The Quizbowl Resource Center

[This is a quick-results post. More to come as soon as it can be uploaded. -Matt Bruce, Logistics/Stats, NAQT 2005 HSNCT.]

Thomas Jefferson proved victorious among 96 teams playing for the High School National Championship Tournament, run by National Academic Quiz Tournaments and held June 4-5 at the Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare. The tournament featured 48 rooms of simultaneous game-play, over 500 of the nation's brightest high school students, and over 500 matches in all. Teams recognized at least one of the moderators: Ken Jennings, NAQT member and record-setting game show champion, will be one of over 100 game officials at this record-setting event.

Lakeside School of Seattle finished second; Lakeside took a strong lead early in the final match but could not hold on in a game separated by five points through 24 tossups. State College Area High School of Pennsylvania finished third; fourth through seventh were Solon (Ohio), Mission San Jose (Fremont, California), Richard Montgomery (Rockville, Maryland), and duPont Manual (Lexington, Kentucky).

Danville, Kentucky, was the best of 12 small-school teams.

Although this was TJ's third straight championship it marked the first time they went undefeated. Lakeside's only three tournament losses were to TJ.

Top individual scorer (based on Saturday's games only) was Noah Rahman of Solon. Other team and individual statistics either are already on http://www.naqt.com or will be there as soon as possible.

duPont Manual (Lexington, Kentucky)

You mean Louisville.

matt979 wrote: ...Although this was TJ's third straight championship it marked the first time they went undefeated...

No it isn't. They were also undefeated last year.

I'm going to assume this is going to become the results thread...

If so, I think I speak for a lot of people when I ask, "Lakeside WHO?"

Not only did they come from nowhere to win a lot of games, they also beat everyone they played, save TJ. And they got close to them, which no one else can say.

So who is Lakeside? What kind of circuit do they have in the NW? Had anyone played/heard of them before HSNCT?

(Of course, this is to take nothing away from the champs, who now have solid evidence of what has long been claimed -- that they may be the best HS team ever assembled. But since that's really no surprise, I think most of that discussion has already happened.)

NoahMinkCHS wrote:So who is Lakeside? What kind of circuit do they have in the NW? Had anyone played/heard of them before HSNCT?

If I recall a different thread correctly, Lakeside either defeated TJ or came close to surpassing them in a recent KMO.

Congratulations to the members of Thomas Jefferson's A squad on their run to this championship. While I have only seen the preliminary stats so far (NAQT's site is currently down), the performance were exemplary and dominating.

This was quite possibly the greatest high school team show of dominance at NAQT/PACE. Once again, congratulations.

leftsaidfred wrote:Congratulations to the members of Thomas Jefferson's A squad on their run to this championship. While I have only seen the preliminary stats so far (NAQT's site is currently down), the performance were exemplary and dominating.

This was quite possibly the greatest high school team show of dominance at NAQT/PACE. Once again, congratulations.

I would like to see what TJ does at PACE NSC before I make such a declaration. Regardless, a very impressive performance both by TJ and the underrated (for those of us with an east coast bias) west coast circuit.

I'm following up with Dan's remarks:

Please note on the PACE record books that TJ-A was the first team to break 600 ppg in prelim matches and 500 ppg in playoff matches last year. That was already a very impressive statistical performance. I don't have last year's NAQT data on-hand either, but they were also very good statistically if I recall correctly. You can also check down the entire record list to see where TJ-A last year had blasted records in scoring.

Has NAQT's website used up all its bandwith? I know I must have reloaded the results page over 100 times over the course of the afternoon yesterday.

NoahMinkCHS wrote:
So who is Lakeside?

They are an excellent academic private institution whose alumni include Bill Gates and Paul Allen. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakeside_School

They were third in most recent KMO, but they were not that close to TJ. Nobody has been very close to TJ in KMO for years.

