that people know about, while using an answer line with nearly 100% convertibility, without too much fuss. You don't need to do 1/1 if you don't want to, but you should absolutely NOT feel like there's a dictum from anyone saying that 1/1 geography is bad by nature.

The fun thing with geography is that it's a universal recipient -- Corry's idea of adding in history clues isn't just good, it's great. Last year's SCOP had a geography bonus themed on art museums because it sounded like fun to me -- the question played like geography, required geo knowledge to get points, but it got to expose people to some cool art clues.

SCOP did a full 1/1 of geography, .5/.5 of CE, and .5/.5 of Philosophy & SS this year, after doing 1/1 geo+CE and 1/1 P&SS for a few years -- so if I had to pick for you, I'd add .5/.5 to geo. Maybe go .75 for geo, .75 for CE, and .5 for SS, but if SS is at .5, a lot of people, myself included, are happy.

Regardless of what you decide, thank you for responding to the critiques and being open to feedback -- that's the sign of good editorship, and I hope it turns out well for your set. :)
Brad Fischer
Head Editor, IHSA State Series
IHSSBCA Chair

Winnebago HS ('06)
Northern Illinois University ('10)
Assistant Coach, IMSA (2010-12)
Coach, Keith Country Day School (2012-16)
Les Remparts de Seville
Kimahri
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by Les Remparts de Seville »

So after considering what Brad and Corry have said about geo distributions, we've decided to put the extra .5/.5 in geography with an interdisciplinary emphasis. (I personally am super excited for this!) So, our final updated distribution will be as follows:

4/4 Literature (25% American, 25% European, 25% British, 15% World, 10% Misc.)
4/4 History (25% American, 25% European, 10% World, 10% Ancient, 30% Misc.)
4/4 Science (25% Biology, 25% Chemistry, 25% Physics, 6.25% Computer Science, 6.25% Math, 12.5% Other)
3/3 Fine Arts (40% Visual Art, 40% Music, 20% Other)
1/1 Religion (emphasis on the big THREE Abrahamic religions)
1/1 Myth (40% Greco-Roman, 20% Norse, 40% Other)
1/1 Geography (of which .5/.5 will have an interdisciplinary emphasis)
.5/.5 Social Science (emphasis on psychology, but also incl. economics and anthropology)
.5/.5 Philosophy
.5/.5 Current Events
.5/.5 Trash/Sports
Tiebreakers will be an additional history, literature, or science.

We also want to announce that the set will be mirrored at the 25th Cavalier Challenge in Roebuck, SC, hosted by the Dorman Quizbowl Team.
Trinish Chatterjee
Richard Montgomery HS '15
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i never see pigeons in wheeling
Rikku
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by i never see pigeons in wheeling »

Les Remparts de Seville wrote:S
3/3 Fine Arts (40% Visual Art, 40% Music, 20% Other)
What does "other" mean in this context? What specific fine arts media?
Ankit
Cal '16
Bellarmine College Preparatory '12
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wordsinblood
Lulu
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Re: Richard Montgomery's HERMES available for mirrors!

Post by wordsinblood »

List of Fighting Spirit characters wrote:What does "other" mean in this context? What specific fine arts media?
Other art includes art film, architecture, photography, sculpture and maybe 1-2 contemporary art questions.
Farah Kabir
Richard Montgomery '15
MIT '19
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