New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Auroni »

Woody Paige wrote:
IHSA 2008-2009 Terms and Conditions wrote: Breakdown of Questions at all levels
of the IHSA State Final Series: The sixty (60)
questions, thirty (30) toss-up and thirty (30)
bonus questions, for each match throughout
the state series will consist of the following
specific number of questions in each category:
1. Science: Six (6) toss-up and six
(6) bonus questions per match.
2. Mathematics: Six (6) toss-up
and six (6) bonus questions per match.
3. Social Studies: Six (6) toss-up
and six (6) bonus questions per match.
4. Literature/Language Arts: Six
(6) toss-up and six (6) bonus questions per
match.
5. Fine Arts: Four (4) toss-up and
four (4) bonus questions per match.
6. Miscellaneous: Two (2) toss-up
and two (2) bonus questions per match.
7. All toss-up questions involving
calculation must be labeled.
8. There will be a maximum of eight
(8) toss-up and eight (8) bonus questions
involving calculation per match.
Note: There will be two (2) toss-up
and two (2) bonus replacement questions from
each category for each level of competition.

Categories and Sub-categories for
Toss-up and Bonus Questions: Designate
“Major” and “Minor” sub-categories in which
written questions will be selected. The bold
sub-categories are the major areas that the
majority of the questions from that category
will be selected.
1. Science
Biology
Chemistry
Physics

General science
Earth science
Astronomy
Health
2. Mathematics
Algebra
Geometry
Calculus
Trigonometry

General math
Analytic geometry
Programming and Scripting
3. Social Studies
Government
Geography
U.S. History
World History

Economics
Current events
Social Science (Psychology,
Philosophy, Sociology)
4. Language Arts
U.S. Literature
British Literature
World Literature and Mythology

Grammar/usage
Spelling
Vocabulary
Speech
5. Fine Arts
Art History
Music History
(mostly but not exclusively from the Common Practice Period 1600-1900)
Music Theory
Art Theory
Artistic Dance (dancing legends ,
choreographers, tap, jazz, modern,
ballroom, ballet)
Musical Theater (Broadway, off-
Broadway, classic musical cinema)
Architecture
6. Miscellaneous
Journalism
Sports
Technology
Agriculture
Family Consumer Science
Driver’s Ed.
Industrial arts
Pop culture
Consumer Ed.
Interdisciplinary
I won't argue with those who pursue "good quizbowl". It's a noble goal. But what you see above is the expectation of an IHSA State Series match. If you're marketing a tournament to the 99% of IL coaches that DON'T troll this board, they generally want tournaments that prepare their kids for State Series.
Folks, I had people complain about the pyramidal questions I used at the Barrington (MS) last year because that's not what we have in our State Series. That said, I'm plowing ahead with it again. Will I lose some teams? We'll see, but I take exception to those who question Reinstein's commitment to good quizbowl just because his distribution approximates a State Series event.
alright then, the IHSA state series distribution is bad. fix it.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by jonah »

:party: :party: :party: :party: :party: :party:
the tournament is done
:party: :party: :party: :party: :party: :party:
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Stained Diviner »

(Jonah is referring to writing, not playing or driving.)

New Trier has a Snow Day today, but the tournament is still on tomorrow. So far, there are no cancellations, but I won't be shocked when I get some. Northmont said that they are hitting the road at 9 AM Eastern Time.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by jonah »

Homewood-Flossmoor and Springfield are, last I heard, our only cancellations. There still might be more, I suppose.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Stained Diviner »

Questions and stats are up. Thanks to everybody who was there and/or wrote questions. Congrats to Auburn for taking the big trophy.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by jonah »

As Mr. Reinstein said, thanks to everyone: players, coaches, moderators, other staffers, and all the writers. I'm sure there is constructive criticism to be had; I'd like to hear it, whether privately or here.