E.T. Chuck wrote:I'm following up with Dan's remarks:

Please note on the PACE record books that TJ-A was the first team to break 600 ppg in prelim matches and 500 ppg in playoff matches last year. That was already a very impressive statistical performance. I don't have last year's NAQT data on-hand either, but they were also very good statistically if I recall correctly. You can also check down the entire record list to see where TJ-A last year had blasted records in scoring.

Ahh but remember, the great LAWN powers beat them (lyric allen wren neel). It's like racing (or any other sport), margin of victory doesnt matter, just getting the victory. If lakeside came that close, well, let's just say, if TJ wins every match by 600 but loses the final by 5 it's all for naught. And who knows? State College lost by only 60 to them once this year, and it was an NAQT tourney too. I must say though that PACE may be even better suited for TJ b/c at bounceback tournaments they get around 32 pts per bonus earned. that's just ridonkulously sweet

I just wanna say congrats to my boys at Solon for finishing 4th... Noah, you and the guys make Ohio proud...

Congrats to everyone else for their fine performances.

Congrats to NAQT for running a great tournament, and congrats to the teams that met or exceeded expectations. There were a lot of great players, and they were as nice as could be.

I watched TJ A one match, and I was laughing out loud at how good they were.

matt979 wrote:[This is a quick-results post. More to come as soon as it can be uploaded. -Matt Bruce, Logistics/Stats, NAQT 2005 HSNCT.]

Other team and individual statistics either are already on http://www.naqt.com or will be there as soon as possible.

For the love of God, change the colors of the background on the rr stats PLEASE! Maroon and purple do not work for team names in blue. I had to highlight the whole page to read the team names that corresponded to the stats w/o triggering a headache.

Sean

TJ A beat Walton 885-95


We only got points from questions they interrupted and got wrong, but then again our team captain was unable to attend so we could have done better. Still, that is an excellent showing against anybody.

just a lil' highlight from the playoffs;

TJ A vs. Walton. Got through 26 tossups with 4 minutes left on the clock.

885 to 95, TJ wins.

14 powers, 2 negs. It works out to getting almost 35 points per tossup heard, if I recall correctly.

By the way, what I took from the final is a) that TJ A can be forced to neg themselves into negative point totals through sheer nervousness, and b) that 10 negs is not enough to keep TJ A from winning by 90. Also that they'll almost always 30 the bonus.

The tournament ran pretty well, and I believe NAQT is planning on trying to get into the triple digits for their nationals tournament next year. I also suspect NAQT wants to hold it in the DC area, but a lot of variables have to work out right for that so yeah.

Yeah, I was watching the TJ-Walton match, that was pretty crazy... It was a pretty good tournament, even though we didn't do as well as we would have hoped. 11 days in Chicago was a bit much, but well worth it. A 4 hour delay at O'Hare didn't help, and going 5-5 in prelims didn't help either, but oh well.

Does anyone have complete, or at least better results?

The NAQT folks should be proud of running a great tournament...especially considering its size and the space they were working in. For the most part, the players and coaches dealt with it well, though it has been a long time since I have been at a tournament where coaches let a number of their kids get a way with a certain level of immaturity (by far in a minority of cases, but it was still sad to see). There were some excellent readers, though for a top flight tournament I was surprised at how many could not pronounce a great many words that come up in quiz bowl quite a bit. The moderator I kept score for on Saturday was easily the best I've ever heard, and I was honored to be paired with him.

I scored TJA's first(?) match against Walton (on Saturday). It was clear that Walton was an accompished team, but without offense, it was also clear that TJA was operating on some other plane of reality. It was a most impressive thing to see.

tj b boy wrote:The tournament ran pretty well, and I believe NAQT is planning on trying to get into the triple digits for their nationals tournament next year. I also suspect NAQT wants to hold it in the DC area, but a lot of variables have to work out right for that so yeah.

Like not scheduling against 's DC/VA regional? Or maybe they should?

