PB 2017: Specific Questions Discussion
Posted: Sun Oct 22, 2017 4:28 pm
This thread is for discussing specific questions from Penn Bowl 2017. Any commentary regarding answer choice, difficulty, clarity, etc. is welcome.
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Must have been a moderator error.Penn Bowl Packet 11 wrote:[10] Name this idiosyncratic Romanian conductor who became the conductor of Berlin Phil after Leo Borchard was killed at a traffic stop. This spiritual conductor is probably best known for his distaste for recording performances and rebuilding the Berlin Philharmonic after WWII.
ANSWER: Sergiu Celibidache
I'm not surprised that the Canadians murdered the Canadian Constitution tossup, but I think it is about correct in pyramidality for the American audiences. The Notwithstanding Clause could possibly be swapped with the next clue, since I wasn't sure what its relative famousness was with respect to the next clue.Penn Bowl 2017 Packet 11 wrote:16. Due to anger about missile testing, Peter Greyson dumped red paint on a physical copy of this document. Parts of this document can be overridden under the “notwithstanding clause.” This document has an amending formula of 7/50 (seven-fifty), and its interpretations evolve under the “Living Tree Doctrine.” The “Beau risqué” strategy supported changes in this document that Rene Levesque (le-VEK) had earlier tried to veto. A crisis over it was triggered due to the use of “ministers without portfolio” when Julian (*) Byng refused to dissolve Parliament. This document’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms was passed as part of its 1982 repatriation. The Meech Lake Accord and Charlottetown Accord were both failed attempts to amend this document. For 10 points, name this document that provides the framework for the governance of a country with a capital at Ottawa.
ANSWER: Canadian Constitution [or Constitution Act 1982; Constitution Act 1867; Canada Act 1982; accept Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms before mention]
Ok, I believe that. Would it be better if I had _Champollion_ as the hard part?Muriel Axon wrote:I wouldn't otherwise comment on an individual bonus's difficulty, but since Christopher brought it up -- I think you (Jason) are, in fact, overestimating how hard "translating hieroglyphics" is.
That would certainly be better. My intuition about how hard _Champollion_ would be (given all the most obvious clues, stated plainly) is much weaker than my intuition about the part as-is, though my n=1 experience still suggests that it would be easy for a hard part.Great End wrote:Ok, I believe that. Would it be better if I had _Champollion_ as the hard part?Muriel Axon wrote:I wouldn't otherwise comment on an individual bonus's difficulty, but since Christopher brought it up -- I think you (Jason) are, in fact, overestimating how hard "translating hieroglyphics" is.
I'm a Canadian law school student, so take with grain of salt, but I think I would swap those two clues.Great End wrote:Glad you enjoyed the set, Christopher.
The ancient Egyptian history bonus was intended to have Memphis as middle and translating hieroglyphics as hard. I don't have much real knowledge of Egyptian archaeology, so it is certainly possible that the hard part was not difficult enough. I don't think it is quite as easy as you seem to have considered it--it is almost certainly at least harder than a middle part--but I will think about swapping it out for something harder.
I'm not surprised that the Canadians murdered the Canadian Constitution tossup, but I think it is about correct in pyramidality for the American audiences. The Notwithstanding Clause could possibly be swapped with the next clue, since I wasn't sure what its relative famousness was with respect to the next clue.Penn Bowl 2017 Packet 11 wrote:16. Due to anger about missile testing, Peter Greyson dumped red paint on a physical copy of this document. Parts of this document can be overridden under the “notwithstanding clause.” This document has an amending formula of 7/50 (seven-fifty), and its interpretations evolve under the “Living Tree Doctrine.” The “Beau risqué” strategy supported changes in this document that Rene Levesque (le-VEK) had earlier tried to veto. A crisis over it was triggered due to the use of “ministers without portfolio” when Julian (*) Byng refused to dissolve Parliament. This document’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms was passed as part of its 1982 repatriation. The Meech Lake Accord and Charlottetown Accord were both failed attempts to amend this document. For 10 points, name this document that provides the framework for the governance of a country with a capital at Ottawa.
