The Quizbowl Resource Center

Hello, Illinois thread page 14.

Minnesota, you know this means war!

My small contribution the above debate before Minnesota's hostile takeover:

I have no objection to Mr Reinstein's distribution thoough I could see tweaking it by some of the ideas that have been suggested. But I still just can't bring myself to say "U.S. Literature" instead of "American Literature". That's just me--I don't want to get into a debate about linguistic imperialism, U.S. not being the sole American country, yadda yadda yadda.

Ukonvasara wrote:Hello, Illinois thread page 14.

Good work, kid. Good work.

cornfused wrote:Lots of good suggestions going on here, but...

styxman wrote:1 literature-esque (vocab), religion/mythology (sort of the middle ground between lit and history) 1 history-esque (social sciences).

Brad, why are you trying to fit RMP and SS into lit or history?

It stems from the ridiculous distribution I have to fit questions into for Bago's conference, with myth in the lit category, social sciences in the history category, and no demarcated room for R or P. They also want the lit/history/science split as even as possible, and so in trying to move myth out of lit and SS out of history, I've had to do some gerrymandering like that to get academic questions in a distribution that has had 1/1 sports, 1/1 pop, and 1/1 other misc. in every round up until now. So I guess I was stuck in that mindset.

Ukonvasara wrote:Hello, Illinois thread page 14.

Weiner's Postulate A will come true in approximately 4 pages.

Good luck to everyone at Solo tomorrow!

David Riley wrote:Good luck to everyone at Solo tomorrow!

Has there been a date change I didn't know about? Do I detect a conspiracy?

Siverus Snape wrote:

David Riley wrote:Good luck to everyone at Solo tomorrow!

Has there been a date change I didn't know about? Do I detect a conspiracy?

And in a related story, Loyola and New Trier students had a smashing performance at Friday's Solo Tournament, capturing every category title and all 9 finalist positions, while no Auburn player made the finals. "I think we found a way to stop Siva and the Auburn crew from dominating the tournaments we attend," said a New Trier player who declined to be identified.

All right, all right, we're off tomorrow; of course I meant Saturday.

On second thought, hmmmmmmmm.............

Aub-ZH wrote: And I think Auburn should start directly influencing what tourneys out feeder school goes to...

Better make sure you still have a feeder school that's playing scholastic bowl.
Exhibit A
Exhibit B

On a total sidenote, wow, I had no idea any schools in East St. Louis did quizbowl.

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:On a total sidenote, wow, I had no idea any schools in East St. Louis did quizbowl.

Darius Miles was a math specialist.

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:On a total sidenote, wow, I had no idea any schools in East St. Louis did quizbowl.

As the former coach of the nearby, defunct Cahokia Wirth program, I'll give East St Louis schools credit for at least trying; unlike my former school that dumped their program within 5 years of my abandonment of them. They have caused any number of headaches for the IESA, to be sure, but you take A.M. Jackson Academy lightly at your peril, as that's their 'gifted' school. When they first started scholastic bowl in ESTL, I organized a round-robin where they played each other as well as my A and B teams. I also invited each school to my 24-team tourney, where they generally got roughed up, but Jackson pulled out a few wins.
As for their high school program, it's my understanding that, more often than not, they cancel participation in the IHSA State Series just before the regional date.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane, Charlie!

Hmm, I might call that school up and drop in on their practices this week or something then and like read HAVOC packets.

Woody Paige wrote:

Aub-ZH wrote: And I think Auburn should start directly influencing what tourneys out feeder school goes to...

Better make sure you still have a feeder school that's playing scholastic bowl.
Exhibit A
Exhibit B

The gifted program has been moved to Washington Gifted Academy, so Auburn now has two feeder schools. Of course, most if not all of our scholastic bowl players would come from Washington, which is not listed here, but I'm sure they have a team.

IESA wrote:135 Hoopeston Area Middle School - Hoopeston - Cornjerkers

Cornjerkers?

I'll take the cornjokers over the Delta State Fighting Okra.

Not to mention NYU's basketball team...as I told my director when I worked there, "How can you muster any school spirit for a team that calls itself "The Violets"?

I'll take Prairie Fire over the Violets any day...It's been a while since I've been able to say that.

I'll also take Prairie Fire over Fighting Scots any day The one time we beat Monmouth. In terms of anything that's not, you know, academics or music or something awesome...

