2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

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2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Eddie »

Discuss specific question content here.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Eddie »

Hi everyone,

I hope y'all enjoyed the set. I had the pleasure to edit music, legends, and the auditory other art for this set. Using the power of detailed stats, I was able to see many strong buzzes and 30s throughout the tournament, which made me happy. I have a couple of questions that I'd like to ask regarding specific questions, so that I can try and incorporate the feedback before the next mirror (which is in less than twelve hours, what in tarnation):
  • What, and on which clue, did people neg toccata with?
  • What, and on which clue, did people neg Mount Ida with?
  • What, and on which clue, did people neg introduction of fire to humanity with?
  • What, and on which clue, did people neg snake (in Chinese mythology) with? I'm pretty sure I already know the answer to this one, but I'd like to confirm with empirical data.
  • The bonus part on accordion had an abnormally high get rate. What did people think was especially easy about this?
  • The bonus parts on Thessaly and Thebes had abnormally low get rates. What did people think were especially hard about these?
  • The Music/Opera bonus part on Adams had an abnormally high get rate. Did many people know this or was it fraudable (e.g. "contemporary composer" + "shares his surname")?
  • The Other Art bonus part on they are filled with water had an abnormally high get rate. Did many people know this or was it fraudable?
Last edited by Eddie on Sun Feb 26, 2017 1:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by TylerV »

Eddie wrote:Hi everyone,
  • What, and on which clue, did people neg Mount Ida with?
  • What, and on which clue, did people neg introduction of fire to humanity with?
  • What, and on which clue, did people neg snake (in Chinese mythology) with? I'm pretty sure I already know the answer to this one, but I'd like to confirm with empirical data.
  • The bonus part on accordion had an abnormally high get rate. What did people think was especially easy about this?
I can tell you what my teammates did on these questions.

Mount Ida was negged rather late with Mount Etna and then proceeded to go dead because nobody in the room could remember the name.

My teammate negged the tossup on bringing fire to humanity on the Väinämöinen clue with flood.

My teammate negged the tossup on snake with rat on crossing the river on a horse's back.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Red Panda Cub »

The accordion bonus said it was a wind instrument with a keyboard, and I don't think many people are going to anything other than guess accordion when they hear that description.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

I thought the tournament's music was good, from the perspective of someone who enjoys listening to music and learning about it but not studying it and not super interested in classical music. The "waltz" tossup, for example, I thought used some clues about well known pieces that don't frequently come up in quizbowl. I also very much enjoyed the tossup on "trumpet" from film scores, and the key usage of very memorable trumpet-based scores.

The one music (or I guess other arts) question I didn't enjoy was the 1950's-in-jazz/rock question. An early clue was Sam Phillips founding Sun Records--this in itself is, at least to me, a fairly famous thing from the '50s (Sun being an Elvis label--I was hoping at the time of the question that Sun was actually founded a decade earlier or something), but I also thought that it narrowed down the answer space quickly as well to something mid-20th century (although looking at the history of record labels, I see some impressively form as early as the 1890's--now there's an answerline!).
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Eddie »

Hi Mike,

I'm glad you enjoyed the music. The waltz and trumpet tossups were written specifically to make music accessible for people like you who have a casual, but deep, interest in areas of the canon that are not considered strictly "pure" or "academic," so I'm glad you enjoyed it.

On the 1950s TU, did you have an issue with the concept / execution of the tossup as a whole, or just that specific clue?
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Aaron's Rod »

Eddie wrote:The Music/Opera bonus part on Adams had an abnormally high get rate. Did many people know this or was it fraudable (e.g. "contemporary composer" + "shares his surname")?
There really aren't that many truly contemporary composers that come up, and John Adams is obviously one of them. I think most people are aware that there's a John Luther Adams, although I'm not sure if I'd really call that frauding.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by The Ununtiable Twine »

Can you post the tossup on vibrational modes, please?
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Eddie »

The Ununtiable Twine wrote:Can you post the tossup on vibrational modes, please?
Round 6, (This) Tournament is a Crime wrote: 16. Monique Tirion showed that a simple uniform potential models these entities effectively in proteins. The inversion of the “bullet” configuration of GroEL was shown to closely resemble one of these entities numbered “18”. When modelling proteins as a Gaussian network, these entities are described by the matrices obtained from decomposing the Kirchhoff matrix. Analyzing these entities is effectively equivalent to molecular dynamics at the low-temperature limit. These entities can be solved for by solving the secular equation for a (*) mass weighted Hessian. Additionally these entities can be solved by assuming solutions of the form of the exponential of i times omega times t and plugging them into the equations of motion. For a non-linear molecule with N atoms, there exist 3N-6 of these entities, examples of which include scissoring and symmetric stretches. For 10 points, name this sort of motion where every part of a system oscillates at the same frequency.