ANSWER: Canadian Constitution [or Constitution Act 1982; Constitution Act 1867; Canada Act 1982; accept Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms before mention]
I wasn't actually sure exactly how famous Margaret MacMillan was. I had read her book on Versailles in a class, but I was afraid that the first clue was too obscure and that I was universalizing my experience. I'm fine with people getting that tossup on the first line if they knew that Margaret MacMillan wrote a book about Versailles. I don't think it ought to be especially fraudable given that it could be any peace treaty/conference.
You're right that there wasn't a ton of geography. We only had 2/2 geography, of which one tossup was indeed the Thames tossup. The Geo and Current Events had to share a 1/1 slot with Trash, which is why it got a bit of short shrift.
If I remember correctly, the first line refereed to packets of phonons [these things] being exchanged, resulting in second sound (a phenomenon that can happen in some solids as well as superfluids). A process happening by the exchange of "packets of superfluids" doesn't make any physical sense, so the clue doesn't apply to superlfuids. This was also negged in my room, and I think the clue was a bit neg-baity since second sound is widely clued for superfluids.techno wrote:Can I see the tossup on phonons? I wanted to see what made the first clue phonons and not superfluids. Thanks!
I made this exact same neg. I think Graham's recollection is basically correct.a bird wrote:If I remember correctly, the first line refereed to packets of phonons [these things] being exchanged, resulting in second sound (a phenomenon that can happen in some solids as well as superfluids). A process happening by the exchange of "packets of superfluids" doesn't make any physical sense, so the clue doesn't apply to superlfuids. This was also negged in my room, and I think the clue was a bit neg-baity since second sound is widely clued for superfluids.techno wrote:Can I see the tossup on phonons? I wanted to see what made the first clue phonons and not superfluids. Thanks!
Oh shoot you're right I used the British title of the book. I'll revise the line to "Margaret MacMillan’s most famous book, subtitled "Six Months that Changed the World," is about this event."cruzeiro wrote:
I thought using Margaret MacMillan was fine as a lead-in - can't speak to America, but at least in this country I think it likely someone interested in modern history would encounter her (I read her book on Nixon in China for a high school class). My only comment is that her book is literally titled "Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World" as opposed to "Peacemakers" in various editions (from ISBN codes, it looks like Peacemakers is the title used in UK editions, while this side of the Atlantic is generally Paris 1919)...which confused the heck out of me hearing it live.
Overall, I have no complaints - this was a fun set.
Penn Bowl 2017 Packet 8 wrote:15. With Sasaki and Ubeda, this scientist proposed the idea of “pacemaker islands” that restore genetic diversity in models of host-parasite evolution. This scientist used the life table of Taiwanese people to show how the forces of natural selection scale over age in one article. This scientist posited that secondary sexual ornamentation is a signal of disease and parasite resistance with Marlene Zuk. One result named for this scientist is usually formulated as “C is less than r times B”, where r is the (*) coefficient of relatedness. That result, first published in “The genetical evolution of social behavior”, was summarized by J. B. S. Haldane as he’d die for two brothers or eight cousins. For 10 points, name this evolutionary biologist whose namesake rule is used to quantify kin selection.
ANSWER: William Donald Hamilton
Penn Bowl 2017 Packet 6 wrote:19. Richard Garner and Bernard Rosen categorize problems in this field of study as semantic, ontological, or epistemological. J.L. Mackie used the “argument from queerness” to argue for an error-theoretic view of this field, challenging rival views in this field like emotivism. A central question in this discipline comes from a text about a man who allowed a murderer to die in a ditch from exposure; that is the (*) “Euthyphro Problem,” which asks, do the gods love what is pious because it is pious, or is the pious pious because the gods love it? Different stances in this field include naturalism and skepticism. Non-realists in this field argue either that moral claims are not truth-apt or that they are truth-apt, but all false. For 10 points, name this field of ethics more abstract than either normative or applied ethics.
