Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

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Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Most tournaments have a 1/1 distribution called “Your Choice” or “Trash, Current Events, or Your Choice.” Almost inevitably in mACF tournaments, this ends up being an automatic 1/1 trash. If anything else goes there, it's probably going to be an extra Big 3 question. But perhaps there should be more to “Your Choice” than these things.

In this post, I want to explore the other things that could potentially go in the “Your Choice” distribution; things that might add variety and enjoyment to the game while still staying within the realm of things that are askable and that quizbowlers might find interesting. My intent isn't to advocate for any specific category or specific example answer, but rather to provoke thought and perhaps encourage innovation or creativity.

Specifically, in this post I will (1) list some categories that might be included in “Your Choice”, and (2) provide some examples of potential answers from those categories.

Excluded Science
The 2000's saw the exclusion of so-called “Colvin Science” from the mACF canon. The 5/5 Science distribution is now strictly limited to the answers that a relatively small cabal of science majors/science grad students deem to be “real.” Well, if you are still interested in things like dinosaurs, geologic periods, landforms, ecology, etc., why not put it in “Your Choice”?

“Excluded Science”, as written for the “Your Choice” distribution, might include answers such as:

* Pterodactyl
* fishes (common-link TU with clues about famous fossil fishes)
* oxbow lakes
* lions (clues about their physiology, habits, and place in the food chain)
* comets (clues about notable comets, basic comet science)
* concatenation

Real World Stuff
Many quizbowlers will one day become lawyers, investment bankers, accountants, actuaries, and other types of employed people. Perhaps some of them are already learning concepts related to these and other real-world professions. Thus they might find tossups on these things interesting or, at the very least, askable.

“Real World Stuff”, as written for the “Your Choice” distribution, might include answers such as:

* hostile takeovers (using clues from corporate law and from famous hostile takeovers)
* net present value
* a question about types of bonds (either a bonus or common-link TU), perhaps incorporating concepts from financial theory
* a bonus about the different kind of accounting statements or about concepts like “depreciation”

Other Thought

Many best-selling books in which ideas are expressed do not fall under the category of “social science” or “RMP”, either because they are in a weird field or because they aren't up to academic standards. Some of these are still interesting and worth reading to intellectually curious people.

“Other Thought”, as written for the “Your Choice” distribution, might include answers such as:

* Samuel Huntington (“political scientist” whose books were popular and well-known, but who is considered a pop theorist by many people actually in political science)
* the pro-atheism books of Richard Dawkins (widely read/adored by quizbowlers, not really academic religion or science)
* Jared Diamond
* the completely random things that Richard Posner writes books about

Modern World

I have long advocated that the “Current Events” distribution be replaced by something I term “Modern World.” I think the key distinction is that “Modern World” looks for what I term “latent importance”; that is, importance that has a foundation in something other than accidents of time.

For instance, the President of France is one of the most powerful men in the world. Even if the President of France has not really made major headlines in the past few months, somebody who wants to be informed about the world should probably still seek to know a few things about the President of France. Compare this with, say, a coup in the Gambia. If such a coup happens right before a tournament, there might be questions about it, and people might get those questions on the basis of having watched the news, but the coup has no real importance apart from the fact that it just happened.

I like “Modern World” for two reasons:
(1)it opens the answer space to things other than recent headlines; and
(2)it ages much better

By “opens the answer space”, I mean that it lets you write about things like the President of France, even if they were not in the news recently. My “ages better”, I mean that people playing the packet in the future are more likely to get it. We now have big packet archives online, and the quizbowlers from the future are going to practice on those sets, use those sets to guide their studying, etc.

To criticize my own quizbowl team, consider the 2009 HFT's bonus about the Copenhagen Conference. A few years from now, some high school team is going to be practicing on that packet, and they are going to hear that bonus. And they will not get very many points on it. Why? Because nobody will care about the Copenhagen Conference in a few years. It accomplished nothing and will be replaced by another conference-of-the-year (in Mexico City, I believe). The team hearing that bonus in the future will be bored and frustrated.

However, had that instead been a bonus on something with latent importance, somebody might remember it. To keep going back to the same example, Nicholas Sarkozy is probably going to be remembered after he leaves office. “Modern World” transforms into history over time, and thus remains interesting and askable.