ANSWER: normal modes [accept vibrational modes; prompt on vibrational degrees of freedom]
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by The Ununtiable Twine »

Why isn't vibrational degrees of freedom acceptable? It seems overly picky not to accept it. [The tossup was very good, by the way.]
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Aaron's Rod »

Also, I've already told Ike Jose, I have a big beef with packet 7 bonus 13 [infinitely divisible/normal/Levy]. As a person who actually does stats at a graduate level (EDIT--and who has also taken probability at a high level), I'm pretty sure I've never heard the term "infinitely divisible." Also, putting in "IID" instead of "independently and identically distributed" seems like just a cheap way to make your bonus a hair shorter, and is unnecessarily withholds information from people (even though people who know the answer probably know what "IID" is).
Last edited by Aaron's Rod on Sun Feb 26, 2017 10:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

Eddie, I'd probably like to see the whole 1950's tossup before judging any further.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Eddie »

Cheynem wrote:Eddie, I'd probably like to see the whole 1950's tossup before judging any further.
Round 5, (This) Tournament is a Crime wrote: 20. This decade saw the release of a two-part instrumental single whose second part features a saxophone solo by Clifford Scott and ends with its composer’s signature organ. The I - vi - IV - V [“one six four five”] chord progression is sometimes nicknamed for this decade, during which Sam Philips founded Sun Records. A self-titled single released in this decade popularized its namesake’s beat, which is basically a 3 - 2 son clave [“three two” sohn KLAH-vay] rhythm. Due to overcrowding at its Cleveland venue, an Alan Freed-organized concert in this decade was prematurely shut down after just one song. In this decade, (*) Pat Boone’s cover of “Tutti Frutti” beat out Little Richard’s original recording to chart at No. 12. This decade witnessed the Moondog Coronation Ball as well as the first sales of the Gibson Les Paul and the Fender Stratocaster. The release of Bill Haley & His Comets’s “Rock Around the Clock” in this decade is said to have brought the genre into the mainstream. For 10 points, name this decade in which Elvis Presley released his first single.

ANSWER: 1950s [or the fifties; or obvious equivalents]
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

The beginning mostly just suffers I think from the misplaced Sun Records clue, but you've got Pat Boone and Little Richard right out of power--I think most people are aware of when they were most relevant musically. I liked what this tossup was trying to do and everything in the tossup is super important, but I'm not sure the decade was the optimal approach to ask about it.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Eddie »

Cheynem wrote:The beginning mostly just suffers I think from the misplaced Sun Records clue, but you've got Pat Boone and Little Richard right out of power--I think most people are aware of when they were most relevant musically. I liked what this tossup was trying to do and everything in the tossup is super important, but I'm not sure the decade was the optimal approach to ask about it.
I tried several approaches to this subject matter and the decade answer line was the best way I could incorporate all of the important details and events (I'd already done guitar for EFT, and I couldn't come up with enough material on a single individual / song / U.S. state / year / what-have-you). I think simply moving down the Sun Records clue could solve both of the issues that you're talking about (clue misplacement and narrowing down the answer space too early).
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by cyclohexane »

Could I see the tossup on trumpets in movies? I negged this tossup on the Bernard Hermann clue on Taxi Driver with saxophone.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Eddie »

cyclohexane wrote:Could I see the tossup on trumpets in movies? I negged this tossup on the Bernard Hermann clue on Taxi Driver with saxophone.
Round 3, (This) Tournament is a Crime wrote: 14. About a minute into the title theme of Elmer Bernstein's score to The Magnificent Seven, the main melody is reprised by a solo for this instrument. A pipe organ solo is interrupted by short repeated-note passages for this instrument at the start of Jerry Goldsmith's score to Patton. This instrument plays the main theme in Goldsmith's score to Chinatown, as well as in Bernard Herrmann's score to Taxi Driver. A wistful unaccompanied solo for this instrument plays at the very start of The (*) Godfather. Four of these instruments introduce the title theme in Raiders of the Lost Ark. This instrument plays the rising motif in the opening sunrise scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey - a theme taken from Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra. For 10 points, name this high-pitched brass instrument.

ANSWER: trumpet
Hi Alex,

On closer listen (and conferring with several reliable sources), that is indeed a saxophone in Taxi Driver! This is a huge oversight on my part (and rather baffling, because two people buzzed with trumpet at that same clue) and I'm sorry you were unfairly negged. Thanks for bringing this to my attention; I will be sure to replace this clue with a factually correct one before next week's mirror.
Last edited by Eddie on Mon Feb 27, 2017 12:26 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by cyclohexane »

" Bernard Herrmann's score to Taxi Driver."