ANSWER: metaethics [prompt on “ethics,” generously prompt on “metaphysics”; prompt on more specific issues like “moral epistemology” or “moral psychology”; do not prompt on viewpoints like “moral nihilism”]
There was a bonus on Beethoven's 5th, but Mozart did not appear in the tournament other than a mention in the Sinfonia Concertante bonus. I couldn't think of any good late clues on Weber without cluing his operatic works, but you're right that it skews the distribution somewhat.cwasims wrote: I thought there was a lot of early music in this set (Purcell, Corelli, L'homme armé bonus, two Bach bonuses iirc). Although important, I think it’s slightly over-represented given everything else to cover. In particular, I don’t seem to recall much specifically on either Mozart or Beethoven besides a few clues here and there. There was definitely some good opera content, although the first round essentially had 2/1 opera given that the giveaway for Weber was about opera.
Penn Bowl Packet 8 wrote: 10. Density fluctuations in packets of these entities result in wavelike conduction in a process known as second sound. Scattering of these entities in an inelastic manner increases thermal resistivity at high temperatures and is known as umklapp. For a basis of two atoms in the primitive cell, the type of these entities with a nonzero frequency at the center of the first Brillouin zone is known as their (*) optical type. Multiplying the density of states of these entities by their energy, integrating up to their cutoff frequency, and differentiating gives a temperature-cubed dependence of heat capacity at low temperatures in the Debye model. For 10 points, name these quasiparticles which correspond to the vibrational modes of a lattice.
ANSWER: phonons
Penn Bowl Packet 3 wrote: 4. Harold Demsetz’s “Towards a Theory of Property Rights” theorizes that in the absence of these entities, the exchange of property results in an efficient outcome. For 10 points each:
[10] Name these things whose absence is also felt in the Coase Theorem. Coase himself later said his theorem didn’t apply in the real world because you can’t describe a world without these.
ANSWER: transaction costs
[10] The Coase Theorem made its first appearance in “The Problem of Social Cost,” an extremely highly cited article in this university’s law review. This university’s namesake school of economics included Milton Friedman.
ANSWER: The University of Chicago [or UChicago; or U of C]
[10] This situation occurs when external costs borne by a third party are shifted back to the party that created them. Coase argued that low transaction costs make outside intervention to accomplish this unnecessary.
ANSWER: internalize the externalities [accept word forms for both words; accept phrase variations like the externalities are internalized; prompt on “internalize” alone]
Okay, the rest of this question clues good and important things, and of course seeing Hamilton-Zuk clued gave me great joy, as Penn Bowl is unwittingly playing into my devious plan to make UMN's EEB department dominate ecology / evolution quizbowl. But digging up the paper this clue is based on -- it only has 44 citations?! Why do this? Hamilton did so much important work -- his classic paper on non-Fisherian sex ratios, his model of dispersal with Bob May, etc. -- I'm not sure why it made sense to dig up this Proc B paper that nobody has heard of. Unless it's a recent, high-profile discovery, I don't think it ever makes much sense to cite a specific paper in EEB, or probably any other science, with so few citations.Penn Bowl 2017 Packet 8 wrote:15. With Sasaki and Ubeda, this scientist proposed the idea of “pacemaker islands” that restore genetic diversity in models of host-parasite evolution.
In hindsight, this tossup is probably a lot harder than it should be; I couldn't clue Concerto for Orchestra or Scheherazade due to both of these being mentioned somewhere else, but I'll see if I can add some more middle clues.Penn Bowl Packet 4 wrote: 12. The third movement rondo of a trio sonata for this instrument, oboe, and piano was modeled after Saint-Saens's second piano concerto; that work was composed by Francis Poulenc. John Williams wrote a concerto called The Five Sacred Trees for Judith LeClair, who is currently the New York Phil’s principal chair for this instrument. Prokofiev transcribed the Humoresque Scherzo from his Ten Pieces for Piano for four of these instruments, and a (*) lengthy melody by this instrument can be heard in the entirety of the fourth movement of Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony. This instrument introduces the full main theme representing the walking brooms in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. For 10 points, name this double-reed woodwind instrument that plays an unusually high solo at the beginning of The Rite of Spring.
ANSWER: bassoon
I didn't write this, but most of the middle clues are on Manon.Penn Bowl Packet 1 wrote: 5. An aria by this composer was the inspiration for the lyrics of “O Superman” by Laurie Anderson. In one of this composer’s operas, a man demands that the protagonist dispose of a statuette of Eros before they are nearly stoned to death. In another of this man’s operas, three actresses reappear in various scenes, including a night of gambling that goes awry. The protagonist of that opera sings “Adieu, notre petite table” when she decides to betray her lover. That opera by this man ends with the death of a young woman in the arms of her former lover, (*) des Grieux, before she is to be deported. For the intermezzo of one of his operas, this composer symbolized the thoughts of a titular courtesan on the verge of conversion in an oft-performed concert piece called Meditation. For 10 points, name this composer of operas such as Thais (ta-is) and Manon.