Late Scobol distribution comments:

think RMP has less of a place in high school than it does in college. The canon is relatively small once you get out of Greek mythology, and I think it is pushing an upper limit to have over half of the rounds at a tournament contain a Greek mythology tossup. I also think it is excessive for a tournament to have five questions that start off, "This religion..." or "This holiday..."

I would think that Norse mythology especially and also various othe mythologies would furnish quite a few answers. Also there are other religion subjects besides religons and holidays; one could write questions on sacred books, or creeds, or ceremonies, or liturgy, or any number of things. And finally, where's philosophy?

For those of you who are obsessive about Solo as I am, there is an interactive version of the schedule on the Solo page, thanks to Mr. Yang. Warning: huge Excel spreadsheet.

Thanks for bringing that back up! I wanted to say, also, that questions that begin "This religion..." or "This holiday..." are a-okay with me and a lot of other people.

MaS

We interrupt our scheduled discussion of the New Trier Solo to announce the 2009 Barrington Invitational Tournament VI for middle schools, which will be held on March 14th, 2009 (yeah, yeah, I know I'm going to be struggling for good moderators, but oh well).
We now return you to our regularly scheduled Solo discussion...

Hey Rockford-auburn,

Can u guys tell us what tournaments u might go to next semester? We would like to play u guys before nationals

Where are you from, John? Depending on the amount of "down south" involved, that might be tricky.

If you're from Carbondale, less tricky.

What news from solo?

Any news from solo yet?

Solo results:
Winner: Siva Sundaram
2. Joe Ahmad
3T. Tony Cao and Ben Cohen
Other finalists: Michael Jiang, Alex Cash, Isa Domin, Crystal Leung, and Calvin Quilty (desperation shot winner)

So what did people think of solo overall?

johnny2468 wrote:Hey Rockford-auburn,

Can u guys tell us what tournaments u might go to next semester? We would like to play u guys before nationals

Umm...
Right now I can only think of New Trier, Wash. U, Decembrist II, Huskie Bowl, and Winnebago, as far as what I'm sure of and what aren't regional tournaments. I'm betting there are a few more. In fact, I'm not even 100% sure about Winnebago, but I was pretty sure we were gonna run the Brad Fischer trifecta this year .


Where are you from?

Aub-ZH wrote:

johnny2468 wrote:Hey Rockford-auburn,

Can u guys tell us what tournaments u might go to next semester? We would like to play u guys before nationals

Umm...
Right now I can only think of New Trier, Wash. U, Decembrist II, Huskie Bowl, and Winnebago, as far as what I'm sure of and what aren't regional tournaments. I'm betting there are a few more. In fact, I'm not even 100% sure about Winnebago, but I was pretty sure we were gonna run the Brad Fischer trifecta this year .


Where are you from?

Hey now - Huskie Bowl is all Kristin, I'm just moderating. And Winnebago's questions are a dual effort between Kristin and I. And Kristin's running the Decemberist once matches get going, because I can't get enough moderating NAQT format. So technically speaking, It's more of a Kristin trifecta than anything

styxman wrote:

Aub-ZH wrote:

johnny2468 wrote:Hey Rockford-auburn,

Can u guys tell us what tournaments u might go to next semester? We would like to play u guys before nationals

Umm...
Right now I can only think of New Trier, Wash. U, Decembrist II, Huskie Bowl, and Winnebago, as far as what I'm sure of and what aren't regional tournaments. I'm betting there are a few more. In fact, I'm not even 100% sure about Winnebago, but I was pretty sure we were gonna run the Brad Fischer trifecta this year .


Where are you from?

Hey now - Huskie Bowl is all Kristin, I'm just moderating. And Winnebago's questions are a dual effort between Kristin and I. And Kristin's running the Decemberist once matches get going, because I can't get enough moderating NAQT format. So technically speaking, It's more of a Kristin trifecta than anything

Fair enough...

First giving results from our team:

We brought four A teamers and our B team captain. Each of our A teamers went 4-3, while our B teamer went 3-4. The frustrating part was that we had three people that were 4-2 going into the last round (David and I included). These three people all lost, but by a combined total of four points. That said, I was proud of the performance of our team. Our history specialist stunned me by taking Zach from Stevenson to double overtime. I stunned myself by barely losing to Jerry Chang and getting five points off Ben Cohen, not to mention proving how much useless pop culture knowledge I have. Everybody held their own in their specialties and I am much more confident in my team than I was twenty four hours ago.

adeveau wrote:So what did people think of solo overall?

While I believe that solo is the most entertaining tournament of the season, there are definitely some complaints that I have with it.