Matt Morrison wrote:It's like racing (or any other sport), margin of victory doesnt matter, just getting the victory. If lakeside came that close, well, let's just say, if TJ wins every match by 600 but loses the final by 5 it's all for naught. And who knows? State College lost by only 60 to them once this year, and it was an NAQT tourney too.

Well, yes and no. If you're the expected winner and lose by a narrow margin, it's all for naught. But if you narrowly miss defeating a strong favorite by a few points, then you've earned respect for just getting close. Some people count "better than expected" as a personal victory in their minds. And I encourage this. It helps all of us continue to strive to be better.

And, of course, Congrats to TJ who defeated many of the top teams in the nation without losing a single game.

Does anyone know if NAQT plans to post the full results from Sunday, at least all the scores?

We looted some of the playoff pairings through Round 16 or so. I'll see what we can dig up.

NAQT's webmaster posted the full Sunday results at http://www.naqt.com/hsnct/2005/2005-hsnct-results.html and http://www.naqt.com/hsnct/2005/results/ ... sults.html

For what it's worth, Saturday's full statistics brought to you courtesy of Jim Puls, Greg McWhirter, Colin Brown, and the web interface on the stat program that may be released soon as some iteration of Livestat.

The comparatively primitive playoff results from the links above are from my own spreadsheet tabulation, as were Saturday morning's schedule and Saturday afternoon pairings. (Game scores and tossups heard entered redundantly on both Livestat and my homegrown tool to reduce the risk of errant data entry.)

Both the latest Livestat and Chris Sewell's SQBS version 4.0 (in beta) have some powermatching functionality, though this year it proved more expedient for me to use my own macros.

See http://www.livestat.org and http://www.stanford.edu/~csewell/sqbs/ for information on the best quiz tournament stat programs out there. Time permitting I might post a cleaned-up copy of the workbook/macros I used for pairing and playoffs, though this is of less obvious use to future TDs.

Matt Bruce
Logistics/Stat Room, NAQT 2005 HSNCT

Howard wrote:

Matt Morrison wrote:It's like racing (or any other sport), margin of victory doesnt matter, just getting the victory. If lakeside came that close, well, let's just say, if TJ wins every match by 600 but loses the final by 5 it's all for naught. And who knows? State College lost by only 60 to them once this year, and it was an NAQT tourney too.

Well, yes and no. If you're the expected winner and lose by a narrow margin, it's all for naught. But if you narrowly miss defeating a strong favorite by a few points, then you've earned respect for just getting close. Some people count "better than expected" as a personal victory in their minds. And I encourage this. It helps all of us continue to strive to be better.

And, of course, Congrats to TJ who defeated many of the top teams in the nation without losing a single game.

^^Good point. Coming close certainly does boost your confidence. I was pretty much speaking from the expected winner's (in this case TJ's) point of view. Hopefully the PACE final will be just as exciting or even more so than NAQT was (it'll probably be State College and TJ, hence the mention of the mere 60 point margin). Wouldn't that be something though, if TJ could win all the NAQT's in the world but couldn't pull off PACE? It'd be a curse on the scale of Earnhardt's 20 yr run w/out a Daytona 500 victory (speaking of racing )

Since the topic came up.....

While I realy do like NAQT's question style, and even lke the timed tournament feature, one thing that often puzzeled me is how easy it was for one good team to blow out another good team. I saw TJA blow out Walton by over 500 points (and as I see, that was their closest match this weekend), yet I would not consider Walton a third teir team.....they wualified for a National playoff, even in a weakened state (as I understand it, their captain was out). For some reason, I would think that "in reality", the two teams are somewhat closer in ability...far closer than the final score indicates. This is not my only experience in the matter, as I have seen this routinely occur in other NAQT tournaments. I'm not sure why this seems to be so unique to NAQT, though I have some guesses.

Not to get my head shot off with another "Illinois" thread; this is one of the few advantages I like about Illinois' format....teams close in ability generally play close matches.

Tegan wrote:Since the topic came up.....