ANSWER: Jules Massenet
I'll say that the bassoon tossup did seem hard to me, but I'm not a great music player, so take from that what you will.Wes Janson wrote:In hindsight, this tossup is probably a lot harder than it should be; I couldn't clue Concerto for Orchestra or Scheherazade due to both of these being mentioned somewhere else, but I'll see if I can add some more middle clues.Penn Bowl Packet 4 wrote: 12. The third movement rondo of a trio sonata for this instrument, oboe, and piano was modeled after Saint-Saens's second piano concerto; that work was composed by Francis Poulenc. John Williams wrote a concerto called The Five Sacred Trees for Judith LeClair, who is currently the New York Phil’s principal chair for this instrument. Prokofiev transcribed the Humoresque Scherzo from his Ten Pieces for Piano for four of these instruments, and a (*) lengthy melody by this instrument can be heard in the entirety of the fourth movement of Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony. This instrument introduces the full main theme representing the walking brooms in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. For 10 points, name this double-reed woodwind instrument that plays an unusually high solo at the beginning of The Rite of Spring.
ANSWER: bassoon
I didn't write this, but most of the middle clues are on Manon.Penn Bowl Packet 1 wrote: 5. An aria by this composer was the inspiration for the lyrics of “O Superman” by Laurie Anderson. In one of this composer’s operas, a man demands that the protagonist dispose of a statuette of Eros before they are nearly stoned to death. In another of this man’s operas, three actresses reappear in various scenes, including a night of gambling that goes awry. The protagonist of that opera sings “Adieu, notre petite table” when she decides to betray her lover. That opera by this man ends with the death of a young woman in the arms of her former lover, (*) des Grieux, before she is to be deported. For the intermezzo of one of his operas, this composer symbolized the thoughts of a titular courtesan on the verge of conversion in an oft-performed concert piece called Meditation. For 10 points, name this composer of operas such as Thais (ta-is) and Manon.
ANSWER: Jules Massenet
This was on me. I forgot about his work on sex ratios, didnt know the dispersal thing, and that paper was interesting.Muriel Axon wrote:Okay, the rest of this question clues good and important things, and of course seeing Hamilton-Zuk clued gave me great joy, as Penn Bowl is unwittingly playing into my devious plan to make UMN's EEB department dominate ecology / evolution quizbowl. But digging up the paper this clue is based on -- it only has 44 citations?! Why do this? Hamilton did so much important work -- his classic paper on non-Fisherian sex ratios, his model of dispersal with Bob May, etc. -- I'm not sure why it made sense to dig up this Proc B paper that nobody has heard of. Unless it's a recent, high-profile discovery, I don't think it ever makes much sense to cite a specific paper in EEB, or probably any other science, with so few citations.
I think adding the word "embedded" at the two starred locations would clear up the ambiguity.The Hopf fibration is a map from a sphere * in this many dimensions to a sphere in one fewer dimensions [...] The volume of a unit sphere * in this many dimensions is pi squared over two.
Yeah, this happened in at least one other science part--it may have been packet 4 bonus 8 part 1 on _restriction enzymes_, but the question said "this class of enzymes" and the team just said "restriction." (I don't remember if that was the exact scenario, but it was something analogous.)t-bar wrote:I2. In packet 8, bonus 4, part 2, the underlining should be "Weber's law," not "Weber's law," and going by Wikipedia, "Weber-Fechner law" should also be on the answerline. I know this is obvious to most experienced mods, but our reader was tripped up when I just said "Weber." If this is a consistent underlining choice throughout the set (I haven't checked thoroughly, but I see that ideal gas law is also underlined in packet 5, bonus 5.2), it should be changed.