1. I am not a fan of the pyramidial math category. The main reason for this is that the giveaways were too easy. I played pretty tough competition throughout the day and I did not see a single person who got the pyramidial math before the giveaway. Meanwhile, the giveaways almost always were solvable in less than five seconds. This meant that a person who started the problem after the first clue almost always lost to the person who waited until the giveaway. This is not rewarding math knowledge, but rather laziness (this coming from somebody who is lazy and absolutely horrible at math).

2. I was not a fan of the Desperation Shot Test. The test, which consisted of knowing the birth and death years of notable people
from multiple subjects was well intentioned. However, knowing the death year of a scientist is not an accurate reflection of somebody's ability in science. Before I was told the answers, I took the test and discovered that I would have gotten ten points. If what David Garb told me is correct, this would have been enough to have sent me into the finals. While I am a good quizbowler, I am by no means as good as some of the people who took that test. When I am outscoring the likes of Paul Botros, Zahed, and Jerry Chang (just to name a few), you know that there is a flaw in the system. Instead I would prefer a much longer test that is similar to an ACE test (70 or so questions, not a theme). There was a good thirty minute period between the end of the Desperation Shot test and the beginning of finals. This period was spent formulating the category ribbon results. I do not think it would have delayed the tournament to have a longer desperation shot test, as you would still have been formulating stats.

3. I also was not a fan of the format of the finals. The whole day was based off the amount of toss-ups that somebody got, with negs being a consideration. In contrast, people were penalized one point in the finals for every neg that they had. This produced a low scoring final as every time that somebody got a question right, they would lose that point seemingly immediately. I understand that you want to prevent people purposely missing a problem, but come on.A better solution would be to start penalizing people a point after the third neg, or make each neg worth a half of a point. If the goal is to reward the best player, this change needs to be made.

Honestly these problems were all pretty minor. The tournament was well run as usual and the card system produced great matches all day long. The moderators were awesome and the questions were nearly perfect. I had a great time and look forward to seeing many of you at Decemberist.

1. Pyramidal math may have potential, but the problem is that you start a problem, then start another easier one, and in the end, the giveaway is the place where you actually get it. Now I'm sure there were plenty of people who got it based on earlier clues, but knowing that information isn't always beneficial, especially if the problem still takes some time.

2. The Desperation shot is intentionally crazy. It's called the Desperation shot for a reason. While I'm not a huge fan of how the winner is decided, I can understand why it's there. A longer test would be interesting, but 70 questions is insane. How about 25 questions: 5 from science, 5 from lit, 5 from fine arts, 5 from history, and 1 each of mythology, social science, math non-comp, miscellaneous academic, and miscellaneous trash, or something of that sort of distribution. The questions in each of the first four categories are pyramidal in that they increase in difficulty from 1-5. Correct answers yield 2 points, wrong answers minus 1 point, and blank answers are worth nothing. That's just an idea I'm throwing out there.

3. I loved the final format. It was well-devised, and it rewarded the two biggest factors in scholastic bowl--knowing things and knowing that you know them. The players with the most knowledge and the most well-placed confidence succeed. The worksheet's implementation was a perfect example of what I'm talking about.


Overall, I thoroughly loved my first Scobol Solo, as the tournament was extremely well-run, and I liked the questions a lot.

Aub-ZH wrote:3. I loved the final format. It was well-devised, and it rewarded the two biggest factors in scholastic bowl--knowing things and knowing that you know them. The players with the most knowledge and the most well-placed confidence succeed. The worksheet's implementation was a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

Note: I've been in the final, and both times I negged out by question 10 or so, and am probably the only person to ever neg out at all.

The final is effectively Panasonic format. Negs worth the value of the question, no rebounds, way too much time after the question's finished til the tossup's dead. If I could rework the final, I'd have rebounds, unlimited negs during the tossup, three buzzes after the tossup. I'd probably keep the elimination of the bottom feeders, but do it like this:

In previous iterations, I believe that the morning champ would come in at 20 tied for the lead, and the field would be cut to 4. At 40, the bottom 2 would be eliminated, and the top 2 would play for 20 questions. I would prefer to see it return to this, because having the top 2 play for 10 tossups where one guy's already up 4 in my opinion isn't good.

Hey, i'm from KY. are there tournaments around Illinois or indiana u guys would recommend so that we can play more good Illinois teams. We've been to Harvard, TJ and everywhere down south, but nothing around the midwest.

dtaylor4 wrote:The final is effectively Panasonic format. Negs worth the value of the question, no rebounds, way too much time after the question's finished til the tossup's dead. If I could rework the final, I'd have rebounds, unlimited negs during the tossup, three buzzes after the tossup.