While I realy do like NAQT's question style, and even lke the timed tournament feature, one thing that often puzzeled me is how easy it was for one good team to blow out another good team. I saw TJA blow out Walton by over 500 points (and as I see, that was their closest match this weekend), yet I would not consider Walton a third teir team.....they wualified for a National playoff, even in a weakened state (as I understand it, their captain was out). For some reason, I would think that "in reality", the two teams are somewhat closer in ability...far closer than the final score indicates. This is not my only experience in the matter, as I have seen this routinely occur in other NAQT tournaments. I'm not sure why this seems to be so unique to NAQT, though I have some guesses.

Not to get my head shot off with another "Illinois" thread; this is one of the few advantages I like about Illinois' format....teams close in ability generally play close matches.

I've noticed the same thing as you. Our Quiz Bowl Team went to Four NAQT tournaments and played 24 preliminary matches. Of the 24 matches we only had one where the marigin of victory was 50 or fewer points.

Our team went to one tournament that had a similar format to NAC and we played seven preliminary matches and three of them were decided by five points.

We also had several more close matches at other tournaments with that format.

The thing about NAQT is that there are so many points at stake for each question. If you buzz in early and make a mistake you can get -5 instead of +15. If the other team gets +10 on the question and gets 30 points on the bonus. If you would have gotten that question right you could have gotten 45 points with the bonus. Instead you got -5 and the opponents got 40. I remember one match I knew the answer to a question and someone beat me out. They got 30 on the bonus but if we got the question right we likely would have gotten 30 on the bonus. We lost the match by 75 and theoretically we would have won by five had we gotten that question.

Scores often don't indicate how close a match was. Say you're down by 35 and you know the last question but someone on the other team beats you out, gets 30 on the bonus and wins by 75. if you could have gotten that question you could have won the match.

I like the NAQT format and I am not complaining about it but I just wanted to point out that so much can be at stake on one question.

I think the blowouts have a lot to do with rhythm. It's a lot easier to keep powering and keep 30ing when you've gotten several in a row, and probably much more difficult to get back in the game if you are substantially behind early on. The most important predictors of our scores this weekend were our scores on the first 5 or so questions. That's a big reason why the final was such a desperate comeback, because we were used to getting a rhythm early.

Adding to what bjb87 said (and a major contributor to the effect mentioned), the lack of bouncebacks means a team with the depth of knowledge and the speed to dominate the tossups will win. In other formats, where you might lose the tossup but at least get some points, the effect isn't as great.

Throw large point swings into a quick-paced timed format, and you get that rhythm thing jewtemplar mentioned. If you can be down by hundreds of points after a half-dozen questions, it's easy to fall apart.

Echoing bjb again, I'm not saying all that's bad -- just that it's how that game is played.

In any format, if a team gets out to a huge lead after a few questions, the other team is gonna feel the pressure and start going in earlier than they should. The best teams know how to come back from these deficits.

NoahMinkCHS wrote:Adding to what bjb87 said (and a major contributor to the effect mentioned), the lack of bouncebacks means a team with the depth of knowledge and the speed to dominate the tossups will win. In other formats, where you might lose the tossup but at least get some points, the effect isn't as great.

Throw large point swings into a quick-paced timed format, and you get that rhythm thing jewtemplar mentioned. If you can be down by hundreds of points after a half-dozen questions, it's easy to fall apart.

Echoing bjb again, I'm not saying all that's bad -- just that it's how that game is played.

Yea well put. I think the blowouts are partly to blame on the lack of bouncebacks. There could still be huge swings though, like if one team powers a tu and 30's an easy bonus where you came a split second to doing the same, that's a 90 point swing off of one question. With bouncebacks this would still happen (if the bonus is easy), however, over the course of a match such swings are less likely to affect the outcome unfairly, as bouncebacks provide a cushion against those things since the round becomes more knowledge-based. That's one thing I like about pace, although what I don't like are the 20 pt powers and no -5 penalties. In a timed format like naqt rhythm does play a big role if you have a fast reader (which you usually do at good naqt tourneys), hard to mentally catch your breath I guess hah .