Also, as I previously indicated, writing collaboration for this tournament was done mostly using MediaWiki, with some additional postprocessing done using Word, some random command-line utilities, and a Perl script I put together. I was very, very happy with how this setup worked out and would strongly recommend it to any large group of collaborators with at least one person having a reasonable amount of technical knowledge. If anyone wants to talk to me more about it and/or see the wiki, shoot me an email (jonah at jonahgreenthal dot com) and I'll be happy to explain more and show you the wiki.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by JackGlerum »

nevermind
Last edited by JackGlerum on Sat Dec 20, 2008 11:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by JackGlerum »

Also I thought that the increase in difficulty throughout the day was a pretty cool thing. I think Jonah said that every three rounds it got harder? Either way, the playoffs were pleasantly competitive because of this.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by at your pleasure »

The two packets I read look pretty good, aside from the stock clue on a certain painting that I have strong feelings about.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by BGSO »

The only complaint I have that I can remember is that the distribution of the rounds was anything but consistent, on multiple occasions there were comp bonuses and comp TU's matched together, which was kind of annoying, I think Carlo mentioned to us that you just randomized the TUs and bonuses so maybe next time make sure they don't match up like that?
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by jonah »

BGSO wrote:The only complaint I have that I can remember is that the distribution of the rounds was anything but consistent, on multiple occasions there were comp bonuses and comp TU's matched together, which was kind of annoying, I think Carlo mentioned to us that you just randomized the TUs and bonuses so maybe next time make sure they don't match up like that?
I was remiss in not making sure that there weren't computational tossups or bonuses consecutively, but as far as tossup-bonus matching I couldn't really do anything since the pairing depends on which tossups are converted.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Stained Diviner »

A lot of people contributed to this set, but special thanks goes to Jonah. Three weeks ago, I thought we were going to host a crappy tournament because we only had half the questions we needed and a lot of the questions we had needed work, but he wrote a bunch of questions, set up a wiki that made it very easy for us to edit questions, formatted everything, encouraged his UIUC teammates to write a few questions, and generally took charge. I'm not claiming that everything was perfect, because it wasn't, but at least there was a lot of good to go along with the bad, and at least the bad wasn't record-setting bad (unless referring to one of the Beatles as McCarthy breaks some kind of record). Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to actually see matches, which means I'm probably not the best judge of the questions anyways.

I was hoping that Jonah would give everyone access to the wiki so that people could see how well he set it up. He gave me two decent reasons not to do it, but hopefully he will do it anyways. At the least, let me say that if anybody is looking for a system to collaboratively write questions using the internet, you would be wise to contact him.

I'm grateful to everybody who contributed. Some of the contributors did not have a lot of experience, and their questions needed some editing and deleting, but there is no doubt that their contributions made this set better than it would have been and that they are intelligent people capable of making solid contributions. (Many of my questions also benefited from other people editing them.) I also want to thank the moderators, who I heard did a very good job, and the New Trier team members who spent the day running errands.

The distribution within each packet was pretty consistent. Each round had four math questions, almost always three of which were computational. There were 4/4 comp sci questions total spread throughout the nine rounds which were counted towards the math distribution. (We stayed pretty close to the IHSA distribution.) There also were a very small number of computer-related questions that were counted towards the miscellaneous distribution.

I do not know whether this tournament will exist in the same way next year. It started several years ago because Nick and Carlo begged me and were willing to do all the work, but they have moved on to better things, and my future team does not have the same commitment level. (That's not a knock on them--I never expected a Nick and Carlo to come along every year.) I have a few months to make a decision, and I'll have to talk to a few people first.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by cdcarter »

Shcool wrote:Questions and stats are up. Thanks to everybody who was there and/or wrote questions. Congrats to Auburn for taking the big trophy.
Can I mirror these at qbpackets?
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Siverus Snape »

I was going to suggest HSAPQ or a mirror for next year, but then I realized that you'll probably want to keep an IHSA-like distribution or at least computational math. How hard do you think it would be to cannibalize a set from another source and basically just write the math questions? Obviously, you'd have to downgrade the other subject areas appropriately, which might be tricky.

