DI specific question discussion
Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2013 3:03 am
Discuss individual questions, repeat issues, typos, and all other specific DI-related things in this thread.
Sponsored by the Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence (Twitter: @PACENSC)
https://hsquizbowl.org/forums/
This currently reads:Sam wrote:There was one bonus whose lead-in asked players to name Old Testament books, and then went on to have questions on Jude, Acts, and Romans. This was confusing as those are not Old Testament books.
EDIT: It's also possible this was read wrong, or I just misheard it, in which case never mind.
so if this was ever a mistake, it has been corrected for future use.DI SCT round 4 wrote:name these books of the New Testament:
The packets that were sent out to hosts have the correct "New Testament" wording. I apologize for this having been misread at our site.bt_green_warbler wrote:This currently reads:Sam wrote:There was one bonus whose lead-in asked players to name Old Testament books, and then went on to have questions on Jude, Acts, and Romans. This was confusing as those are not Old Testament books.
EDIT: It's also possible this was read wrong, or I just misheard it, in which case never mind.
so if this was ever a mistake, it has been corrected for future use.DI SCT round 4 wrote:name these books of the New Testament:
Kooikerhondje wrote:Kronecker generalizes Jacobi which generalizes Legendre
Tossups: curvature (2), Kronecker (3), quaternions (4), Poincaré (8), Niels Abel (12), convergence (14), PDEs (15), polynomials (16)Kooikerhondje wrote:Can someone post the answer lines to all of the math questions and what packet they appeared in? I think I had some problems with the math in this set, but I'd like to check my memories of it before I say anything.
It's not. Taxpayer standing has never come up for me in any class, including the ones where we actually discuss standing. Based on what I've read about it online it appears to be something of some significance in the past that has been rendered essentially irrelevant by the Supreme Court. So it is somewhat strange that it keeps coming up. As for standing as a whole it seems like a decent amount of non-law students know about it (and certainly law students should) so it seems like an ok tu selection, although it is strange it has come up three times in the last year when so many other areas of law never come up.Plan Rubber wrote:I thought the standing tossup was fine difficulty wise, since it's really important, although I delayed buzzing because it mentioned taxpayer standing really early. Not being a lawyer, I may be mistaken, but I thought taxpayer standing was an important and controversial thing.
Both Meinhard and Palsgraf are Cardozo opinions (two of his most notable ones, in my opinion).A case decided in this state held that partners in a business owe fiduciary duties to each other for business opportunities. Besides ~Meinhard v. Salmon~, another case in this state arose when fireworks exploded on a railway platform, causing a scale to fall on the plaintiff. The ~Palsgraf~ opinion was authored by a judge from this state, whose judiciary included both (*) Learned Hand and Benjamin Cardozo. For 10 points--name this state governed by {Charles Evans Hughes} and Mario Cuomo.
I'd like to see the convergence tossup, since one of the early clues in it was (I believe) somewhat underdetermining.jonah wrote:Tossups: curvature (2), Kronecker (3), quaternions (4), Poincaré (8), Niels Abel (12), convergence (14), PDEs (15), polynomials (16)Kooikerhondje wrote:Can someone post the answer lines to all of the math questions and what packet they appeared in? I think I had some problems with the math in this set, but I'd like to check my memories of it before I say anything.
Bonuses: planarity/four(-color theorem)/computer (1), prime numbers/Wilson's theorem/(if (n-1)! ≡ 2 mod n, then n =)4 (5), Fubini's theorem/differentiation/Euler-Lagrange equation (6), differentiability/smoothness/Cauchy-Riemann equations (9), groups/Lagrange's theorem/Ludwig Sylow (10), circle/secant line/Cauchy distribution (11), roots of unity/cyclotomic polynomials/complex conjugate (15)
Fond du lac operon wrote:I'd like to see the convergence tossup, since one of the early clues in it was (I believe) somewhat underdetermining.