NoahMinkCHS wrote:Adding to what bjb87 said (and a major contributor to the effect mentioned), the lack of bouncebacks means a team with the depth of knowledge and the speed to dominate the tossups will win.

The aim of quizbowl is in fact to reward the team with depth of knowledge and better tossup speed.

The effect of bounceback bonuses is not to make games closer but rather make the games more lobsided. In the majority of cases, the inferior tossup team will also be the inferior bonus team. Therefore the bonus parts which the superior team does not get are not likely to be gotten by the inferior team. On the other hand, the bonus parts not gotten by the inferior team are much more likely to be gotten by the superior team.

In effect, bounceback bonuses give the superior more opportunities to increase its lead.

Romero

My hat is off to the NAQT folks for running such a great national competition. My team and I really enjoyed the competition and that field was among the strongest I have ever seen. Congrats to TJ and Lakeside who stood out among that tough field.

I have been at NAQT Nationals since the first one at OU in 1999 (I missed the 2003 tournament.) If NAQT would just abandon the timed format and add bonus bouncebacks, the validity of their matches would be improved. (Yes, I know the validity of what they already do is good, I just think they can do better.) The frantic pace of the matches takes away from the "beauty" of the game and necessitates that mastering that pace be an important skill in being successful at NAQT. It is frustrating to me as an observer of this type of competition.

I was impressed with the competency of the readers we heard and enjoyed the pleasant attitudes of the NAQT people I spoke with. I like the site as well and also think NAQT might benefit by returning to that site as Chicago is very accessible transportation-wise. Of course Aspen, CO is always my first choice for Nationals!

I look forward ot PACE this weekend and their more leisurely pace and bouncebacks. I wish that field was larger, but plenty of strong teams will be there.

Romero wrote: The aim of quizbowl is in fact to reward the team with depth of knowledge and better tossup speed.
Romero

^Not necessarily one in the same. You talk about "the inferior team" and the "superior team" being further apart, well what about those that you can't quite tell apart? heck our b team even beat RMA A once this year(with their full lineup ). See the purpose of bouncebacks is not to make games closer; I think it's a bad idea to ever set out with some rules with the sole purpose of increasing excitement. Instead, the purpose of the bouncebacks is to determine who those superior and inferior teams are, and who has the greater depth of knowledge.

jrbarry wrote:...It is frustrating to me as an observer of this type of competition...

I completely understand your preferences regarding pacing and bouncebacks, but to others they may be just the points that make NAQT stand out above PACE. Personally, I enjoy the academic content of PACE questions, but greatly enjoy the challenge of playing the game at a high speed. As a spectator, I also find the pace of the match produces more impressive play. Leisurely it is not, but it has its advantages.

Matt Morrison: What IS the purpose of bouncebacks in your vaulted opinion.

JR Barry: Define Validity

Romero wrote:Matt Morrison: What IS the purpose of bouncebacks in your vaulted opinion.

Matt Morrison wrote:Instead, the purpose of the bouncebacks is to determine who those superior and inferior teams are, and who has the greater depth of knowledge.

Regarding NAQT format and victory margin, I'll post some data from Saturday's rounds later but I happen to have playoff gamescores convenient right now. The numbers below mean less than they might seem, unless/until you find some other data set with which to make useful comparisons.

The five playoff games with a 400+ point margin all involved Thomas Jefferson A. Other playoff games had an mean average margin of 140.7 points and a median of 120. This includes five-point game, five 10-point games, a total of 15 games decided by 50 points or less.

Total score (both teams): Mean average 568.1, median 572 (on the order of a 290-280 score). Of course there's some selection bias in that the stronger teams played more games than the teams eliminated earlier.