My own beef with IHSA distribution and computational math aside, I think that the tournament ran quite well and was both enjoyable and legitimate. Thank you (especially Jonah) for doing so much work, even at the last minute.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by pblessman »

Congratulations on a well-run tournament, as several people here have commented on the quality of this event! We went last year and we hope it will continue. If New Trier doesn't have the people to do it, hopefully the burden can be shared with some of the other IL powerhouses. I did have one question- I read through the wonderfully complex playoff structure whilst it was still posted on the NT website, but now that document is gone, and from the SQBS results I am having a hard time reconstructing why Auburn are the champions and Loyola A the runners-up, as they did not meet in the last match, AND Loyola won their only meeting earlier in the playoffs AND both teams have one loss in the playoffs... maybe this was some kind of double-elimination with the morning loss counting for Loyola A? But Loyola A finished on a win...
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

Nope, it's just that final finish was determined by total record. Auburn and Loyola were both 2-1 in the playoff round robin, but Auburn finished with one loss and Loyola with two, so Auburn won.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

The playoff structure wasn't really "wonderfully complex" when you parsed what it actually, was. After

The five 4-1 teams and all the 3-2 teams were seeded by a tiebreak of median score.

#1 5-0: BYE into playoff RR
#1 4-1: BYE into playoff RR
#2 4-1 vs #3 4-1: winner into playoff RR, loser into consolation RR.
#4 4-1 vs #5 4-1: winner into playoff RR, loser into consolation RR.
#1 3-2 vs #2 3-2: winner into consolation RR, loser out.
#3 3-2 vs #4 3-2: winner into consolation RR, loser out.
#5 and worse 3-2: out.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

Ignore that "After."
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by JackGlerum »

Siverus Snape wrote:I was going to suggest HSAPQ or a mirror for next year, but then I realized that you'll probably want to keep an IHSA-like distribution or at least computational math. How hard do you think it would be to cannibalize a set from another source and basically just write the math questions? Obviously, you'd have to downgrade the other subject areas appropriately, which might be tricky.

My own beef with IHSA distribution and computational math aside, I think that the tournament ran quite well and was both enjoyable and legitimate. Thank you (especially Jonah) for doing so much work, even at the last minute.
This is pretty much what I thought of the tournament. IHSA distribution pretty much always makes it unenjoyable for me, though. 20% computational math waters down every other category, completely cancels out others, and having to find the area of a hexagon in the middle of a match is annoying. I agree with Siva's initial solution of a mirror.

The positives were the card system (I think?), the pyramidality (if that isn't a given), and both the difficulty and quality of the playoff-round questions. For some reason, I thought they were notably better than the morning. The negatives were the comp. math and the question randomization. For example, I wanted to get up and leave after this series of questions:
Round 3 wrote:2. (RS) This team's first coach was Ted Marchibroda, and their current coach is the brother of Stanford's
head football coach. Their current quarterback is in his rookie season out of the University of Delaware,
and their current owner bought the team from Art Modell a few years after the franchise was relocated
and renamed. They won their only Super Bowl, defeating the New York Giants thirty-four to seven.
Name this AFC North team scheduled to play Dallas tonight whose nickname was inspired by Edgar
Allan Poe.
ANSWER: Baltimore Ravens (accept partial answers)

3. (HT) Some of its less common definitions include the burrow of a badger, a place where fishing nets
are secured, and a train of coal-trucks; these are among the over 200 definitions listed in the Oxford English
Dictionary. For the most part, these definitions fall under one of the four following categories: the
state of being fixed, actions involving the relocation of an object, the noun form of the preceding two
categories, and a grouping of some sort. More common definitions include a sequence of jazz numbers, a
grouping of tennis games, the act of becoming seated, and the action of putting something in its proper
place or manner. Provide this three letter word that, when applied to the actions of the sun, signifies the
end of day.
ANSWER: set

4. (DR) Computational — pencil and paper ready. In radians, find the x- and y-coordinates of the maximum
point on the graph between x equals zero and x equals two pi of y equals the sum of sine of x plus
cosine of x. Thirty seconds.
ANSWER: (x, y) equals (pi over 4, the square root of 2) or (x, y) equals (one-fourth times pi, the square
root of 2) or equivalent

5. (DR) Computational — pencil and paper ready. Find the value of the derivative of y with respect to x at
the point three comma two for the relation four x squared plus y squared equals forty. You have thirty
seconds.
ANSWER: –6
Sports, vocab, comp. math, comp. math = extremely frustrating