“Modern World”, as written for the “Your Choice” distribution, might include answers such as:

* Nicholas Sarkozy
* Important world political parties (UK Liberal Democrats, Israeli Likud, Hungarian FIDESZ, etc. – these are likely to continue to exist well into the future)
* F-15 fighter jet
* notable trade blocs/alliances (NATO, ASEAN, NAFTA, etc)

Matt Bruce Memorial Category

According to legend, NAQT writer Matt Bruce used to pick tossup answers based on things he saw in his house. Many quizbowlers live in houses or apartments, or know people who live in houses or apartments, and thus are familiar with everyday products, appliances, and other consumer goods. While an important part of our everyday lives, these things don't really fit into any category. They might be “Trash”, but lose out to flashier things like comic books, video games, sports, and movies.

“Matt Bruce Memorial Category”, as written for the “Your Choice” distribution, might include answers such as:

* spoon (clues about history of spoons, types of spoons, schools of spoon use)
* bread (there are many types of bread, and individual kinds of bread can have interesting histories)
* curtains/blinds/window coverings
* televisions (the objects, not the images they show)
* Lean Cuisine
* Kraft (clues on products and corporate history)
* calculators
* tape (there are at least two kinds of tape in my room right now)
* fashion-trash (this gets written under trash, to an extent, often as “girl trash”)
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

A category that I forgot to add:

Hobbies

Many quizbowlers have hobbies or interact with people who have hobbies. If not, they may read or watch fiction about people with hobbies. Some of these hobbies might be interesting or curious, or at least an important part of everyday social life. Often times, the hobbies will have some kind of nexus with another category.

“Hobbies”, as written for the “Your Choice” distribution, might include answers such as:

* terms/concepts from coin or stamp collecting
* questions about the everyday practice of skiing, surfing, golfing, or other potential hobbies (as distinct from Sports tossups about famous people in these activities)
* questions about board games
* Dance that falls short of "Fine Arts"; e.g., "FTPE, identify the following relating to the traditional Irish jig"

------------

In closing, I'll say that at one point I strongly considered writing a small set of packets (perhaps 2-3) with nothing but "Your Choice" questions, for the express purpose of demonstrating via example the untapped possibilities of the category. I won't have time to do that and this thread is in part a replacement for that exercise.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Cheynem »

This is an awesome thread.

Other things I'd like to see:

Historical Oddities: Maybe it's because they are so frequently associated with bad quizbowl, but where are the questions on explorers? Criminals? Historical sex scandals?

Borderline Film/Television: The kind of films that aren't academic enough for Fine Arts, but aren't entertaining enough for Trash.

Folklore: I can think of a lot of good crap for American folklore alone.

Cross-Distributional, Crazy Stuff: Where else can we be rewarded for knowing about the historical lives of scientists? Or what writers did besides writing? Or the literary careers of politicians? That sort of stuff.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by bsmith »

Please tell me the Matt Bruce category is a joke.

If I'm understanding it correctly, I support your "real world"/professional category. I know that several students pursue degrees in management, nursing, engineering, communication, and so on, but aren't well-represented in quizbowl. Ottawa has a full department (and doctoral programs) in French-English translation/interpretation, but I bet you can't find a translation question in the archives.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by at your pleasure »

Whig's Boson wrote:A category that I forgot to add:

Hobbies

Many quizbowlers have hobbies or interact with people who have hobbies. If not, they may read or watch fiction about people with hobbies. Some of these hobbies might be interesting or curious, or at least an important part of everyday social life. Often times, the hobbies will have some kind of nexus with another category.

“Hobbies”, as written for the “Your Choice” distribution, might include answers such as:

* terms/concepts from coin or stamp collecting
* questions about the everyday practice of skiing, surfing, golfing, or other potential hobbies (as distinct from Sports tossups about famous people in these activities)
* questions about board games
* Dance that falls short of "Fine Arts"; e.g., "FTPE, identify the following relating to the traditional Irish jig"
What about questions on places associated with hobbies or other things about hobbies not related to their everyday practice?
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Doink the Clown wrote:
Whig's Boson wrote:A category that I forgot to add:

Hobbies

Many quizbowlers have hobbies or interact with people who have hobbies. If not, they may read or watch fiction about people with hobbies. Some of these hobbies might be interesting or curious, or at least an important part of everyday social life. Often times, the hobbies will have some kind of nexus with another category.

