ACF Fall Discussion

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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by vcuEvan »

One more thing:

Packet penalties for formatting are built into the ACF rules. I didn't want to seem like a nitpicking asshole so I chose not to use them, but I'm strongly recommending that future editors enforce these. Bonuses like the following bonus submitted by an experienced team show almost no attempt to follow format guidelines:
For ten points each, answer some questions about a useful molecule in biology.
a) This compound that glows under blue light is expressed by a reporter gene that binds to molecules to be observed. It has been introduced into a variety of transgenic species including humans and was originally discovered in the organism aequorea victoria.
ANSWER: Green Fluorescent Protein (Accept GFP)
b) Aequorea victoria is a bioluminescent type of this kind of organism. It has weak nematocysts and alternates between polyp and medusa forms during life.
ANSWER: Jellyfish
c) Three biologists from Boston University, UCSD, and Columbia University won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2008 for discovering GFP. For 5 points per answer, name two of them.
ANSWER: Martin Chalfie or Osamu Shimamura or Roger Tsien
This wasn't at all an isolated incident. I'd advise people to be more careful in the future, unless they want to suffer monetary penalties.

EDIT: missing words
Last edited by vcuEvan on Mon Nov 08, 2010 8:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

The problem with this solution to totally saturate the circuit with novice level events is that the limited resources we can dedicate to quizbowl dictate that once you hit a certain point of producing tons of novice sets, you are no longer able to produce the number of sets you need to keep the most dedicated parts of the circuit happy. I certainly have no problem with us producing a certain number of very good, low difficulty sets and then telling the Matt Jacksons of the world that the set isn't edited with their pleasure in mind, but once we hit the point where we have to tell the top 20 teams that they shouldn't expect to enjoy half of the events available to them because they will be cakewalking over them and will never get the chance to play lots of sets that more finely gradate their knowledge, that seems to present a situation I find as unacceptable as one where novices almost never get a chance to play an easy set. If there were some way to have a ton of novice events produced while also keeping every other difficulty level's production up, then that would seem more worth discussing, but as is there is simply no way you can truly meet the demands of offering a ton of novice events and still having there be time for the good teams to play plenty of regular difficulty events. I don't find the tradeoff of telling the people who love the game most to decrease their participation in the events they love most to be worth the benefit of bringing in more novices.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Nick wrote:It seems that, and I could be way off, there are, traditionally, a handful of easier tournaments (EFT, Fall, MUT, Delta Burke), a handful of "regular difficulty" tournaments (SCT, Regs, Winter/MLK, Penn), and a handful of harder tournaments (ICT, ACF Nats, Chi Open, Minn. Open). I suppose I would contend that, for the sake of expanding quizbowl and providing more people with more meaningful/enjoyable games and more opportunities, the ratio shouldn't be 1:1:1, but instead something closer to 3:2:1.

Thoughts?
I'm not sure why there should be more "easy" tournaments than "regular" tournaments unless you want the term "regular" to lose all meaning. "Regular difficulty" implies, and is generally intended to mean, the standard level of difficulty at which collegiate competition should be taking place. One of the goals at hand here is to get lots of teams interested in playing tournaments at that "regular" level; easier tournaments ostensibly serve as a stepping stone to that level, and flooding the schedule with them makes it less likely that the step up to regular difficulty will be seen as a necessary thing.

Further, here's a somewhat more accurate listing of tournaments, grouped by general history and intent, with notes to clarify the relatively simple three-tier system: easier (Collegiate Novice, EFT, Fall, Delta Burke, MUT, DII SCT*), normal (DI SCT, DII ICT*, Regs, MLK/Winter, Penn Bowl, TIT, Buzzerfest, T-Party/THUNDER/FEUERBACH/equivalents, IO**), hard (DI ICT, ACF Nats, VCUO***, MO***, CO***).