Sorry, this is getty sorta lengthy, but there were two other questions I had beef with.
Round 5 wrote:8. (DR) This adjective applies to Up the Down Staircase, Humphry Clinker, Dangerous Liaisons, Poor
Folk, The Moonstone, The Sorrows of Young Werther, Pamela, and The Color Purple. It is also used to
described much of the New Testament. Though it generally refers to works written as a series of documents,
it usually refers to works that are collections of letters. Name this adjective beginning with the letter
E.
ANSWER: epistolary
see: Avery Enterprises
Round 6 wrote:4. (JG) Answer the following about a six-book 1866 work by Fyodor Dostoevsky:
[10] This is the novel, in which a poor student murders his landlord because he believes he is an "extraordinary
man" and thus above the law.
ANSWER: Crime and Punishment
[10] This protagonist of Crime and Punishment eventually confesses to the murder and is sent to Siberia
to do hard labor.
ANSWER: Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov (accept either or both)
[10] Raskolnikov chases after this woman, the daughter of a drunkard whose life he saves. She fits the archetype
of the pious prostitute.
ANSWER: Sonya Semyonovna Marmeladova (prompt on Marmeladova)
No, he doesn't.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by jonah »

JackGlerum wrote:
Round 6 wrote:4. (JG) Answer the following about a six-book 1866 work by Fyodor Dostoevsky:
[10] This is the novel, in which a poor student murders his landlord because he believes he is an extraordinary man" and thus above the law.
No, he doesn't.
Yeah, you're totally right there, Jack, and I apologize for that bonus. I wrote it from memory, which was clearly a mistake because I got an important detail about the first part wrong and also (as Ben informed me) forgot that Sonya's name was actually Sofia or something with Sonya as a diminutive. Hopefully it didn't cost you guys any points.

The other problems you mentioned are, as I've said above, regrettable; I should definitely have paid closer attention to consecutive categories and, in particular, consecutive computational questions. I don't like computational math in quizbowl either, but it wasn't my choice as to whether to include it.

In addition to that pretty significant error (though I doubt one that prevented people from converting that part if they knew it otherwise), the only mistake I am aware of was the transposition of two words in a bonus part that mentioned "orbitals in electrons" rather than electrons in orbitals. To my knowledge there was only one protest all day, which was about the acceptability of Pastorale for Pastoral symphony. If people have found other errors or of course have other constructive criticisms of the questions, I'd like to hear about them for my own reference.

As for next year, I don't know what Mr. Reinstein precisely has in mind, and I don't think anyone including him will for a while. But if it is desired, I am prospectively open to the idea of doing a similar thing next year; that is, writing about half of the questions and overseeing the editing. I think that for my first writing and editing experience, it went pretty well, and I really enjoyed the experience.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by jonah »

cdcarter wrote:
Shcool wrote:Questions and stats are up. Thanks to everybody who was there and/or wrote questions. Congrats to Auburn for taking the big trophy.
Can I mirror these at qbpackets?
It's okay with me; get Mr. Reinstein's approval too, though. Since your post kind of got buried up there, you might want to email him at reinsted at newtrier dot k12 dot il dot us. And if you want a single PDF file instead, with bookmarks for rounds, I have that conveniently available. For that, email me at jonah at jonahgreenthal dot com.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Stained Diviner »

One thing that happened as we wrote this tournament was that we didn't like the Vocabulary questions we were writing. In the end, we decided to go with just four such tossups in the whole tournament (magical realism, contraband, set, and epistolary).

Also, there were two sports tossups in the whole tournament. I actually wrote the Ravens question, and at some point there was a Honus Wagner tossup that was written by Robert and edited by me.

Round 3 was one of the few (possibly the only) rounds with four computational tossups--most had three. Of those four tossups, three of them could be answered by a solid math student without putting pencil to paper (the other one being the implicit differentiation in #5).

I'm sorry you got four questions you don't like in a row, but Jonah's question sorting algorithm did not have any provisions to separate out questions that Glerum doesn't like.