I think there's a very good reason that both Panasonic and the Solo finals have only one buzz per tossup, and stiff neg penalties. It simply wouldn't work if you could buzz in unlimited times during the tossup, because if you're between two answers, you could just mash the buzzer and give both possibilities. Alternatively, there is too much strategy about not wanting to neg because your answer might allow other players to immediately know the right answer...it just doesn't make sense to let nine people buzz in on a single tossup.

leapfrog314 wrote:

dtaylor4 wrote:The final is effectively Panasonic format. Negs worth the value of the question, no rebounds, way too much time after the question's finished til the tossup's dead. If I could rework the final, I'd have rebounds, unlimited negs during the tossup, three buzzes after the tossup.

I think there's a very good reason that both Panasonic and the Solo finals have only one buzz per tossup, and stiff neg penalties. It simply wouldn't work if you could buzz in unlimited times during the tossup, because if you're between two answers, you could just mash the buzzer and give both possibilities. Alternatively, there is too much strategy about not wanting to neg because your answer might allow other players to immediately know the right answer...it just doesn't make sense to let nine people buzz in on a single tossup.

Obviously once someone negs, they can't buzz in a second time. I've played in such a format before, and found it worked decently well. Also, the strategy concerning tipping off via negging exists in regular quizbowl. At times, you have to take the chance. I recall Siva negging at least 2-3 times in the 40 questions he played, but he got enough tossups to make up for it.

Simple answer: Stop negging, people. Problem solved.

But anyway, the problem with three buzzes per tossup is you're going to have a buzzer race after a "clear" of the system. That's just plain luck.

cornfused wrote:Simple answer: Stop negging, people. Problem solved.

But anyway, the problem with three buzzes per tossup is you're going to have a buzzer race after a "clear" of the system. That's just plain luck.

Not if the clues are good enough to avoid buzzer races.

Sir Thopas wrote:

cornfused wrote:Simple answer: Stop negging, people. Problem solved.

But anyway, the problem with three buzzes per tossup is you're going to have a buzzer race after a "clear" of the system. That's just plain luck.

Not if the clues are good enough to avoid buzzer races.

Yeah, but what if the situation in question occurs on a difficult tossup that none of the players know until the end?

And Donald, I'm pretty sure I negged more like 6 times, but 2 or 3 of those were random, dumb, and not strategic at all.

dbarman wrote:Hey, i'm from KY. are there tournaments around Illinois or indiana u guys would recommend so that we can play more good Illinois teams. We've been to Harvard, TJ and everywhere down south, but nothing around the midwest.

Ping, your best bet is the HSAC at Washington University in St. Louis on January 31st. Looking at the calendar, WUHSAC has the best historical question quality of all the tournaments open to non-Illinois teams left, and it should attract the top teams in Illinois again. It's about a 5.5 hour drive for you, but the campus is beautiful and the tournament is very well run.

WUHSAC announcement page: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6007

thanks siva

Also, we would love to have you at New Trier Varsity on December 20. A full list of Illinois tournaments can be found here in case you want to pick a date and ask us our opinions.

Sir Thopas wrote:

cornfused wrote:Simple answer: Stop negging, people. Problem solved.

But anyway, the problem with three buzzes per tossup is you're going to have a buzzer race after a "clear" of the system. That's just plain luck.

Not if the clues are good enough to avoid buzzer races.

At the high school level, it seems impossible to keep any clue from keying to the answer for at least two or three of nine of the better players in the state, especially if an answer has already been eliminated by a neg. Or, for instance, there's computational math in this - now while Reinstein is saying WRONG and clearing, if two people solve it, poof.

Please note that ever singles tournament (pretty much) runs with Donald's proposed format. It works fine.

MaS

cornfused wrote:Simple answer: Stop negging, people. Problem solved.

But anyway, the problem with three buzzes per tossup is you're going to have a buzzer race after a "clear" of the system. That's just plain luck.

Dude, buzzer races already exist in regular quizbowl. Luck is a part of it. You're never going to eliminate it entirely. Also, the only way to stop negs is to get rid of those who neg, namely every quizbowl player.

Also, I'm not sure you get it. It's three buzzes after the tossup is finished, then it goes dead. In theory, every single person could neg on a tossup, if they all buzz in before the end.