The first clue is about Rouche's theorem, which isn't strictly about going around a boundary to get information about poles, but does have the general complex-analytic flavor of boundary conditions telling you about things in the interior. That being said, a. it seems unlikely to me that someone would have that intuition codified and linked to complex analysis in their head, but not be familiar with the statement of Rouche's theorem and b. I think that kind of knowledge is deep enough to warrant being in the first line.Penn Bowl, Packet 1 wrote:One theorem in this field states that under certain hypotheses, if a function g is strictly smaller than a function f on the boundary of a region, then f and f plus g have the same number of zeroes in that region. The fundamental theorem of algebra can be proven as a corollary of a theorem from this field by arguing that the reciprocal of a polynomial with no zeroes would have to be bounded, and thus (*) constant. The main objects of study in this field satisfy the relations u sub x equals v sub y and u sub y equals negative v sub x. Those are the Cauchy-Riemann equations, which determine when a function is analytic, or equivalently holomorphic. For 10 points, name this branch of mathematics that extends the results of real analysis to functions over C.
ANSWER: complex analysis [prompt on just “analysis”]
Penn Bowl, Packet 12 wrote: Virgil Thomson infamously dismissed Sibelius’s symphony of this number as “vulgar” and “self-indulgent” in his debut review for the New York Herald Tribune. The second movement of that symphony of this number was inspired by an earlier sketch called “Christus.” Boulez wrote this many books of Structures for two pianos. It’s not twelve, but Shostakovich’s symphony of this number was composed to celebrate (*) the anniversary of the October Revolution. One symphony of this number uses a harp and a clarinet to imitate the chiming of Big Ben; that work is Ralph (raif) Vaughn Williams’s A London Symphony. For 10 points, name this number of instruments that play in pairs in Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra.
ANSWER: two
That's me - I've taken two complex analysis courses, but both were at the introductory level (one was a part of a general analysis sequence) so we didn't get to much of the intermediate stuff.a. it seems unlikely to me that someone would have that intuition codified and linked to complex analysis in their head, but not be familiar with the statement of Rouche's theorem.
Yeah, I wasn't complaining about the question, I just wanted to know what theorem they were talking about/what the rest of the toss-up looked like.b. I think that kind of knowledge is deep enough to warrant being in the first line.
The former. _amusement parks_ was a film tossup in other arts, and _Big Short_ was a movie tossup in trash.15.366 wrote:In the finals packet, was the "amusement parks" under Misc Arts AV: Film, and "The Big Short" was under Trash, or was "The Big Short" considered film and the amusement parks question was actually literary clues but I recognized a clue from Strangers On A Train as filmed by Hitchcock?
I agree--this threw me off too, since the SN2 of alcohols to alkyl halides occurs in basic conditions. Of the three clues in the bonus part:dnlwng wrote:Could I see the bonus part on “alcohols”? I am aware that the pKa of an alcohol was given, but I’m pretty sure the Williamson synthesis uses an alkoxide, which wasn’t accepted.
I'll note I did exactly this, buzzing in with "ethics" on "argument from queerness", and could only disbelievingly produce "moral realism" upon being prompted. The question ended up going dead against a strong team.Muriel Axon wrote: I think the question on meta-ethics played poorly. I can't imagine someone buzzing early -- say, on the Mackie clue -- and producing "meta-ethics" without at least first being prompted.
There's a few clues here that I think really need to be a lot more specific, in a way that suggests to me that the writer relied on people using associations and reasoning the question out to arrive at the correct answer, rather than knowing the information being discussed.Round 11 wrote: This person wrote a treatise called “The Only Way” where he laid out methods, like teaching songs, that he would later use to pacify the “Land of War.” This person created a settlement at Cumana that was undercut by a slave raid conducted by Gonzalo Ocampo. Laws sponsored by this non-monarch led to the revolt of Gonzalo Pizarro. This person engineered the replacement of the Laws of Burgos with the “New Laws.” Some historians blame this person for writing the earliest works perpetuating the (*) “Black Legend.” This person argued against Juan de Sepulveda’s claims that a certain group were “natural slaves” in the Valladolid Debate. Earlier, he was Bishop of Chiapas and Protector of the Indians. For 10 points, name this Dominican Friar who wrote of the Spanish brutality in the New World in his A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies.
ANSWER: Bartolome De Las Casas