“Hobbies”, as written for the “Your Choice” distribution, might include answers such as:

* terms/concepts from coin or stamp collecting
* questions about the everyday practice of skiing, surfing, golfing, or other potential hobbies (as distinct from Sports tossups about famous people in these activities)
* questions about board games
* Dance that falls short of "Fine Arts"; e.g., "FTPE, identify the following relating to the traditional Irish jig"
What about questions on places associated with hobbies or other things about hobbies not related to their everyday practice?
Do you mean, like, convention sites? That could be interesting, perhaps.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by at your pleasure »

I was thinking more along the lines of famous golf courses/trout streams, but famous convention sites sound interesting too.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Nine-Tenths Ideas »

Well, I'm just a high schooler, but this sounds a little ridiculous to me. Some of these suggestions are fine, but a lot of those suggestions typically fall under "trash" anyway [for example, golf courses under sports, borderline film/television is perfectly writable under trash anyway].
Maybe I'm alone in this assertion, but I'd find it immensely frustrating to get a bonus on trout streams or terms from stamp collecting during a close game, as these things are non-canonical [I know, that's kind of the point] and unlikely to be known by many people beyond your average stamp enthusiast. I realize that "Your Choice" is, uh, your choice, but I sort of learned my lesson when I wrote a packet for practice for my team with a bonus on moderately well-known ska bands, which no one on my team knew. Everyone was sort of unhappy about the whole thing, which trumped my happiness about getting to write a ska bonus. I feel that this could sort of end up being the same way.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Important Bird Area »

There's a difference between "non-canonical" and "too hard for the field." (Maybe that ska bonus would have been better off with part A. answer: _ska_.)
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by at your pleasure »

Aldo Montoya wrote:Well, I'm just a high schooler, but this sounds a little ridiculous to me. Some of these suggestions are fine, but a lot of those suggestions typically fall under "trash" anyway [for example, golf courses under sports, borderline film/television is perfectly writable under trash anyway].
Maybe I'm alone in this assertion, but I'd find it immensely frustrating to get a bonus on trout streams or terms from stamp collecting during a close game, as these things are non-canonical [I know, that's kind of the point] and unlikely to be known by many people beyond your average stamp enthusiast. I realize that "Your Choice" is, uh, your choice, but I sort of learned my lesson when I wrote a packet for practice for my team with a bonus on moderately well-known ska bands, which no one on my team knew. Everyone was sort of unhappy about the whole thing, which trumped my happiness about getting to write a ska bonus. I feel that this could sort of end up being the same way.
I was rather thinking more along the lines of clues on the trout fisheries of already-canonical streams with notable trout fisheries, such as the Delaware River, or clues on trout fishing in already-canonical regions, such as the Catskill mountains or Yellowstone.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by dtaylor4 »

My fear is that many of these kinds of questions will be written by people well-versed in the area, and will see a huge variance in conversion, aka the classic 30 or 0 bonus. I'm sure that there are answers that are very easy, but that doesn't mean that they will be actually included as answers.

Also, for "real world": If memory serves, I've heard prior questions on such things as the Black-Scholes model, Miller-Modigliani, and the DCF model.

To my knowledge, there are an entire two quizbowlers who are actual accounting students. A "financial statement" bonus will either be 30'd or 0'd, because there are a very fixed number of actual financial statements.

I think one could include some hostile takeovers as part of the history distribution, depending on how it's written.

I think "options" was tossed up in the 2008 EFT set. I think I've also seen bonds tossed up.

Trust me, as a player I'd love to see such things tossed up. However, as I alluded to earlier, I don't see that many others converting such questions at an acceptable rate.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

I don't think discussing trout fisheries, of all things, is really the most productive way to handle this thread.

I think Bruce has made an interesting talking point, and with all of these ideas to discuss, I think there are some things there that we absolutely could put into use successfully, and there are some ideas that probably could only make zero to one good question ever. That's why we discuss these things, as I think Bruce will agree. I hope authors think more about interesting ideas: in particular, I think there is a good case for us writing questions on the kinds of animals people might either own as pets (lizards, maybe a bonus on do breeds) or have spent a lot of time as a child learning about (dinosaurs and big snakes were my choice, and I thought octopodes were cool too). On the other hand, questions about specialized things will always play poorly no matter what subject they're in.

I think Mike Cheyne's historical oddities and folklore ideas should be explored more heavily. In all my career, I don't think I've ever heard an actual question on Johnny Appleseed, for instance. There is probably a bunch of interesting stuff that we all know about like that waiting to be asked about.

I also hope the Matt Bruce category is not taken up, simply because I think there would be a mix of bad/nonexistant clues and a general dislike of any of those questions from players in the room. I'm afraid of those questions looking like the infamous "Times New Roman" tossup.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Papa's in the House »

dtaylor4 wrote:My fear is that many of these kinds of questions will be written by people well-versed in the area, and will see a huge variance in conversion, aka the classic 30 or 0 bonus. I'm sure that there are answers that are very easy, but that doesn't mean that they will be actually included as answers.

