February Poll

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Dominator
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Re: February Poll

Post by Dominator »

I just wanted to thank everyone for the recent outpouring of support this past week. I now see the community aspect of quiz bowl, and it's pretty awesome.

Just to be clear, I hold no ill feelings about anything said on the forums (it appears all of us were guilty of judging too quickly). I would caution people, though, about what they say here. There are a lot of teams for which the best scholastic bowl they see all year is the IHSA State series who may stumble across these forums who would not appreciate feeling their success in "bad quizbowl" is worthless. If anything, success in IHSA should serve as a springboard to get more teams involved in "good quizbowl".

BTW, I put "bad quizbowl" and "good quizbowl" in quotes because, as a mathematician, I feel very uncomfortable using undefined terms. So far, the only definition I have seen of either term is as the opposite of the other.
Dr. Noah Prince

Normal Community High School (2002)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2004, 2007, 2008)

Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy - Scholastic Bowl coach (2009-2014), assistant coach (2014-2015), well wisher (2015-2016)
guy in San Diego (2016-present)
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jdeliverer
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Re: February Poll

Post by jdeliverer »

Taken from http://www.qbwiki.com/wiki/Good_quizbowl

Aspects of good quizbowl


Both the game-oriented and learning-oriented schools of quizbowl thought maintain that good quizbowl contains the following:

1. Questions that primarily reward knowledge of a topic over speed, as exemplified by tossups that contain many clues arranged in rough order from most obscure to least obscure (usually denoted by the term pyramidality) and bonuses that contain "easy", "medium", and "hard" parts.
2. Tossups and bonus parts that ask uniquely about one desired answer or (in the case of multiple-answer bonus parts or "name's the same" tossups) set of answers.
3. Clues that are interesting, informative, and point directly to the desired answer.
4. A range of topics from subjects people should and do know much about to subjects that are not as well-known but nevertheless important (the collective set of these subjects is called the canon).
5. A distribution of questions that primarily emphasizes the academic nature of quizbowl and eschews spelling, "excess" general knowledge or trash, and other "fluff".
Robert Volgman
Brown '14
Latin School of Chicago '10
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Dominator
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Re: February Poll

Post by Dominator »

jdeliverer wrote: 1. Questions that primarily reward knowledge of a topic over speed, as exemplified by tossups that contain many clues arranged in rough order from most obscure to least obscure (usually denoted by the term pyramidality) and bonuses that contain "easy", "medium", and "hard" parts.
2. Tossups and bonus parts that ask uniquely about one desired answer or (in the case of multiple-answer bonus parts or "name's the same" tossups) set of answers.
3. Clues that are interesting, informative, and point directly to the desired answer.
4. A range of topics from subjects people should and do know much about to subjects that are not as well-known but nevertheless important (the collective set of these subjects is called the canon).
5. A distribution of questions that primarily emphasizes the academic nature of quizbowl and eschews spelling, "excess" general knowledge or trash, and other "fluff".
Well that sounds pretty good.

In reality, though, these all sound great, but how good quizbowl is implemented is still not spelled out. For example, is there a particular distribution that is accepted in good quizbowl?

Also, I'm not sure on #5. I am of the opinion that it may be possible to write a good spelling question that includes a lot of interesting etymology, but I know those questions are not general practice.
Dr. Noah Prince

Normal Community High School (2002)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2004, 2007, 2008)

Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy - Scholastic Bowl coach (2009-2014), assistant coach (2014-2015), well wisher (2015-2016)
guy in San Diego (2016-present)
President of Qblitz (2018-present)

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Stained Diviner
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Re: February Poll

Post by Stained Diviner »

I wish there were better terms than "good" quizbowl and "bad" quizbowl. I think that some people extend the terminology to think that good people are associated with one and bad people are associated with the other, which is a bit dicey at best. I would prefer something more along the lines of educational quizbowl and traditional quizbowl.
David Reinstein
Head Writer and Editor for Scobol Solo, Masonics, and IESA; TD for Scobol Solo and Reinstein Varsity; IHSSBCA Board Member; IHSSBCA Chair (2004-2014); PACE President (2016-2018)
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jdeliverer
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Re: February Poll

Post by jdeliverer »

Dominator wrote: Well that sounds pretty good.

In reality, though, these all sound great, but how good quizbowl is implemented is still not spelled out. For example, is there a particular distribution that is accepted in good quizbowl?