As far as the error is concerned, as Jonah said the number of errors in the tournament was very small, though still too many. However, we had reasonable protest policies in place and knowledgeable moderators and staff. I could be mistaken, but I thought your moderator for that match was Mike Sorice, who knows a few things.

As far as the Epistolary tossup is concerned, I honestly would like to hear why it was so egregious. I realize that a tossup which relies to a large extent upon a list isn't going to win Tossup of the Year Award, but I thought it was the best way to approach that particular topic. I didn't get to see the question in play, so I'm not sure what went wrong. Was it a hose that caused a wrong answer to be given? Was it a difficulty cliff? Was it not clear what it was asking for? Is it too insignificant a topic? Could the question have been fixed through editing, or was it without redemption? When I wrote the question, I thought it rewarded significant academic knowledge, and if it did not I would like to know why so that I do not repeat the mistake.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by dtaylor4 »

If people have questions/comments about the myth questions in this tournament, feel free to email me at (hsqb handle) @ uiuc . edu, or just post here, as I had a hand in all of them.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by JackGlerum »

jonah wrote:I wrote it from memory, which was clearly a mistake because I got an important detail about the first part wrong and also (as Ben informed me) forgot that Sonya's name was actually Sofia or something with Sonya as a diminutive. Hopefully it didn't cost you guys any points.

The other problems you mentioned are, as I've said above, regrettable; I should definitely have paid closer attention to consecutive categories and, in particular, consecutive computational questions. I don't like computational math in quizbowl either, but it wasn't my choice as to whether to include it.

In addition to that pretty significant error (though I doubt one that prevented people from converting that part if they knew it otherwise), the only mistake I am aware of was the transposition of two words in a bonus part that mentioned "orbitals in electrons" rather than electrons in orbitals. To my knowledge there was only one protest all day, which was about the acceptability of Pastorale for Pastoral symphony. If people have found other errors or of course have other constructive criticisms of the questions, I'd like to hear about them for my own reference.
Shcool wrote:As far as the error is concerned, as Jonah said the number of errors in the tournament was very small, though still too many. However, we had reasonable protest policies in place and knowledgeable moderators and staff. I could be mistaken, but I thought your moderator for that match was Mike Sorice, who knows a few things.
The Raskolnikov error wasn't a big deal; it was just something that I remembered. It didn't make a difference in the game and I only picked up on it because we just read C&P in class.
Shcool wrote:As far as the Epistolary tossup is concerned, I honestly would like to hear why it was so egregious. I realize that a tossup which relies to a large extent upon a list isn't going to win Tossup of the Year Award, but I thought it was the best way to approach that particular topic. I didn't get to see the question in play, so I'm not sure what went wrong. Was it a hose that caused a wrong answer to be given? Was it a difficulty cliff? Was it not clear what it was asking for? Is it too insignificant a topic? Could the question have been fixed through editing, or was it without redemption? When I wrote the question, I thought it rewarded significant academic knowledge, and if it did not I would like to know why so that I do not repeat the mistake.
Well, I'm not wild about having "epistolary" as an answer to a tossup. I feel like vocab is english class and not quizbowl, and it's not a great lit question if you wanna classify it as such. Thus, to fix the problem, asking about The Color Purple or Pamela would suffice.

It wasn't a hose or a difficulty cliff, but rather two poor writing techniques, imo. 1. The first half of the question is a list. (which you alluded to) 2. The giveaway clue names the first letter of the word. These two issues combined with its short length lead me to classify it as Averyesque. Am I wrong?

edit: what siva said
Last edited by JackGlerum on Mon Dec 22, 2008 1:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Siverus Snape »

The epistolary tossup was really ambiguous for me until quite late; "adjective" doesn't really clear the air much. It would have been better, probably, to include a word like "form" or "structure," or even to discuss the epistolary nature of a few of the works in depth.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Irreligion in Bangladesh »

The best way to write a question where you want the answer of "epistolary" given by teams is some variation on this:

The Sorrows of Young Werther and The Moonstone are both examples of a certain kind of literary form.
1. Another example of this form is (blah blah info about The Color Purple)
ANSWER: The Color Purple
2. Still another example is (blah blah Pamela)
ANSWER: Pamela
3. These works take this style, where the writing consists of series of letters. (optional extra New Testament clue if you desire)
ANSWER: Epistolary