The wikipedia page for taxi driver ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_Driver) claims the theme uses a saxophone.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Sam »

Eddie wrote: I tried several approaches to this subject matter and the decade answer line was the best way I could incorporate all of the important details and events (I'd already done guitar for EFT, and I couldn't come up with enough material on a single individual / song / U.S. state / year / what-have-you). I think simply moving down the Sun Records clue could solve both of the issues that you're talking about (clue misplacement and narrowing down the answer space too early).
If I remember correctly this tossup also occurred in a round where there had been a tossup whose answer line was a decade (the 1990s, I think). I don't think there was anyone trying to decide between 1990s and 1950s, but it did narrow down the possible answer that much more.

Issues with that specific tossup notwithstanding, I liked the format of the answer line being a decade. It was a good way to ask about stuff that either isn't tossup-able (like the commission on the Harrod's department store owner) or would become obvious very fast if asked in a different format (e.g., asking for "Pepys diary" rather than "the 1660s").
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

I might be credited with buzzing on the Taxi Driver clue (because that's where I buzzed) but I have never listened to that soundtrack. I was actually responding to the Chinatown clue and taking a few seconds to determine if that actually was a trumpet or not. I guess this is also a reminder of the simple fact that sometimes buzz points don't actually show the a-ha moment that caused a buzz, especially for conservative players like me who don't want to just buzz in and think.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

I'm curious about the leadin to this prostaglandins question. The assay I've seen used to determine whether a given unknown clear fluid is CSF is the beta-2-transferrin assay, which as far as I know isn't part of the prostaglandin synthesis pathway. Is there another test I'm unaware of?
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Charbroil »

The tossup on German POW camps in Packet 5 should accept or, at the absolute minimum, prompt on "concentration camps." I buzzed in with that answer on the first clue about Ari Libsker's Stalags, was negged, protested, and was told that the protest was rejected because "the movie is literally called Stalags."

However, if you actually search for that documentary, almost every mention of it associates the phenomenon discussed in it with the Holocaust and concentration camps. (Examples: 1, 2, 3). To give an example of how important concentration camps are to the movie:
An excerpt from the second link above wrote:Libsker ends “Stalags” with footage of high-school classes touring Auschwitz, their principal reading sections of “The Dollhouse” as if it were a nonfiction account of what transpired inside its walls.
The Holocaust is so important to the film's premise that it literally appears in the film's English title: Holocaust & Pornography in Israel.

Thus, rejecting a buzz of "concentration camps" on the clue about Stalags betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of that film's premise, which is that the Holocaust impacted the sexual psychology of Israeli Jews. The only reason you would reject an answer of "concentration camps" would be if you looked at just the film's title (and only its original language title) and ignored its actual subject.

I normally wouldn't harp so much on a single question, especially since I greatly enjoyed the set. However, having my protest on this tossup rejected cost us the chance to make the top bracket. That's rather galling, given that it appears that whoever decided the protest did absolutely no research before doing so. (If that person wants to disagree, I'll point him to the fact that the word "Holocaust" appears in literally the first search entry on Google when you Google "Ari Libsker" "Stalags.")

I realize that my protest was probably decided by someone different from the person mentioned in Max's post who resolved the protest at HIT. However, as someone apparently did at HIT, perhaps I should have hunted down the protest decider at TTiaC and kept badgering him until he agreed with my protest interpretation? Is that how quiz bowl protests work these days?
Last edited by Charbroil on Mon Feb 27, 2017 8:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Charbroil »

Also in Packet 5: The giveaway on the "vibrational modes" tossup is a little confusing because it refers to a "sort of motion." I buzzed in with "vibrations" there, was prompted, and gave the correct answer. The other team (understandably) protested that "vibration" was incorrect and the protest was resolved against us.

I do realize that vibration is probably wrong (and not promptable) for the pre-FTP clues in this tossup, but I don't think there's any issue with describing "vibration" as a "sort of motion." Along those lines, it seems like it would be a good idea to change the "sort of motion" wording in the giveaway.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Auroni »

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:I'm curious about the leadin to this prostaglandins question. The assay I've seen used to determine whether a given unknown clear fluid is CSF is the beta-2-transferrin assay, which as far as I know isn't part of the prostaglandin synthesis pathway. Is there another test I'm unaware of?
The clue was about prostaglandin D2 synthase; I didn't realize that beta 2-transferrin does the same thing, so I'll modify the leadin to rule it out.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Ike »