Also, for "real world": If memory serves, I've heard prior questions on such things as the Black-Scholes model, Miller-Modigliani, and the DCF model.

To my knowledge, there are an entire two quizbowlers who are actual accounting students. A "financial statement" bonus will either be 30'd or 0'd, because there are a very fixed number of actual financial statements.

I think one could include some hostile takeovers as part of the history distribution, depending on how it's written.

I think "options" was tossed up in the 2008 EFT set. I think I've also seen bonds tossed up.

Trust me, as a player I'd love to see such things tossed up. However, as I alluded to earlier, I don't see that many others converting such questions at an acceptable rate.
There was also the CAPM bonus part at the 2009 MO.

I agree with Donald on this one. I'd love to hear such questions (because they're part of my majors), but I tend to stay away from writing them in lieu of trash because I find that the trash converts more. Furthermore, the few things that could be asked about and probably converted by the majority of players are difficult to write about in a pyramidal way and are usually transparent. There don't tend to be many "middle" clues for these types of questions; just lead-ins and giveaways, and while I might consider something a giveaway, others that aren't in my majors probably won't think the same. That being said, feel free to try and prove me wrong.

As to the other categories mentioned, I wouldn't mind seeing questions written from those categories, but I don't know if they'd convert as well as trash/current events tend to (though the current events should be restricted to things that would be historically important 20 years down the road).
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Furthermore, the few things that could be asked about and probably converted by the majority of players are difficult to write about in a pyramidal way and are usually transparent. There don't tend to be many "middle" clues for these types of questions; just lead-ins and giveaways, and while I might consider something a giveaway, others that aren't in my majors probably won't think the same.
There are these things called bonuses.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Sir Thopas »

bsmith wrote:Ottawa has a full department (and doctoral programs) in French-English translation/interpretation, but I bet you can't find a translation question in the archives.
You are happily wrong!
Gaddis I, Round 3 wrote:1. Rudolf Schottlaender was one of the first people to perform this task, which was later carried out by the tandem of Franz Hessel and Walter Benjamin. More recently, Christopher Prendergast headed a seven-person team devoted to performing this task. Richard Howard, who is currently in the process of doing this, changed the opening line to (*) “Time and again, I have gone to bed early.” D. J. Enright and Terence Kilmartin revised the work of the most notable man to do this, C. K. Scott Moncrieff, who chose a quotation from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30 for the title. FTP, name this activity wherein a novel beginning with ► Swann’s Way is rendered into another language.
ANSWER: translate In Search of Lost Time [accept clear-knowledge equivalents; accept translate A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu, translate Remembrance of Things Past, or translate Marcel Proust] (2)
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Papa's in the House »

Jeremy Gibbs Free Energy wrote:
Furthermore, the few things that could be asked about and probably converted by the majority of players are difficult to write about in a pyramidal way and are usually transparent. There don't tend to be many "middle" clues for these types of questions; just lead-ins and giveaways, and while I might consider something a giveaway, others that aren't in my majors probably won't think the same.
There are these things called bonuses.
And then you would have the 30/0 problem mentioned upthread. Either I give you all easy parts (giveaways in tossups) or hard parts (lead-ins).
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by New York Undercover »

Whig's Boson wrote: Matt Bruce Memorial Category

According to legend, NAQT writer Matt Bruce used to pick tossup answers based on things he saw in his house. Many quizbowlers live in houses or apartments, or know people who live in houses or apartments, and thus are familiar with everyday products, appliances, and other consumer goods. While an important part of our everyday lives, these things don't really fit into any category. They might be “Trash”, but lose out to flashier things like comic books, video games, sports, and movies.
this reminds me of
jeff (NAQT IS#70) wrote:Larger ones are often labeled with their capacity as a fraction of a barrel; the most common is the one denoted one-sixth, which measures 12 by 7 by 17 inches. The numeric label on smaller ones indicates how many pounds of sugar they can hold. Made primarily from (*) unbleached kraft paper, this is--for 10 points--what grocery-store alternative to plastic?
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by bsmith »