Two types of this property are related in {Egorov's theorem}. The {Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem} relates {boundedness} to this property for a substructure. {Fatou's lemma} is used to prove Lebesgue's [luh-bayg'z] "dominated" theorem of it. The {Weierstrass [VY-ur-strass] M-test} checks for one type of this property, which is possessed in a {complete metric space} by every (*) {Cauchy [koh-shee] sequence}. For 10 points--the {ratio and root tests} assess what property of a {sequence} or {series} that consists of having a finite {limit}?
answer: _converge_nce (accept word forms; accept _uniform converge_nce)
Hm. The two formulations of the Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem I'm familiar with are that in R^n, (1) every bounded sequence has a convergent subsequence, or (2) a set is sequentially compact if and only if it is closed and bounded. I think (1) corresponds pretty directly to the question, which is what I intended. In the case of (2), I would say that since the theorem additionally requires topological closure to prove (sequential, but in R^n it's equivalent to regular) compactness, I'm not super convinced that "compactness" is a particularly defensible buzz for that clue. Seth, I assume you're hanging around this thread; thoughts?Fond du lac operon wrote:So on the Bolzano-Weierstrass clue, it's just kind of begging you to neg with "compactness" -- which is what I did. I get that compactness is closely related to convergence, and B-W is often formulated as being about bounded sequences rather than bounded spaces, but if you've never heard of Egorov's theorem (and I really should have, since I've read some measure theory) then that clue makes you pretty much have to guess what the question writer wanted. I'm not sure how I'd phrase it without giving away too early that we're looking for a property of sequences, but as worded it's pretty unacceptable.
EDIT: Maybe just "It's not compactness, but..." although that might have just confused me.
Yeah, the theorem does require closure, but the question didn't really get that precise; all it asked was what Bolzano-Weierstrass "related" boundedness to. The second definition clearly "relates" boundedness (and closure) to compactness, for some definitions of that word. The 500-character count makes constructions like that pretty necessary, I'm sure, but I think the wording is vague enough to admit either interpretation.jonah wrote:Hm. The two formulations of the Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem I'm familiar with are that in R^n, (1) every bounded sequence has a convergent subsequence, or (2) a set is sequentially compact if and only if it is closed and bounded. I think (1) corresponds pretty directly to the question, which is what I intended. In the case of (2), I would say that since the theorem additionally requires topological closure to prove (sequential, but in R^n it's equivalent to regular) compactness, I'm not super convinced that "compactness" is a particularly defensible buzz for that clue. Seth, I assume you're hanging around this thread; thoughts?Fond du lac operon wrote:So on the Bolzano-Weierstrass clue, it's just kind of begging you to neg with "compactness" -- which is what I did. I get that compactness is closely related to convergence, and B-W is often formulated as being about bounded sequences rather than bounded spaces, but if you've never heard of Egorov's theorem (and I really should have, since I've read some measure theory) then that clue makes you pretty much have to guess what the question writer wanted. I'm not sure how I'd phrase it without giving away too early that we're looking for a property of sequences, but as worded it's pretty unacceptable.
EDIT: Maybe just "It's not compactness, but..." although that might have just confused me.
I think it's worth tweaking the wording here. Maybe "For substructures, {compactness} and this property are related to {boundedness} by the {Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem}"?jonah wrote:Hm. The two formulations of the Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem I'm familiar with are that in R^n, (1) every bounded sequence has a convergent subsequence, or (2) a set is sequentially compact if and only if it is closed and bounded. I think (1) corresponds pretty directly to the question, which is what I intended. In the case of (2), I would say that since the theorem additionally requires topological closure to prove (sequential, but in R^n it's equivalent to regular) compactness, I'm not super convinced that "compactness" is a particularly defensible buzz for that clue. Seth, I assume you're hanging around this thread; thoughts?Fond du lac operon wrote:So on the Bolzano-Weierstrass clue, it's just kind of begging you to neg with "compactness" -- which is what I did. I get that compactness is closely related to convergence, and B-W is often formulated as being about bounded sequences rather than bounded spaces, but if you've never heard of Egorov's theorem (and I really should have, since I've read some measure theory) then that clue makes you pretty much have to guess what the question writer wanted. I'm not sure how I'd phrase it without giving away too early that we're looking for a property of sequences, but as worded it's pretty unacceptable.