In 17 games of 74, the victory margin was less than 10% of the total score. On the median it was about 25%. Games on the median (for margin to total score ratio): Brookwood 325, Richard Montgomery B 195; duPont Manual A 420, Princess Anne 255.

I'd be interested in seeing empirical data on how bounceback bonuses affect margin of victory, since my personal intuition (like Chris Romero's and apparently unlike conventional wisdom) is that bouncebacks would increase that margin.

Errata, while I'm here: Posters have already noted in this thread that Danville is closer to Lexington than to Louisville and that Thomas Jefferson A also went undefeated in 2004 - pardon me for both misstatements in the thread-opening post.

Matt Morrison wrote: Instead, the purpose of the bouncebacks is to determine who those superior and inferior teams are, and who has the greater depth of knowledge.

I doubt that bouncebacks make much difference in determining the team with greater depth of knowledge, except possibly in cases where a team has deep knowledge but poor buzzer skills. But the game does involve knowledge AND speed, else just give both teams a written test and see who knows more... Bo-o-o-ring!

I think the real reason some people prefer bounceback bonuses is that it keeps them involved in the game every step of the way. Some players get a little bored waiting while the other team gets to run through their bonuses. But, with bouncebacks they have to stay more involved because they might get the bounceback opportunity. Some players want to constantly have the chance to give answers.

One minor negative of bounceback bonuses is that it creates the frustrating scenario of winning the tossup but getting fewer total points on the question. You also get the occasional awkward situation where you are better off not to answer a tossup at all even though you know the answer.

JR Barry: Define Validity[/quote]

For the Aggie:

One definition of validity
The extent to which a measure accurately reflects the concept that it is intended to measure

Do I pass? :-)

I don't feel like getting into an argument about bouncebacks tonight... But I do want to take a few minutes and give my thoughts about the tournament.

First, I want to say that this was a great experience. The kids had a great time, and learned alot about what it takes to be a great team. I also learned a great deal. As a coach, it was great to meet and talk to other coaches. It was also helpful to see my team playing against some of the best teams in the country. I definately have a better idea of where the team is at and where we need to be this time next year.

I had stated earlier that we were shooting for the Small Schools Championship, but we fell short of that mark. When we played Danville in the prelims, we won 340-65. I thought that was a good sign, but unfortunately for us, White Cloud played a great second half in the Small School semis and took away our chance to play Danville again for the championship. Congrats to both White Cloud and Danville, both teams were great, and both coaches were exceptionally nice.

It was also great to see many familiar faces from my days playing on the college circuit. I desperately miss playing, but I had to choose between that and coaching... And coaching has definately been a more rewarding experience. Also, it would seem that I am a better coach than player...

Anyway, thanks to everyone at NAQT for what was a near-perfect tournament. Also, congrats to all the winners, finalists, and participants.

I look forward to bringing my teams back for many, many years to come!

Reagarding bounceback bonuses

The reason most folks I know in the Southeast use bouncebacks is two-fold:

1. It rewards the team who is most knowledgable.

2. It keeps all players concentrating on every question.

Many toss-up questions come down to the last clue with several players buzzing-in almost at the same time. In my opinion, rewarding the team whose player was a milisecond early to an obvious clue by awarding them exclusive access to 20-30 bonus points is not the best way to determine who is the most knowledgable team.

My team won more than one match this year by getting several bounceback points after getting fewer toss-ups than our opponents. This has happened for me and against me every year since most tournaments I attend use bouncebacks.

For the gentleman from Georgia:

One defintion of simpleton: A person who is deficient in judgment, good sense, or intelligence.

Another definition for you, A good argument: one that is based on logic and not personal opinion or what the Southeast thinks is appropriate.

One more definition for you, Bonus: Something given in addition (therefore not detrimental)

Since you missed the point the first time, let me try this again. Why do you believe that the NAQT game lacks in validity?

You cite as evidence that it keeps students more involved; most teams are able to concentrate during the NAQT game.