That's rather galling, given that it appears that whoever decided the protest did absolutely no research before doing so. (If that person wants to disagree, I'll point him to the fact that the word "Holocaust" appears in literally the first search entry on Google when you Google "Ari Libsker" "Stalags.")
We in fact did do research on this. I was not part of the group that made this ruling, but I can confirm a significant amount of time was spent weighing this protest. Hopefully the person who ruled on your protest can give the rationale.
I realize that my protest was probably decided by someone different from the person mentioned in Max's post who resolved the protest at HIT. However, as someone apparently did at HIT, perhaps I should have hunted down the protest decider at TTiaC and kept badgering him until he agreed with my protest interpretation? Is that how quiz bowl protests work these days?
Do not do this. What happened at HIT was an anomaly and a function of Alex Fregeau being completely new to writing, running a tournament etc. If anyone / a team tried to pull this at a tournament I'm running, they get a stern warning for attempting to relitigate the protest.

Edit: grammar
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by ElysiaJW »

First of all thank you to the writers for writing this tournament. It was a tricky set but I didn't do as badly as I expected to and dredged up some things I thought I had long forgotten!

I have some things to say about specific questions. Firstly I agree with the sentiment that the use of certain language was not necessary. When the Butz quote was read in our room, people on both teams and the moderator were immediately and vocally uncomfortable, which is an extremely rare occurrence. Secondly there were a few cases where it felt like certain clues came too early. One of these was the Turkish question. I don't know how well-known it is in the US, but Madonna in a Fur Coat is very popular right now in the UK and has been for a while - there are massive posters for it on the tube - and so this question got powered on the first clue in both rooms at our site. Changi airport also seemed to come too early in the question on Singapore. The other one that immediately comes to mind is that the clue ordering on the TU on contraceptives felt a little off - I buzzed on "breakthrough bleeding" and was only a word out of power. I am definitely not a scientist and recognised none of the clues before it and after it only the very last giveaways; I got it from having taken oral contraceptives and thus been subject to the health warnings. Given [insert glib comment about quiz gender demographics here], this might be fair pyramidality, but it stuck out to me at the time, so I wanted to mention it.

If I think of any others I will add these.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Auroni »

ElysiaJW wrote:I don't know how well-known it is in the US, but Madonna in a Fur Coat is very popular right now in the UK and has been for a while - there are massive posters for it on the tube - and so this question got powered on the first clue in both rooms at our site.
While I'm excited that people knew about this, I'll defend its placement as a clue: I can't really think of any widely read novels in translation that haven't come up in quizbowl before (as opposed to something like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which I was comfortable making a giveaway despite its rarity in quizbowl since I know it to be extremely widely read), and I don't think Madonna of the Fur Coat qualifies. I only found out about it from reading recent book reviews and thought that it could serve the dual purpose of allowing people to buzz on Maureen Freeley (the pre-eminent Pamuk translator)'s name.
The other one that immediately comes to mind is that the clue ordering on the TU on contraceptives felt a little off - I buzzed on "breakthrough bleeding" and was only a word out of power. I am definitely not a scientist and recognised none of the clues before it and after it only the very last giveaways; I got it from having taken oral contraceptives and thus been subject to the health warnings.
Yeah, I figured that that would be a pretty easy clue, but still harder than the actual names of Plan B and the pill, so I put it just out of power to smooth the tossup's gradient out.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

I read over the "normal modes" question and had a few thoughts:
Additionally these entities can be solved by assuming solutions of the form of the exponential of i times omega times t and plugging them into the equations of motion. For a non-linear molecule with N atoms, there exist 3N-6 of these entities, examples of which include scissoring and symmetric stretches. For 10 points, name this sort of motion where every part of a system oscillates at the same frequency.
So, first, "these entities can be solved" seems like it's missing a "for" afterwards, because otherwise it sounds like you're talking about a set of equations. With regard to the rest of this sentence, I think it would be useful to add that the actual determination of the frequencies corresponding to the normal modes is achieved by finding the eigenvalues of the mass-spring constant matrix. Otherwise, just plugging them into the equations of motion... doesn't actually do anything. Having now seen this question, I realize that I was thrown by the fact that it was mostly clues from chemistry rather than normal modes as I'm used to seeing them in physics with a series of masses coupled to springs. If that's the direction you want to go, I think it makes a lot of sense to say that they are typically determined by Raman scattering.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by CPiGuy »

I didn't really like the tossup on "modulo" -- it seemed really awkwardly constructed, and had I been playing and not staffing I probably would have figured out what was going on right around the powermark but not been able to buzz until the giveaway -- if I were writing that tossup, I'd probably make the answerline "modular congruence" and make it things about, like "if a and b have this relationship to each other with respect to a prime p" and so on for the clues.