EDIT: Maybe just "It's not compactness, but..." although that might have just confused me.
I almost made that same mistake, until I remembered that you have it backwards. The Legendre symbol is less general than the Jacobi symbol because the Jacobi symbol accepts composite numbers in the bottom argument. I agree with the general thrust of your criticism of this question, however.The Ununtiable Twine wrote:Regarding the clue "His namesake symbol generalizes the Jacobi (*) symbol to all integers" (where the (*) is where there was a buzzer race between Harrison and I), I buzzed and said "Legendre" because Legendre's symbol is a generalization of the Jacobi symbol to odd primes and we study that in number theory as a basic result. Up until this point in the clue, it is not uniquely identifiable. Then the clue mentions "to all integers" which by that time, we took the neg bait.
In general, I worry that the answer space for mathematicians is a little anemic. Lots of mathematicians, including Kronecker, are famous for only one or maybe two things; like, I'd say Kronecker has the Jugendtraum (which is a hard clue for basically any level) and the delta function. Lots of other mathematicians have done a good deal of important things but aren't famous enough among non-mathematicians to justify tossing up. I can see four quadrants, here:The Ununtiable Twine wrote:Tossing up Kronecker at SCT was probably not the best idea. He's not a terribly notable mathematician - I mean he has some results, but more often than not the only thing people are going to know about him is that he names a symbol and maybe the Kronecker product of matrices
The LV tossup was mine. According to one of my physio texts, Eisenmenger's refers to (among other findings) the shunt reversal due to an uncorrected VSD... and that book is a first-edition from 1998 that I got for like fifty cents and should have thought twice before using. Sorry for the lack of specificity.The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:Eric's extensive constructive criticism
So I wrote that question. It originally was a question with just the answer line _energy_, but it was changed into KE as that is specifically what the energy in the turbulent energy cascade refers to. Still, just _energy_ was acceptable for most of the question until the description of Bernoulli's eq as it is usually just referred to as energy in the fluid mech context.The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote: -In the KE question, is the clue about the energy cascade specific for kinetic energy? I've always read that as just the turbulence energy cascade, without further specification.
I just want you to know that I appreciate this type of detailed feedback, Eric. Here are some responses. (If I didn't respond to a particular criticism, it's because it's about something, like Friedel-Crafts reactions, that I don't feel qualified to comment on.)The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:Guess what its time for, Andrew Hart!
I wrote this question. In retrospect, a prompt on "meteorites" and "lunar meteorites" would probably be good, so I added it for subsequent mirrors.Moon rocks: I liked this question in retrospect, but I was a little confused by the wording. I know what KREEP is, but I probably would have negged with meteorites if I was feeling gutsy at that point because my interpretation of that question is that lunar meteorites are a subset of meteorites (so "some" would refer to a subset of meteorites).
This is perhaps a little easy; I think that section got edited around because my original question had an unverifiable claim about Ra and Apep being brothers.Should "his opponent is a snake" really be in power for Ra? (ANSWER: _I'd strongly suggest not_)
I agree. Reading through the set, I think that there were some hard parts that stuck out as much harder than others. I think we generally did a good job ensuring that every hard part was at least within the realm of possibility, but we could have had a tighter clustering of difficulty in many instances, including this one."A Distant Mirror" (without Tuchmann) as a hard part? Really? Especially after that much easier Turgenev bonus, that stood out as pretty egregious.
In my mind, Crazy Horse is the military commander and Sitting Bull is the spiritual leader at Little Bighorn. I don't know if this is entirely accurate or well known, but that was my thought when looking over that bonus and giving it the okay.Seems kind of mean to have a bonus part on Crazy Horse that makes it really difficult to distinguish him from Sitting Bull other than the title of a Stephen Ambrose work.