Also, I'm not sure on #5. I am of the opinion that it may be possible to write a good spelling question that includes a lot of interesting etymology, but I know those questions are not general practice.
I think a large part of why spelling questions are not asked is because spelling is considered Trivia.
Robert Volgman
Brown '14
Latin School of Chicago '10
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at your pleasure
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Re: February Poll

Post by at your pleasure »

Dominator wrote:
jdeliverer wrote: 1. Questions that primarily reward knowledge of a topic over speed, as exemplified by tossups that contain many clues arranged in rough order from most obscure to least obscure (usually denoted by the term pyramidality) and bonuses that contain "easy", "medium", and "hard" parts.
2. Tossups and bonus parts that ask uniquely about one desired answer or (in the case of multiple-answer bonus parts or "name's the same" tossups) set of answers.
3. Clues that are interesting, informative, and point directly to the desired answer.
4. A range of topics from subjects people should and do know much about to subjects that are not as well-known but nevertheless important (the collective set of these subjects is called the canon).
5. A distribution of questions that primarily emphasizes the academic nature of quizbowl and eschews spelling, "excess" general knowledge or trash, and other "fluff".
Well that sounds pretty good.

In reality, though, these all sound great, but how good quizbowl is implemented is still not spelled out. For example, is there a particular distribution that is accepted in good quizbowl?

Also, I'm not sure on #5. I am of the opinion that it may be possible to write a good spelling question that includes a lot of interesting etymology, but I know those questions are not general practice.
.Most good quizbowl distributions are based off the ACF distribution, possibly with some variation(for instance, replacing trash with an additional religion/mythology/philosophy question):
4/4 literature(1/1 world, 2/2 english, 1/1 euro)
4/4 history (similar)
4/4 science (1/1 each of big 3 and 1/1 minor science
3/3 arts (1/1 visual, 1/1 non-opera music, 1/1 other)
2/2 religion, mythology, and philosophy
1/1 social science
1/1 geography
1/1 trash, current events, or miscellaneous
Feel free to correct my subdistributions. Also, http://www.doc-ent.com/qbwiki/index.php ... _Questions is a very thurough outline from a question-writer's prespective of what makes for good and bad questions.
As for #5, it might be possible to insert interesting etymology clues into a spelling tossup but it's not clear that they would be very useful clues(unless you want to see if people can figure out what the word is before you give it) and spelling is simply not that academic.
EDIT:
I wish there were better terms than "good" quizbowl and "bad" quizbowl.
Well, we are making a value judgement anyways. I prefer "modern" or "progressive" quizbowl to "good' quizbowl.
Douglas Graebner, Walt Whitman HS 10, Uchicago 14
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Charley Pride
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Re: February Poll

Post by Charley Pride »

Dominator wrote:I just wanted to thank everyone for the recent outpouring of support this past week. I now see the community aspect of quiz bowl, and it's pretty awesome.

Just to be clear, I hold no ill feelings about anything said on the forums (it appears all of us were guilty of judging too quickly). I would caution people, though, about what they say here. There are a lot of teams for which the best scholastic bowl they see all year is the IHSA State series who may stumble across these forums who would not appreciate feeling their success in "bad quizbowl" is worthless. If anything, success in IHSA should serve as a springboard to get more teams involved in "good quizbowl".

BTW, I put "bad quizbowl" and "good quizbowl" in quotes because, as a mathematician, I feel very uncomfortable using undefined terms. So far, the only definition I have seen of either term is as the opposite of the other.
Your IHSA point is valid, since, for teams that play on QG, etc all day, IHSA is the best quizbowl they're exposed to. It's had to write off the entire question set, because while most questions are within the definition of bad, there are plenty of good and maybe great questions. The questions in IHSA aren't in inherently bad; it's the fact that most of the writers ftn have little grasp of quizbowl when they produce the set. As long as the IHSA improves and continues to do so, I have no qualms with calling it anything, even if we call it something it's not.
Zahed Haseeb

Auburn High School 2010
University of Chicago 2014
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Geringer
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Re: February Poll

Post by Geringer »

Westwon wrote:I wish there were better terms than "good" quizbowl and "bad" quizbowl.
Those terms are "quiz bowl" and "scholastic bowl." :wink:
R. Jeffrey Geringer
Saint Viator '09
Illinois '13, '14
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CometCoach72
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Re: February Poll

Post by CometCoach72 »

Dominator wrote:I just wanted to thank everyone for the recent outpouring of support this past week. I now see the community aspect of quiz bowl, and it's pretty awesome.
Your team played very well at State Finals; I can think of two of your students off the top of my mind who played great during the 3rd Place game. Good luck the rest of this year and next year. I hope you're able to join IHSSBCA as well; I think our organization would love to have your contributions.
Jay Winter
Greenville HS (IL) Scholastic Bowl Coach and Chief UN Translator for Math
Decatur MacArthur Class of 1990 - Illinois State Class of 1994 - MS Ed SIU Edwardsville 2010
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