*DII NAQT tournaments are a bit hard to quantify like this, but I think that since their general intent is to provide an easier version of their DI equivalents for newer players, this is a fair ranking.
**IO is kind of all over the place, but generally falls and has fallen on the harder end of regular difficulty.
***I think high-difficulty open tournaments, especially summer opens, should be considered separately from the general list of "hard tournaments", not least because they're not during the school year and they're not intended to be played by traditional college teams. MO is a bit of an odd duck in this case, in that it does take place during the year, but I've always considered that to be merely a temporal accident; MO is run very much along the "summer open" model. The primary relevant facet of this model is that the general population of teams isn't being expected to play MO or CO in the same way that they're expected to play ACF Regs or even ACF Nats; they function essentially as side events to the general circuit.

With this in mind, if you take the open tournaments out of the list, you get a ratio of 6:9:2, which seems rather reasonable to me.

EDIT: I totally agree with everything Charlie says here.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

Whenever I hear calls for more easy tournaments, I want to ask, "who is going to produce those tournaments?" Somehow, the answer is never "the people who are calling for more easy tournaments."

We're in a good place here, folks. There's something for everyone. Advocating for a 3:2:1 ratio of easy:regular:hard tournaments is advocating for a system that would never be realized for reasons elucidated by Charlie and others.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Rococo A Go Go »

Nick wrote:And Conder, I'd have to disagree that theres enough of Fall level tournaments. Even you said personally you were challenged by this ACF Fall. If you got to decide what the next tournament was in the college circuit schedule- would it be another ACF Fall kind of tournament or would it be something harder?
I think we should have a good, regular difficulty tournament in the fall semester, so I'd have to go with something harder. I think at some point lower level teams have to get an accurate assessment of the gap between themselves and the best teams, and an accurate assessment of what their strengths and weaknesses are in the standard collegiate canon. Regular difficulty tournaments do the best job of that in my opinion. I know our stats are better for ACF Fall compared to ACF Regionals last year, but I need to know how much of that is because Fall is much easier, and how much of it is actual improvement by myself and my teammates.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Matt Weiner »

The craziness of having somewhere between 0 and 1 normal tournaments before January this academic year is hopefully enough to get people to realize that we need more coordination regarding the quizbowl calendar. Is there anyone who hosts any kind of real collegiate tournament who disagrees? Because I'm hoping all we need to do is have reasonable people discuss a voluntary action here.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by theMoMA »

For what it's worth, Evan, I did enforce packet penalties by the letter of the law for Winter last year. Aside from one host that decided not to collect those fees, it was successful. I would suggest that future ACF head editors strictly enforce packet penalties because the amount of packet variation is quickly becoming an epidemic.

I think that there are just about the right number of novice events right now. Our efforts are much better spent getting new teams to attend the events we already do have. At a certain point, we not only saturate the market, but create a large class of teams that exclusively play novice events. Andrew Yaphe's tennis analogy aside, I don't think that's the best use of our resources.
Matt Weiner wrote:The craziness of having somewhere between 0 and 1 normal tournaments before January this academic year is hopefully enough to get people to realize that we need more coordination regarding the quizbowl calendar. Is there anyone who hosts any kind of real collegiate tournament who disagrees? Because I'm hoping all we need to do is have reasonable people discuss a voluntary action here.
I couldn't agree more.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by lasercats »

Matt Weiner wrote:The craziness of having somewhere between 0 and 1 normal tournaments before January this academic year is hopefully enough to get people to realize that we need more coordination regarding the quizbowl calendar. Is there anyone who hosts any kind of real collegiate tournament who disagrees? Because I'm hoping all we need to do is have reasonable people discuss a voluntary action here.
(I can't believe I'm saying this to you, Matt, but) I totally agree. This is especially true in our part of the country, where we are really lucky to get two mirrors a year within 400 miles of us. Our team is trying to save up to attend one big tournament next semester, since ACF is all we could do this fall, and only because we hosted.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

I think I would like to see more "novice plus" tournaments if that means anything. EFT, at least according to some of its creators, and MUT are not novice tournaments, but are easy enough to be enjoyed by a wide audience. The best types of regular tournaments, such as ACF Regs the last few years, last year's version of TIT/IO, and Penn Bowl are also enjoyable for all audiences. We should recognize that regular difficulty does not and should not be a ghastly increase in difficulty from novice, but rather something of a gradation.