After consulting with Seth, I changed the prompt to accept "orbitals" or "atomic orbitals" before "bonding."I've been told you can use the CI method to solve atomic orbitals as well as molecular ones. If someone could explain to me why Atomic orbitals shouldn't be acceptable (if there's something about that clue that rules it out), I'd really appreciate it (I'm not being sarcastic).
The answer line initially accepted either Aphrodite or Venus, but I incorrectly read Seth's note to remove "Venus." This has been fixed, and it's now acceptable.The story of Cupid and Psyche is exclusively Roman. This is confusing, not to mention kind of an unnecessarily mean way of asking this question.
DI SCT round 9 wrote:This denomination publishes a "Blue Book" during its triennial leadership summits, which convene a House of Deputies and a House of Bishops. In 2006, Katharine Jefferts Schori became this denomination's first female primate. Ellen Barrett was a pioneering priest in this denomination, which issued a 1976 proclamation stating that (*) homosexuals are "children of God," and ordained gay bishop Gene Robinson. For 10 points--name this offshoot of the Anglican Church in the United States.
answer: (Protestant) _Episcopal_ (Church in the United States of America) (or _Episcopalian_s; prompt on "Anglican Church" or "Anglicans")
KREEP refers to certain deposits on the Moon; I'm not sure why that would make someone think "this is a tossup on (lunar) meteorites" (in particular, I don't believe KREEP really points to "lunar meteorites"), but I guess I don't mind prompting on those answers.The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:PACKET 1:
-Moon rocks: I liked this question in retrospect, but I was a little confused by the wording. I know what KREEP is, but I probably would have negged with meteorites if I was feeling gutsy at that point because my interpretation of that question is that lunar meteorites are a subset of meteorites (so "some" would refer to a subset of meteorites).
-In the KE question, is the clue about the energy cascade specific for kinetic energy? I've always read that as just the turbulence energy cascade, without further specification.
From what I can tell, the first few sentences of the tossup apply both to molecular orbitals and atomic orbitals (multi-electron systems is multi-electron systems, as they say), and the answer line was recently updated to reflect that.The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:PACKET 9:
-I've been told you can use the CI method to solve atomic orbitals as well as molecular ones. If someone could explain to me why Atomic orbitals shouldn't be acceptable (if there's something about that clue that rules it out), I'd really appreciate it (I'm not being sarcastic).
I put that in as a replacement for a lead-in that consisted of (what felt to me like) a very coy clue about the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. Since I hate hate hate the GPE and I hate even more the idea that we're at a point where we give coy clues about it*, I decided to go with something important that I hadn't heard come up much in quizbowl: Feschbach resonances. Perhaps they've come up more than I thought.The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:PACKET 12:
-Feschbach resonance is a buzzword for BEC. Its pretty much a one-to-one association at this point.
Huh. I'd only heard about microscopic reversibility as a different (but related) concept: any process is reversible. Looking around online suggests that the phrase is also used to describe detailed balance. I'll see about getting that added as an alternate answer.The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:PACKET 16:
-Microscopic reversibility should be acceptable for detailed balance.
This was my mistake. I have revised the question with an actual Kamakura clue for the two upcoming SCTs.The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote: PACKET 13:
-The leadin to the Kamakura question is incorrect. The Jodo-shu sect was established by Honen in 1175. The Heian period ended in 1185. And yes, that was negged in my room with Heian for this reason.
For what it's worth, Seth, I found sources indicating lunar meteorites can be "KREEPy." I don't think it makes sense to accept lunar meteorites in the context of the early clues, but it seems like a prompt we should include if we want to be sympathetic, which I think we do.setht wrote:KREEP refers to certain deposits on the Moon; I'm not sure why that would make someone think "this is a tossup on (lunar) meteorites" (in particular, I don't believe KREEP really points to "lunar meteorites"), but I guess I don't mind prompting on those answers.