Whereas you have another scenario where a team can get a Toss-up and still fall behind due to bounceback bonuses. So in effect what happens in this case is that bouncebacks may lead to teams choosing to not answer tossups, undermining the most fundamental nature of quizbowl (i.e. answering questions right as often as possible)

I am absolutely certain that any statistical definition of viability (that is what I was aiming for btw) supports the exclusion of bouncebacks.

You do not pass; your notions of what is good for quizbowl are rooted in fundamental inaccuracies and boil down to adherence to tradition in the southeast.

Keep it civil, please.

There are good arguments for and against bouncebacks. Personally, I could take or leave them, and I enjoy the different experience (compared to constructing collegiate packets) of working with bouncebacks in mind when writing and editing for PACE NSC. Whether you prefer bouncebacks or not, they are not something that makes the game unfair (like one-line tossups are), just a stylistic difference that some people like and some don't. I think for what we try to do with PACE, with the untimed, more relaxed, and longer questions, bouncebacks fit the mood. Obviously NAQT, with its greater emphasis on game speed and the clock, isn't as suited to them.

There are people who will falsely try to attribute all differences across tournaments to personal preference, but this is a case where it really does boil down to that. The division between different aspects of acceptably fair and legitimate quizbowl, catering to those who prefer one or the other or both, is why both PACE and NAQT can and should exist.

Apologies for lack of civility....

The aggie thing pissed me off...that and the point was still missed.

Romero

I'm not that excited by the bounceback argument. Bouncebacks make a match a little more entertaining, but they slow a match down so that you get through fewer questions per match or play fewer matches.

One thing that could lead to some of the matches lacking validity is the nature of tossups with so many clues. Players often make educated guesses halfway through a question. Because the final clues are so easy, whenever the guess is wrong, the other team will steal the tossup. Also, bonus conversion for the top teams averages 20 points, which is the maximum points in the format my team is used to. Losing 5 points is not a big deal, but handing the other team 30 points is a big deal.

I am not advocating fewer clues per tossup--I have been there, done that, and found it much worse. In matches between teams with winning records, however, it would be nice if they did not read the last part of the clue so that teams that know nothing about a subject did not get the answer. (In matches with weaker teams, you have to read the whole thing so that several tossups get answered during a match.) This would be difficult to do, but might make for better matches. As someone who writes questions myself, I know that it is difficult to find a balance.

Some of the runs teams went on were huge. In one match, we were losing by 100, then winning by 100, then lost in overtime. In another match, we were winning with four questions left but lost by 95 even though we got one of the last four.

I hate to complain--as I said before, this was a great tournament with great questions and moderators.

Matt Bruce wrote:I'd be interested in seeing empirical data on how bounceback bonuses affect margin of victory, since my personal intuition (like Chris Romero's and apparently unlike conventional wisdom) is that bouncebacks would increase that margin.

I can comment that PACE has been using reboundable/bounceback bonuses. Right now, we're a bit busy in preparing for this weekend so an analysis of this type from my end anyway is going to be short. Suffice to say, we do have data files on our most recent competitions online off our website.

On the PACE NSC website, we keep records of highest bonus points stolen on bouncebacks. There are only 620 points possible with bonus questions, all of which can be stolen if given the opportunity. I'd have to go back to see if I have the actual match scores that correspond to each record, but I will note that 4 of the 13 matches that we note in that record has the team stealing over 100 points losing the match. Bykowski and I have seen tons of scoresheets over the years (again all compiled on the website), and I think on average in a 28-tossup match we probably don't see steal numbers that go over 40 or 50 points that often (out of 620 possible).

In my experience, for a match in which a very good team plays a not-so-very-good team, reboundable bonuses probably don't make much of a difference. VGT will probably get most of the tossups and bonus points available, and if VGT misses, the NVGT probably won't be able to answer it say... half the time, so those points don't matter anyway. But when two teams of similar strength do play each other, rebounds tend to make a match much closer, but our data only suggest a swing of no more than 1/6th the possible points at the BEST (or 5 points per bonus heard).