I do find that ACF Nats is almost like a light year jump in difficulty from regular difficulty, but I don't know if there's a way or if there even should be a way around that.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Sun Devil Student »

Cheynem wrote:I think I would like to see more "novice plus" tournaments if that means anything. EFT, at least according to some of its creators, and MUT are not novice tournaments, but are easy enough to be enjoyed by a wide audience.
Might it help to move EFT to later in the year, like perhaps two weekends after ACF Fall? That way we could have a nice gradient of CollegiateNovice to ACF Fall to EFT and then to Penn Bowl/TIT/whatever replaced ACF Winter.

I advocate two weekends after ACF Fall for EFT because it's very difficult for many of my troops to travel for two weekends in a row. We kind of need the off-weekend to catch up on homework and stuff.
Cheynem wrote:The best types of regular tournaments, such as ACF Regs the last few years, last year's version of TIT/IO, and Penn Bowl are also enjoyable for all audiences. We should recognize that regular difficulty does not and should not be a ghastly increase in difficulty from novice, but rather something of a gradation.
Unfortunately, the enjoyment is often only a very small one (or non-existent, for some people) for the lower end of the audience spectrum. Two different ASU B teams had a hell of a time at 2010 ACF Winter and ACF Regionals losing on the classic "muddy battlefield" in games with 8 or 10 dead tossups. Regular difficulty as now practiced is ghastly enough of an increase from novice that having an intermediate tournament like EFT makes a lot of sense to me conceptually.
Cheynem wrote:I do find that ACF Nats is almost like a light year jump in difficulty from regular difficulty, but I don't know if there's a way or if there even should be a way around that.
In my experience, the major place where we lose new recruits is 1) in the jump from "never played" to "ACF Fall"; and 2) the jump from "ACF Fall" to "regular". If we don't have some stairsteps for our freshmen/sophomores in those two spots, there's not even going to be anyone left to try that Nationals jump, so worry about those two first.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Is this set making the email rounds? If so, could someone send it to [email protected]?
EDIT - Thanks circuit, I'm now all taken care of.
Last edited by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) on Mon Nov 15, 2010 4:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by AKKOLADE »

Please to be sending me the sets.

REQUEST FULFILLED
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by at your pleasure »

I would likewise like a copy of the set.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by goblue16 »

I would like a copy as well. [email protected]
Last edited by goblue16 on Mon Nov 15, 2010 5:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

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Auroni Gupta (she/her)
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Edward Elric »

If I could also that would be swell. [email protected]
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Kwang the Ninja »

I would like a copy as well, please. [email protected]
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by jdeliverer »

I would as well please. [email protected]
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Flutist Wren »

EDIT: got it
Last edited by Flutist Wren on Mon Nov 15, 2010 9:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by master15625 »

Hello,

May I have a copy of the set as well?

ngurramaster7744 at GMAIL.com
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Broad-tailed Grassbird »

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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Ras superfamily »

hey can I have a copy?

[email protected]
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by azngod1992 »

Hey, can I have a copy as well?

[email protected]
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Windmill Tump »

I'd be grateful if somebody were to send me a copy too.

[email protected] (laugh all you want)
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by ... and the chaos of Mexican modernity »

A copy here as well [email protected]
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by marnold »

nah, I'll pass
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Angry Babies in Love »

While we're at it, [email protected] please thank you.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Habitat_Against_Humanity »

I am going to spam the hell out of you all.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Masked Canadian History Bandit »

Since everyone else is jumping in on the bandwagon. patarDOTknightATwikiATgmailATcom Thanks.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Matthew D »

put me on the list for a set please
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by AKKOLADE »

What have I done? :(
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

hey you know if you wait five days it'll be on quizbowlpackets, free to download at your leisure
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

But it's my PACKETS and I need THEM now!
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by vcuEvan »

If everyone who acquired this set or played it can email me a note about any typos, repeats or other problems they find, I'd be grateful.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by The Tourist »

Having played on a similar team against some familiar opposition at Fall and at ACF Novice, I feel that by and large, Fall was appropriately more difficult, and sufficiently close in difficulty (again, on the whole) as last year's Fall.