I did really like the bonus on lattices/posets/subsets.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

CPiGuy wrote:I didn't really like the tossup on "modulo" -- it seemed really awkwardly constructed, and had I been playing and not staffing I probably would have figured out what was going on right around the powermark but not been able to buzz until the giveaway -- if I were writing that tossup, I'd probably make the answerline "modular congruence" and make it things about, like "if a and b have this relationship to each other with respect to a prime p" and so on for the clues.
This question seemed fine to me; I can't remember the initial clues but for sure once you start talking about the definition of the Legendre symbol, there's only one place that could go.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

I suppose as long as I'm here, I'd appreciate it if someone could post the above tossup as well as the one on "optimization."
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Ike »

Snap Wexley wrote:I suppose as long as I'm here, I'd appreciate it if someone could post the above tossup as well as the one on "optimization."
Alexia Massalin introduced the "super-" form of this practice in a paper that discusses various techniques in evaluating the signum function. Values are recomputed rather than reloading them in a form of this technique called rematerialization; it is often seen as a form of this technique known as "hoisting," in which invariants are moved outside of the body of certain constructs. Expressions are replaced by their known values in constant folding, a type of this technique that along with strength (*) reduction comprises the "peephole" forms of this technique. This technique often converts a recursive tail call into an iterative loop, and loops themselves may unwound as part of this technique, though an increase in space is needed. Compilers often perform, for 10 points, what process of improving the efficiency of a computer program?
ANSWER: optimization [or optimizing]
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

Ok, as I thought, this is definitely a question on compiler optimization. I think this is a case where you should actually have a more restrictive answer line and require the whole thing, but the question itself is good and a really good idea.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by CPiGuy »

Snap Wexley wrote:
CPiGuy wrote:I didn't really like the tossup on "modulo" -- it seemed really awkwardly constructed, and had I been playing and not staffing I probably would have figured out what was going on right around the powermark but not been able to buzz until the giveaway -- if I were writing that tossup, I'd probably make the answerline "modular congruence" and make it things about, like "if a and b have this relationship to each other with respect to a prime p" and so on for the clues.
This question seemed fine to me; I can't remember the initial clues but for sure once you start talking about the definition of the Legendre symbol, there's only one place that could go.
Yeah, I mean, I liked a lot of the content and think the clues were pretty good -- I just don't like how "modulo" got clued as an operation when I feel like a lot of math people tend to think of modular congruence as a relationship (and that would also make the tossup less clunky). Now that I look back at it, it seems less bad than it did on first glance, though.

also, the tossup itself:
This Tournament Is a Crime wrote:If a polynomial equation Q has a root for this operation applied to the equation with respect to a prime p, then there will exist a unique root for Q for this operation applied to a power of p by Hensel's lifting lemma. An odd prime p is expressible as the sum of two squares if and only if a form of this operation applied to p yields one according to one of many results called Fermat's Theorem. For two numbers a and p, a raised to p minus 1 divided by two applied to this operation of p gives the (*) Legendre symbol, giving conditions for when the golden theorem can be satisfied. Both linear and quadratic residue classes are defined using this operation. Wilson's theorem states that a number n is prime if and only if n minus one factorial is congruent to negative applied to this function n. A percent sign is used to represent, for 10 points, what operation that gives the remainder after division?
ANSWER: modulo [prompt on remainder]
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

CPiGuy wrote:Yeah, I mean, I liked a lot of the content and think the clues were pretty good -- I just don't like how "modulo" got clued as an operation when I feel like a lot of math people tend to think of modular congruence as a relationship (and that would also make the tossup less clunky). Now that I look back at it, it seems less bad than it did on first glance, though.
"Operation" seems pretty clear to me. You can certainly call it a relationship, but I think anything that you actually compute is definitely an operation, any other descriptor notwithstanding.

edit: I think you're conflating "modulo" and "congruence" here.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Ike »

I thought a bit about what "pronoun" to best use for modulo, and I settled on operation. I am sympathetic to the idea that the pronoun usage could be confusing, but I think choosing something like "function" or "relation" had similar problems.