Two teams of very good strength are going to get their tossups and get the majority of their bonus points, giving the opposing team relatively little opportunity to steal. Two team of not very good strength aren't going to get many tossups, and in all likelihood, if they don't convert the bonus questions, the opposing team won't etiher.

Is there a possibility that an undesired result would occur: that a team that answered fewer tossups could win the match on steals? Absolutely. I am sure that under such situations, a team that is very good on tossup speed but has little depth loses to a team that is less buzzer prone but has amazing bonus conversion (above 15 bp/t).

My opinion without any solid basis right now: I think that if we had negs on tossups in PACE format, the likelihood of such "improper" games may result in the possibility that a team that negs most wins the match, which is probably a more egregious result than most of us would like. Of course, this is purely conjecture.

Noting again with Matt W, rebounds don't work well in timed matches, and it still takes most college-trained folks to learn rebounds (which is a good thing we don't do it timed). And yes, not too many people run PACE format, which, in a good way, means everyone is on an even playing field when it comes to preparation. It's all just philosophy. Each of the different nationals has its philosophy about how to determine the best academic teams (like each of the golf majors tournament comp committees decide its criteria for the cut of the grass or the location of the pins: yea, US Open).

Chiming in with JRB and Dr JB, overwhelmingly all coaches that prefer rebounds comment "it keeps students involved in the match", especially in close matches for which we (as players) want to be involved. The writing style for bbb (bounceback bonuses) as MW points out is slightly different because you can't really do "A, B, both, or neither" or 30-20-10 choice bonuses as easily; I'll admit it is harder to write and edit those questions, but there are great rewards for doing it "right."

PACE format was constructed in a rather peculiar way, as Samer can attest, but even with its peculiarities, it has served a very useful purpose in determining the effects of rebounds... if someone wants to mine the data.

NB: For hard stats, I'll let Byko summarize the analysis since he has most of the original data set (as I do). But the data we have (still in our history) is accessible on the website.

Since I started this mess, let me be the one to start a new thread in the "Misc HS Quizbowl" section. If there is an administator in the house, let's slide the last dozen or so posts over there, and keep this thread for people posting on the NAQT tourney, and more specifically TJA's victory....they both deserve that.

As I recall, TJA beat the "LAWN powers" something like 14 times earlier in the year. Not to take away from the victory, but going 14-1 against a team usually indicates who is the better team.

according to my old stat sheet from last year, it was 13 times in "true" TJ A games, that is not counting VHSL matches. TJ B went 3-5 against them. Still, don't let that take anything away from that team, which I still insist is certainly the second-best team of that year and one of the best teams I have ever seen.

iamsam wrote:As I recall, TJA beat the "LAWN powers" something like 14 times earlier in the year. Not to take away from the victory, but going 14-1 against a team usually indicates who is the better team.

There is no disputing you here. The PACE finals notwithstanding, TJ A proved themselves to to be the best team last year without a doubt, although our team was one of our best teams ever and possibly our best team ever. (though the 1995 team led by Amanda Goad and the 2000 team led by Matt Weiner were great teams as well.)

It would have been hard to imagine a better team than last year's TJ A. But this year's version seems to be even better. We may never see this kind of power in a high school team again. They have certainly set a high standard for excellence to which we can all aspire in the future.

In the NAQT finals we finally saw a team that could beat TJ A, and that is TJ A itself. I mean no disrespect to Lakeside; they definitely proved to be the second best team in the field. But, I find it hard to believe that a team could get that many negs against a team of the quality of Lakeside, and still pull out a victory. Is it really true that TJ had 11 negs?! What is that, a 600 point swing or something? How many toss-ups did Lakeside actually win on first buzz (as opposed to the freebies TJ gave them?) How many negs did Lakeside themselves have? I wonder if anyone would be willing to post the score sheet to that very bizarre final match, since some of us did not witness the event in person.