Sir Thopas wrote:
bsmith wrote:Ottawa has a full department (and doctoral programs) in French-English translation/interpretation, but I bet you can't find a translation question in the archives.
You are happily wrong!
Gaddis I, Round 3 wrote:1. Rudolf Schottlaender was one of the first people to perform this task, which was later carried out by the tandem of Franz Hessel and Walter Benjamin. More recently, Christopher Prendergast headed a seven-person team devoted to performing this task. Richard Howard, who is currently in the process of doing this, changed the opening line to (*) “Time and again, I have gone to bed early.” D. J. Enright and Terence Kilmartin revised the work of the most notable man to do this, C. K. Scott Moncrieff, who chose a quotation from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30 for the title. FTP, name this activity wherein a novel beginning with ► Swann’s Way is rendered into another language.
ANSWER: translate In Search of Lost Time [accept clear-knowledge equivalents; accept translate A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu, translate Remembrance of Things Past, or translate Marcel Proust] (2)
My girlfriend with a translation degree disagrees with this being labeled a translation question. This is an application of translation rather than the theory behind it, sort of like how computer science students wouldn't consider software as true comp sci.

Translation theory is about the connections between languages and optimizing machine translation, and similar to linguistics. I found a passable example in the 2005 Terrapin, with a tossup on "computational linguistics".

A translation theory syllabus I found (covering concepts my girlfriend understands) is at: http://www.helsinki.fi/~chesterm/TransTheory.html
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Cheynem »

There was a tossup on Swedenborgians at last year's RMPFest that used Johnny Appleseed as a clue. It was pretty cool.

Another thing that I can't remember hearing about is non current event questions on the space program/astronauts.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Theory Of The Leisure Flask »

Cheynem wrote:Folklore: I can think of a lot of good crap for American folklore alone.
Do people find it acceptable to include folklore (Paul Bunyan, Baba Yaga, that sort of stuff) as an occasional question in the myth category?
Whig's Boson wrote:To criticize my own quizbowl team, consider the 2009 HFT's bonus about the Copenhagen Conference. A few years from now, some high school team is going to be practicing on that packet, and they are going to hear that bonus. And they will not get very many points on it. Why? Because nobody will care about the Copenhagen Conference in a few years. It accomplished nothing and will be replaced by another conference-of-the-year (in Mexico City, I believe). The team hearing that bonus in the future will be bored and frustrated.

However, had that instead been a bonus on something with latent importance, somebody might remember it. To keep going back to the same example, Nicholas Sarkozy is probably going to be remembered after he leaves office. “Modern World” transforms into history over time, and thus remains interesting and askable.


I don't know, I think Copenhagen will age better than you fear; people still know about the Kyoto Protocol, after all.

I think it's well and good to focus on asking for things likely to retain their relevance many years from now; however I would submit that if "current events/modern world" questions are replacing trash, then IMO you do have the luxury of occasionally asking about things which may not age quite as well. Now, if you're trying to write a question on recent events for history, then much stricter scrutiny would be called for.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Sun Devil Student »

Whig's Boson wrote: The 2000's saw the exclusion of so-called “Colvin Science” from the mACF canon. The 5/5 Science distribution is now strictly limited to the answers that a relatively small cabal of science majors/science grad students deem to be “real.” Well, if you are still interested in things like dinosaurs, geologic periods, landforms, ecology, etc., why not put it in “Your Choice”?
Wait... ecology isn't a real science? I thought ecology was biology, which is part of the 5/5 science in the ACF distribution.

Also, wouldn't things like geologic periods or landforms go under "earth science" (the current posted ACF distribution has earth science and astronomy sharing a 0/1 or 1/0)? And the dinosaurs, from a scientific standpoint, would be paleontology, so either earth science or biology depending on what mood the question takes... right?
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Important Bird Area »

I think Bruce's original post was a bit harsh on the definition of "Colvin Science." It's fine to use clues about things scientists actually study- a lot of the hostility to questions like this (especially taxonomy and the geologic time scale) was that they did a poor job of rewarding science knowledge and were often frauded by players with limited experience in the subject.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Jesus vs. Dragons »

I genuinely like the ideas Bruce posed, but the only qualm I have with it is that it seems to be better suited to the college level, with little to no application in high school. While this was probably Bruce's target audience, I hope he can perhaps elaborate on this for me. As for major-specific questions, I generally think that is a very bad idea. I do not think a team must have a "specialist" on their team to convert a tossup.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by ValenciaQBowl »

Do people find it acceptable to include folklore (Paul Bunyan, Baba Yaga, that sort of stuff) as an occasional question in the myth category?
I write a folklore question or two every year for Delta Burke. This year I had a Paul Bunyan toss-up, and I've done Pecos Bill and similar figures (including Baba Yaga) in the past. Not only are such figures now legitimate areas of academic inquiry, they're part of the cultural fabric of a nation. And even better they're usually convertible by new players.