Jerry, that does seem awfully restrictive to require compiler for compiler optimization, can I ask your rationale for requiring it?
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by CPiGuy »

Snap Wexley wrote:
CPiGuy wrote:Yeah, I mean, I liked a lot of the content and think the clues were pretty good -- I just don't like how "modulo" got clued as an operation when I feel like a lot of math people tend to think of modular congruence as a relationship (and that would also make the tossup less clunky). Now that I look back at it, it seems less bad than it did on first glance, though.
"Operation" seems pretty clear to me. You can certainly call it a relationship, but I think anything that you actually compute is definitely an operation, any other descriptor notwithstanding.

edit: I think you're conflating "modulo" and "congruence" here.
Yeah, that's fair -- I guess it just didn't mesh with how I thought of it and so I committed the "I didn't like how it was done so it's wrong" fallacy (a close relative of the "I thought this clue was easy so it shouldn't have gotten 15 points" fallacy). I still would have written the tossup differently, but it works as is.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Kevin »

I think the "God" in Judaism question was poorly worded. I was watching during a bye round and someone negged with "Allah," which arguably should've been accepted since there are Arabic-speaking Jews. Regardless of that particular issue, I think it's a bad idea to use "god" in the question and then expect "God" as the answer. It seems to me like a tossup on "Yahweh" or "Adonai" or some other name for God (or just "names of God" in general as answer line) would've worked better.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Charbroil »

Ike wrote:
That's rather galling, given that it appears that whoever decided the protest did absolutely no research before doing so. (If that person wants to disagree, I'll point him to the fact that the word "Holocaust" appears in literally the first search entry on Google when you Google "Ari Libsker" "Stalags.")
We in fact did do research on this. I was not part of the group that made this ruling, but I can confirm a significant amount of time was spent weighing this protest. Hopefully the person who ruled on your protest can give the rationale.
I'll look forward to hearing that rationale.
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I realize that my protest was probably decided by someone different from the person mentioned in Max's post who resolved the protest at HIT. However, as someone apparently did at HIT, perhaps I should have hunted down the protest decider at TTiaC and kept badgering him until he agreed with my protest interpretation? Is that how quiz bowl protests work these days?
Do not do this. What happened at HIT was an anomaly and a function of Alex Fregeau being completely new to writing, running a tournament etc. If anyone / a team tried to pull this at a tournament I'm running, they get a stern warning for attempting to relitigate the protest.
I was being sarcastic, though I do understand why you would want to reiterate this rule (which I agree with).
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Beast Mode »

Charbroil wrote:
Ike wrote:
That's rather galling, given that it appears that whoever decided the protest did absolutely no research before doing so. (If that person wants to disagree, I'll point him to the fact that the word "Holocaust" appears in literally the first search entry on Google when you Google "Ari Libsker" "Stalags.")
We in fact did do research on this. I was not part of the group that made this ruling, but I can confirm a significant amount of time was spent weighing this protest. Hopefully the person who ruled on your protest can give the rationale.
I'll look forward to hearing that rationale.
I don't know if I'm being included in "the group that made this ruling," but I certainly did pass along to Auroni that according to this New York Times article, "the Stalags were named for the World War II prisoner-of-war camps in which they were set." I haven't seen the documentary, and this was the first reputable-looking source my Google search at the time turned up.

However, I'm now looking at this other New York Times article, which opens "In early-1960s Israel pornographic, possibly anti-Semitic novels that detailed sensational tales of the torture and rape of male concentration camp prisoners by curvaceous female Nazi guards rapidly rose from marginal pulp reading to mass-market popularity."

I should've done more digging in the first place, since the first article even says "the movie contends that Stalag pornography was but a popular extension of the writings of K. Tzetnik" (an author I know of from a Holocaust lit class). If I'm the one responsible for denying you a top-bracket berth, I'm very sorry for that.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Excelsior (smack) »

I was confused by the "modulo" tossup because I had difficulty parsing some of the constructions. Given that modulus is a 2-ary operator, it seems odd to refer to "applying" it to a single operand, as the tossup does in most of its clues. By analogy with subtraction (another non-commutative 2-ary infix operator), this is sort of like saying "this operation applied to the number 7 with respect to the number 4 is equal to 3", which I think is pretty confusing. (I don't know of any better way to phrase these sentences, though. Maybe if we said e.g. "if this operation applied to a polynomial equation Q and a prime p has a root, then this operation applied to Q and a power of p will have a unique root, by Hensel's lifting lemma", it would be clearer.)