Something I did notice, however, was the amount of variation in difficulty within questions of the same general area of knowledge. Take, for example, soccer bonuses. I was delighted at their inclusion (and at the points they so graciously gave me), but was a little surprised with the variation within questions. Spain/Andres Iniesta/Iker Casillas was a supremely easy (this is trash, so, supremely easy if you have a vague awareness of the subject) set of bonuses, though I suppose it increases slightly in difficulty progressively. I had a bye round that supposedly asked for Fulham FC and Everton FC on a bonus. That one was a good bit more difficult, requiring some knowledge of the English Premier League. That's a hit or miss, 30 or 10 type of question, that may see as many 0s as it would 30s (I think the first answer was Landon Donovan? This is second hand information). The third one was Portugal/Christiano Ronaldo/Eusebio, which was very well constructed. Portugal is easy, Christiano Ronaldo is fairly easy, and Eusebio is quite challenging.


I stumbled on this thread a little bit late, so my memory needs to be refreshed on some of the questions. I'll check quizbowlpackets soon and see if I'm reminded of examples of the same problem in other areas.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Is there a reason differentiation is routinely never included in answerlines for questions on mathematical derivation?
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Duncan Idaho »

I'd like a copy. (myfirstname).(mylastname).19 at gmail.com
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:Is there a reason differentiation is routinely never included in answerlines for questions on mathematical derivation?
If there is, it's a bad reason; "derivation" is a rarely-seen term (almost always referring to the derivation of a statement). "Taking the derivative" or "differentiation" should dominate the answer line.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

OK, I'm not too up on math terminology so I didn't know derivation wasn't a way to say taking the derivative. Still, I constantly see questions where the answer is _derivative_ and I almost never see differentiation on the answer line and it's baffling. People should stop and take some time to write the real answer lines, this is a big problem in a lot of tournaments.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:OK, I'm not too up on math terminology so I didn't know derivation wasn't a way to say taking the derivative. Still, I constantly see questions where the answer is _derivative_ and I almost never see differentiation on the answer line and it's baffling. People should stop and take some time to write the real answer lines, this is a big problem in a lot of tournaments.
Yeah, I agree. It would be useful to have a public resource of standard answer lines, particularly when there are alternative answers that deserve some disambiguation that could obviously be done wrong.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by The Toad to Wigan Pier »

The problem with the final version of that tossup was that it said "this operation" instead of "this measure" or "this entity" after For 10 points. That being said, I should have listed more acceptable answers.
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by gauss1181 »

I'd like a set too. Please count me in for the questions. Here's my email so you can email them to me.

[email protected]
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by gabjoh »

Ukonvasara wrote:hey you know if you wait five days it'll be on quizbowlpackets, free to download at your leisure
Liar! Scoundrel!

(Just kidding; I know other quizbowlers have lives, and I have to respect that.)

But if anyone's emailing packets, can they forward a copy to ggjohnso at owu (dot) edu? You will have my eternal gratitude (unless I die from looking at the packet, in which case I may be mildly annoyed.)
Gabriel Johnson
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by tiwonge »

Eternal gratitude doesn't last as long as it used to.
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PeterB
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by PeterB »

I played the Oxford mirror yesterday (and seem to be the first to comment from over here so far). We don't get tournaments like this over here really, and it was great of Kyle and the rest of OUQS to organise it. It was good that very few toss-ups fell dead, but there were several that went to the end - I felt the difficulty of these was about right. My issue wasn't with the hard parts of bonuses, but the easy parts - questions which boil down to "which country was Victor Hugo from?" or "which is the largest city in Australia?" didn't quite seem to fit in.

For the record I loved the trash questions, especially Monsters Inc.
Peter Berry
University of Oxford (Merton) - 2009-13
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Teams are bad at quizbowl. It's really hard to find an ACF Fall easy part that is too easy for the overall field.
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DLSqb10
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by DLSqb10 »

Hey I didn't find a copy of the set on quizbowlpackets, so could someone email it to me, thanks
[email protected]
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Down and out in Quintana Roo
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Re: ACF Fall Discussion

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

DLSqb10 wrote:Hey I didn't find a copy of the set on quizbowlpackets, so could someone email it to me, thanks
[email protected]
Why aren't they posted on quizbowpackets.com, by the way?
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