I'd probably avoid writing on such characters for a high-level tournament, but they seem perfectly acceptable for other sets.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Theory Of The Leisure Flask wrote: Do people find it acceptable to include folklore (Paul Bunyan, Baba Yaga, that sort of stuff) as an occasional question in the myth category?
Baba Yaga is a staple of the mythology distribution at lower-difficulty tournaments like EFT. But American folklore like Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, etc. doesn't seem to come up at all. I'd feel uncomfortable including it in a tournament as RMP.

But yeah, folklore seems like another interesting thing that could be written on as Your Choice.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Theory Of The Leisure Flask »

Whig's Boson wrote:Baba Yaga is a staple of the mythology distribution at lower-difficulty tournaments like EFT. But American folklore like Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, etc. doesn't seem to come up at all. I'd feel uncomfortable including it in a tournament as RMP.
What exactly is the reason for this disparity, and/or the justification for perpetuating it? I fail to see why folklore from other countries is OK for the myth distro, but American folklore isn't.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

It seems that prior to very recent times, people only knew Slavic mythology from classical music. Thus, Chernobog, Baba Yaga, etc. was people idea of Slavic myth. Then Perun, Svarog, Dazhbog, etc. were discovered.

There are also primitive cultures who never developed true mythologies like the Romans or Norse did, and if we want to tossup them, we need to ask about their folklore.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Lagotto Romagnolo »

bt_green_warbler wrote:It's fine to use clues about things scientists actually study- a lot of the hostility to questions like this (especially taxonomy and the geologic time scale) was that they did a poor job of rewarding science knowledge and were often frauded by players with limited experience in the subject.
Yeah, back in high school when I wrote occasional science questions for practice, they would often end up as list questions. Taxonomy, by its very nature, is always at risk of that.
Whig's Boson wrote:The 2000's saw the exclusion of so-called “Colvin Science” from the mACF canon. The 5/5 Science distribution is now strictly limited to the answers that a relatively small cabal of science majors/science grad students deem to be “real.” Well, if you are still interested in things like dinosaurs, geologic periods, landforms, ecology, etc., why not put it in “Your Choice”?
I'm trying to pin down what it is these things have in common that lends itself well to bad quizbowl....
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Nothing in my posts should be construed as apologism for list tossups.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Lagotto Romagnolo »

Whig's Boson wrote:Nothing in my posts should be construed as apologism for list tossups.
Of course not. What I'm saying is that taxonomy is hard to write well.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by cvdwightw »

Sun Devil Student wrote:Also, wouldn't things like geologic periods or landforms go under "earth science" (the current posted ACF distribution has earth science and astronomy sharing a 0/1 or 1/0)? And the dinosaurs, from a scientific standpoint, would be paleontology, so either earth science or biology depending on what mood the question takes... right?
There's also "1/1 Other Science" to fill - I certainly wouldn't have a problem with any of this stuff showing up in that 1/1 "your choice science." What I think people get upset about is so-called "science history" that contains no science and very little history (legitimate history of science/"intellectual history" is something that I think Bruce failed to mention in his list of "your choice" topics), especially the science biography questions that don't tell you why the scientist being biographied is important.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Stained Diviner »

TheLessFamousEthan wrote:I genuinely like the ideas Bruce posed, but the only qualm I have with it is that it seems to be better suited to the college level, with little to no application in high school. While this was probably Bruce's target audience, I hope he can perhaps elaborate on this for me.
"Your Choice" is generally only used for mACF packet-submission events, which is why this thread is much more applicable to college. If you are thinking about writing questions for a high school tournament, then you have some control over the distribution, especially at the edges, and there would be nothing wrong with having 1/1 "My Choice" that included some of the topics raised in this thread.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Jesus vs. Dragons »

Shcool wrote:
TheLessFamousEthan wrote:I genuinely like the ideas Bruce posed, but the only qualm I have with it is that it seems to be better suited to the college level, with little to no application in high school. While this was probably Bruce's target audience, I hope he can perhaps elaborate on this for me.
"Your Choice" is generally only used for mACF packet-submission events, which is why this thread is much more applicable to college. If you are thinking about writing questions for a high school tournament, then you have some control over the distribution, especially at the edges, and there would be nothing wrong with having 1/1 "My Choice" that included some of the topics raised in this thread.
I am pretty sure that a bonus on "Real World" things mentioned on here, as well as the "Other Thought" category, would not go over well at a high school tournament. While you might be able to get 10 for Richard Dawkins from 50 percent of the teams, anything after that would fail to be converted. The "Excluded Science" category seems perfectly plausible as most high schoolers do know these things. They just seem to be more along the lines of niche categories that would cause frustration.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by grapesmoker »