I mentioned this to Ike already, but I was also confused by the "optimizations" tossup because "compiler optimizations" doesn't feel like a reified collection of things to me ("okay, rematerialization is a thing that compilers do that makes programs faster; hoisting is another thing that compilers do that makes programs faster; what is the common feature that unites them both?"), but maybe I'm just being dumb. I was expecting the answer to be some group of things with more conceptual unity, like "dataflow analysis techniques" or something. That said, all the topics in this question were interesting and I'm glad they were tossed up.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Æthelred the Unready Steady Cook »

There were a number of things which I can't recall off the top of my head but the Schliemann repeat mention was confusing.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by CPiGuy »

Beast Mode wrote:
Charbroil wrote:
Ike wrote:
That's rather galling, given that it appears that whoever decided the protest did absolutely no research before doing so. (If that person wants to disagree, I'll point him to the fact that the word "Holocaust" appears in literally the first search entry on Google when you Google "Ari Libsker" "Stalags.")
We in fact did do research on this. I was not part of the group that made this ruling, but I can confirm a significant amount of time was spent weighing this protest. Hopefully the person who ruled on your protest can give the rationale.
I'll look forward to hearing that rationale.
I don't know if I'm being included in "the group that made this ruling," but I certainly did pass along to Auroni that according to this New York Times article, "the Stalags were named for the World War II prisoner-of-war camps in which they were set." I haven't seen the documentary, and this was the first reputable-looking source my Google search at the time turned up.

However, I'm now looking at this other New York Times article, which opens "In early-1960s Israel pornographic, possibly anti-Semitic novels that detailed sensational tales of the torture and rape of male concentration camp prisoners by curvaceous female Nazi guards rapidly rose from marginal pulp reading to mass-market popularity."

I should've done more digging in the first place, since the first article even says "the movie contends that Stalag pornography was but a popular extension of the writings of K. Tzetnik" (an author I know of from a Holocaust lit class). If I'm the one responsible for denying you a top-bracket berth, I'm very sorry for that.
As another person who was in that room and helped research the protest, Wikipedia (not that good of a source, I know), claims that Jews never actually appeared in Stalag fiction because it would be "too taboo"; it also explicitly talks about British and American soldiers in POW camps, as does the aforementioned NYT article (which is propbably a better source). However, I think that things like that second NYT article show that perhaps "concentration camp" is a general term that includes "POW camp", and so Charles should have been prompted (not based on, like, substantive clue content, just because the set of things described by the term "concentration camp" is a superset of the set of things described by the term "POW camp").

Also, Saul, re: Tzetnik, it seems that Tzetnik's graphic depiction of the Holocaust was the inspiration for Stalag pornography, and the movie claims that they're an extension of Tzetnik's writings to POW camps, not that they're about the same thing.

Charles, I'm sorry that this protest decided whether or not you made top bracket -- regardless of how it's decided, it always sucks to have major things decided on minor semantic quibbling.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

Ike wrote:Jerry, that does seem awfully restrictive to require compiler for compiler optimization, can I ask your rationale for requiring it?
My rationale is just that it's a totally different thing than mathematical optimization but maybe that's too harsh. Anyway, it was good to see a question on this topic.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Charbroil »

CPiGuy wrote:
Beast Mode wrote:
Charbroil wrote:
Ike wrote:
That's rather galling, given that it appears that whoever decided the protest did absolutely no research before doing so. (If that person wants to disagree, I'll point him to the fact that the word "Holocaust" appears in literally the first search entry on Google when you Google "Ari Libsker" "Stalags.")
We in fact did do research on this. I was not part of the group that made this ruling, but I can confirm a significant amount of time was spent weighing this protest. Hopefully the person who ruled on your protest can give the rationale.
I'll look forward to hearing that rationale.
I don't know if I'm being included in "the group that made this ruling," but I certainly did pass along to Auroni that according to this New York Times article, "the Stalags were named for the World War II prisoner-of-war camps in which they were set." I haven't seen the documentary, and this was the first reputable-looking source my Google search at the time turned up.

However, I'm now looking at this other New York Times article, which opens "In early-1960s Israel pornographic, possibly anti-Semitic novels that detailed sensational tales of the torture and rape of male concentration camp prisoners by curvaceous female Nazi guards rapidly rose from marginal pulp reading to mass-market popularity."

I should've done more digging in the first place, since the first article even says "the movie contends that Stalag pornography was but a popular extension of the writings of K. Tzetnik" (an author I know of from a Holocaust lit class). If I'm the one responsible for denying you a top-bracket berth, I'm very sorry for that.
As another person who was in that room and helped research the protest, Wikipedia (not that good of a source, I know), claims that Jews never actually appeared in Stalag fiction because it would be "too taboo"; it also explicitly talks about British and American soldiers in POW camps...
I don't know which Wikipedia article you looked at, but the one on Stalag fiction describes the genre this way:
Purported to be translations of English-language books by prisoners in concentration camps.
It's also worth noting that a small number of British and American POWs were sent to concentration camps. This article describes POWs sent to Buchenwald and Dachau while this one describes prisoners sent to Mauthausen. (Mauthausen was also where the "bullet decree" regarding POWs that appears in a later clue in this tossup was implemented).

Thus, just because works in the genre only featured British and American POWs doesn't mean that they couldn't have been set at concentration camps.

To further confuse the concentration camp/POW camp distinction, apparently Soviet POW camps were built in the same complexes as concentration camps. (Source)

Beyond all of this, why were you and Saul the ones doing research on this protest? Isn't the rule for protests that the person deciding them doesn't know which teams are involved? I don't question your honesty (or Saul's), but having the moderator and scorekeeper for the match under protest do the research to determine the protest seems to contradict that rule.

Edit: Just to note, I actually really like this tossup (both in idea and execution); it's just the answer line that I'm annoyed with.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Beast Mode »

Charbroil wrote: Beyond all of this, why were you and Saul the ones doing research on this protest? Isn't the rule for protests that the person deciding them doesn't know which teams are involved? I don't question your honesty (or Saul's), but having the moderator and scorekeeper for the match under protest do the research to determine the protest seems to contradict that rule.
It looks like ACF rule H.11 would've allowed Auroni to delegate it to us, but since he didn't, there's no question that we were overeager and out of line in volunteering our findings. I didn't think we were actually resolving the protest; my thinking was that it couldn't hurt for Auroni and Bruce and whoever else to have those findings. This was wrong thinking, and I'm sorry for acting unprofessionally.

EDIT: We never told Auroni who the teams involved were, but obviously the above still stands.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by CPiGuy »

Beast Mode wrote:
Charbroil wrote: Beyond all of this, why were you and Saul the ones doing research on this protest? Isn't the rule for protests that the person deciding them doesn't know which teams are involved? I don't question your honesty (or Saul's), but having the moderator and scorekeeper for the match under protest do the research to determine the protest seems to contradict that rule.
It looks like ACF rule H.11 would've allowed Auroni to delegate it to us, but since he didn't, there's no question that we were overeager and out of line in volunteering our findings. I didn't think we were actually resolving the protest; my thinking was that it couldn't hurt for Auroni and Bruce and whoever else to have those findings. This was wrong thinking, and I'm sorry for acting unprofessionally.

EDIT: We never told Auroni who the teams involved were, but obviously the above still stands.
Yeah, I'd like to second this -- it seems we did the wrong thing, and I apologize. I was under the impression that moderators/other staff were expected to resolve/research protests before bringing them to the TD; I am no longer under that impression and won't do it again. Having said that, it seems that the correct resolution to the protest is probably that you should be prompted on "concentration camps" because they're a superset of "POW camps"; would you agree with that?
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

CPiGuy wrote:
Beast Mode wrote:
Charbroil wrote: Beyond all of this, why were you and Saul the ones doing research on this protest? Isn't the rule for protests that the person deciding them doesn't know which teams are involved? I don't question your honesty (or Saul's), but having the moderator and scorekeeper for the match under protest do the research to determine the protest seems to contradict that rule.
It looks like ACF rule H.11 would've allowed Auroni to delegate it to us, but since he didn't, there's no question that we were overeager and out of line in volunteering our findings. I didn't think we were actually resolving the protest; my thinking was that it couldn't hurt for Auroni and Bruce and whoever else to have those findings. This was wrong thinking, and I'm sorry for acting unprofessionally.

EDIT: We never told Auroni who the teams involved were, but obviously the above still stands.
Yeah, I'd like to second this -- it seems we did the wrong thing, and I apologize. I was under the impression that moderators/other staff were expected to resolve/research protests before bringing them to the TD; I am no longer under that impression and won't do it again. Having said that, it seems that the correct resolution to the protest is probably that you should be prompted on "concentration camps" because they're a superset of "POW camps"; would you agree with that?
But this isn't true - concentration camps and POW camps serve distinctly different purposes. Concentration camps are used to place a number of people belonging to some general category in the same place for political purposes, whereas POW camps are used to hold captured enemy combatants and/or civilians. It appears to me, superficially, that the lead-in can refer to either of these - thus, Charles' buzz should be straight-up accepted, particularly as some of the same institutions served both purposes here!
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by Auroni »

I delegated protest adjudication to Saul, because I was too overwhelmed to do it properly, and because he volunteered. At the time, I didn't realize that he was the one who moderated the round. I stand by and endorse his ruling.
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Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion

Post by CPiGuy »

On a completely different note (and one that I had forgotten about until now): I really liked the tossup on the birthday problem. I think it's really cool to see more "recreational"-type math being tossed up -- I feel like oftentimes tournaments that only have 1 math per round stick to the typical analysis/algebra/calculus stuff because there's not enough material to push the envelope, and I appreciate the efforts made at this tournament to do so.
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