My feelings on this thread are mixed (I like the idea of "modern world" but not much else) but I'll just note that there is no problem with folklore questions going into the myth category and I don't think there ever was.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Susan »

RE/geologic eras--these make for perfectly acceptable science questions if you do them right, and if you don't think they're coming up under science than you haven't been listening. I, at least, have written a handful of geologic era tossups and similar bonuses over the past couple of years from the prescriptivist perspective that everyone, particularly molecular biologists, could stand to know a little more about evolution and natural history; they can be earth science or bio depending on how you write them, but they are unquestionably appropriate for the science distribution if you write them properly.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by No Rules Westbrook »

This is a really thoughtful and well-done thread. I have no problem with any of the mentioned ideas coming up as "Your Choice," since we usually have 1/1 trash filling that role and so (for most casual tournaments - i.e. not ACF Nats, notably) we accept that there can be 1/1 per packet of fluff.

I would point out that, practically speaking, most people are probably just more amused by and prone to writing their favorite ilk of trash, so I'm not sure how much play the above stuff will get.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

No Rules Westbrook wrote:This is a really thoughtful and well-done thread. I have no problem with any of the mentioned ideas coming up as "Your Choice," since we usually have 1/1 trash filling that role and so (for most casual tournaments - i.e. not ACF Nats, notably) we accept that there can be 1/1 per packet of fluff.

I would point out that, practically speaking, most people are probably just more amused by and prone to writing their favorite ilk of trash, so I'm not sure how much play the above stuff will get.
In the future, there might emerge an "mNAQT" style, which might have larger packets and thus we might see "Your Choice" as its own category apart from Trash. Or Geography might be killed and replaced with Your Choice (however much I would oppose that). I also hope that, one day, there is a reaction against the "lulz, I like comic books and video games, so here are 15 tossups on them" thing that too many contemporary editors are able to get away with.

So even if Your Choice is never written now, there is some value in having a "Your Choice in exile" movement for the day in the future when it might be needed.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Alejandro »

Are engineering concepts (i.e. aliasing/folding, specific types of filters) included in any other category or would those also fall under My Choice?
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by bsmith »

Alejandro wrote:Are engineering concepts (i.e. aliasing/folding, specific types of filters) included in any other category or would those also fall under My Choice?
Several engineering concepts would fall under "other science", especially in chemical, mechanical, and electrical. Others (take the civil engineering examples of "landfill" or "truss" or "traffic") would get relegated to "your choice". I would divide "science" and "your choice" based on how related it is to physics, chemistry, math, and biology.

Separately, my brief investigations seem to suggest that nursing has bonus-able (if not tossup-able) topics, varying from social science (eg: epidemiology; schools of nursing thought) to biology & medicine. Any nursing students out there?
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Lagotto Romagnolo »

bsmith wrote: Several engineering concepts would fall under "other science", especially in chemical, mechanical, and electrical. Others (take the civil engineering examples of "landfill" or "truss" or "traffic") would get relegated to "your choice". I would divide "science" and "your choice" based on how related it is to physics, chemistry, math, and biology.
Yeah, I think aliasing and filters definitely fall into the "other" science category as part of electrical engineering. For stuff like landfills and trusses, though, you may need to decide on a case-by-case basis.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Cheynem »

I was watching an old Jeopardy episode today and another Your Choice thing that sprang to mind was sort of a "Newsmakers of the Past" type thing. For example, where would a tossup on John Glenn go? Dale Carnegie? Jacqueline Kennedy? These people have some level of historical importance, but it's hard to ask about them in the American History distro and Trash doesn't seem right either.

Note that I would only promote 1/1 Your Choice using these criteria for distributions minus the 1/1 Trash, as trash and your choice would result in too much kerfluffle.

If I have the will and time (unlikely on both counts), the Bruce Arthur Memorial Your Choice Tournament is coming to a Minnesota Open side event next year.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by dxdtdemon »

Since non-pre-determined party conventions pop up in packets, wouldn't it be reasonable to include John Glenn in a question about the 1984 Democratic convention?
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

I don't think "1984 Democratic Convention" is an answer whose time has come yet, but history questions on things from that era are not unheard of. I wrote some 1990's and even 2000's history for my various history tournaments (answers like Boris Yeltsin, 9/11, Hugo Chavez, etc.) and as far as I can tell they were well received.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by grapesmoker »

Before you all go nuts writing questions on "traffic" and "landfills" please take a minute to consider whether anyone can actually get them. I think these concepts, while many of them are interesting and worthy of being written about, are almost certainly going to work out better as bonus parts or as clues for other better-known concepts.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Jesus vs. Dragons »

grapesmoker wrote:Before you all go nuts writing questions on "traffic" and "landfills" please take a minute to consider whether anyone can actually get them. I think these concepts, while many of them are interesting and worthy of being written about, are almost certainly going to work out better as bonus parts or as clues for other better-known concepts.
This was why I felt that this would only be applicable to the college game. No one can reasonably expect 90 percent of a field to convert a tossup on things taught in engineering, communications, or law school. These things are so niche and and only someone in those fields would be expected to answer a tossup or even an easy bonus part. We can all agree that it should not be required to be a French literature major to get a tossup on a French author, so why would a writer expect that for a more common major?
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Yes, we get that high schoolers know fewer things that college students. Any responsible writer restricts his answer space when writing HS tossups. This is not a concern or phenomenon unique to any particular sub-distribution.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by grapesmoker »

TheLessFamousEthan wrote:This was why I felt that this would only be applicable to the college game. No one can reasonably expect 90 percent of a field to convert a tossup on things taught in engineering, communications, or law school. These things are so niche and and only someone in those fields would be expected to answer a tossup or even an easy bonus part. We can all agree that it should not be required to be a French literature major to get a tossup on a French author, so why would a writer expect that for a more common major?
Well, this discussion is about the college game. Anyway, there are lots of things that people know from other disciplines. As a physicist who does a lot of programming and electronics work, I know a fair bit about both of those things, though not as much as someone who actually majored in that. Presumably, a question on some engineering or CS thing would discriminate between our respective knowledge levels. Most of the topics we seem to be discussing right now may not be niche as answer choices (i.e. you could get almost anyone to say the word "traffic") but they're tough because most people in the game know relatively little about them so tossups on these things would end up being reduced to buzzer races. What you want to do instead is use information from these fields as clues. For example, civil engineering people use a lot of finite element analysis for modeling; I don't know all that much specific terminology from CE but I don know a few things about FEA, as do many other people in the sciences, so you're better off linking those things with the answer being "FEA" than trying to write tossups on specifically CE things, even if people can get them by the end. Take the aforementioned "truss" as an example: most people know what trusses are but they don't know all that much about them. So instead of making "truss" your answer, you could write a bonus that said something like, "Answer these questions about trusses, for 10 points each." and then proceed to ask for Young's modulus or what have you. Point being, you gotta be judicious in your construction so you don't end up frustrating people.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Jesus vs. Dragons »

Whig's Boson wrote:Yes, we get that high schoolers know fewer things that college students. Any responsible writer restricts his answer space when writing HS tossups. This is not a concern or phenomenon unique to any particular sub-distribution.
since this is in the collegiate discussion sub forum (which I did not realize), I can see how my posts could seem pretty dumb.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Ethnic history of the Vilnius region »

TheLessFamousEthan wrote: This was why I felt that this would only be applicable to the college game. No one can reasonably expect 90 percent of a field to convert a tossup on things taught in engineering, communications, or law school. These things are so niche and and only someone in those fields would be expected to answer a tossup or even an easy bonus part.
To sort of expand on what Jerry posted, there is plenty you can ask about that is taught in law school (besides historic Supreme Court cases) that could be reasonable tossup answers that would be well converted. "Contracts" has come up as an answer before, and things like "jurisdiction," "burdens of proof," "wills," "juries," etc. could be potentially decent tossup answers (if they haven't been tossups before already) that any team paying attention could answer by the end. I think they could be written with accessible lead-in and middle clues so as to reward teams with deeper knowledge as well.
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Re: Let's Talk About "Your Choice"

Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

Yeah, I always laugh about how I am completely horrible at quizbowl law questions, because quizbowl only ever asks about first amendment cases. I will graduate from law school without ever taking a class about the first amendment, and odds are that, unless I work for the government, I will never do anything relating to the first amendment, even if I practice law for the rest of my life.

Quizbowl law is basically "here are some cases that are politically important". This is probably a good thing, though, as far as the 4/4 History distro goes.

There are occasionally tossups on things like jurisdiction or even "justiciability" in the social science category, and I think that's somewhat misplaced. "Your Choice" might be a better home for such things.
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