You can obviously sub in harder works if you desire. Note, of course, that's it's an ACF bonus. I don't think this would work nearly as well if teams didn't have access to all the title names before they got to epistolary, while removing the aesthetic negative of being a list tossup.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Matt Weiner »

Shcool wrote:I'm sorry you got four questions you don't like in a row, but Jonah's question sorting algorithm did not have any provisions to separate out questions that Glerum doesn't like.
I think he's pointing out that these were all obviously bad questions, rather than trying to express some arbitrary whim he has. (I'll give the Ravens one a pass as it doesn't strike me as objectionable structurally by high school standards, but trash sure does amplify the effect of having vocabulary and arithmetic questions).
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Captain Sinico »

The "epistolary" tossup is very poor: it certainly doesn't uniquely specify an answer until nearly the end and maybe never does. There as many adjectives that apply to all those works and there are synonyms for epistolary...
Actually, that's a microcosm of my biggest beef that I think you're willing to address (behind distribution and answer selection: if you didn't know, I think you ought to get rid of comp. math tossups and select more academically rigorous, relevant topics; I can give you examples of what I mean if you like.) What I mean is: I felt like a lot of questions didn't specify unique answers. Either they didn't contain a pronoun/signifying phrase until late, or they just didn't specify a unique answer at all. The latter issue is exemplified by the epistolary tossup and the one on Maxwell's demon below, which could be any number of things until "creature." The former is exemplified by the Arnolfini Wedding tossup and some others, where there just isn't a pronoun. That issue was less common but also much easier to overcome: just open with "This work" (or whatever) right away.
Round 7 wrote:Leó Szilárd's 1927 paper pointed out that this is impossible because acquiring information requires expending energy. Another theory about this uses analysis of the choices it makes to refute its existence, as Léon Brillouin proposed in 1950, concluding that the paradox is not actually paradoxical. Boltzmann's work led up to this idea, but it was Lord Kelvin who introduced the name for this creature. The argument for it relies on gas molecules of the same temperature having different speeds and moving
randomly. Identify this thought experiment featuring a trapdoor between two chambers and a small intelligent being that would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
ANSWER: Maxwell's demon
Round 3 wrote:The single lit candle among the brass chandelier's several has resulted in widely-varying interpretations, but the most common is that it represents the titular event. Indeed, it is often argued that the painting was created as a legal document to validate that. However, this is called into question by the left figure's use of his left hand instead of his right. The woman looks pregnant, but this was probably simply due to the predominant style of 1434, when it was made. A dog sits at her feet, and an observer of the ceremony can be seen in the mirror. The painting is now in London's National Gallery. Name this oil painting that depicts the marriage of a Lucca merchant, a work by Jan van Eyck.
ANSWER: The Arnolfini Portrait (accept "Marriage", "Wedding", or "Double Portrait" for "Portrait") or Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife (accept clear knowledge equivalent)
MaS

PS: I agree with what Matt's saying. It seems like that's a pack of questions you know many players are going to find objectionable to open a round. I hear you saying you can't write an algorithm to randomize away from that. My rejoinder is that you wouldn't have to if you didn't include such questions (or so many of them.)
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by at your pleasure »

The Arnolfini wedding is not that neggable for the reason that it a)begins with a stock clue and b) is about a painting that nobody in their right mind would use as a leadin.
Epistolary novel-list tossups should be avoided at all costs. Mabye a question where your open with a specific use of the epistolary form(Dracula is unusual for its incoproration of news articles in a novel of this strucure blah blah blah) would be passable. Or a proper common link on "epistolary novel".
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Blackboard Monitor Vimes »

Anti-Climacus wrote:The Arnolfini wedding is not that neggable for the reason that it a)begins with a stock clue and b) is about a painting that nobody in their right mind would use as a leadin.
Epistolary novel-list tossups should be avoided at all costs. Mabye a question where your open with a specific use of the epistolary form(Dracula is unusual for its incoproration of news articles in a novel of this strucure blah blah blah) would be passable. Or a proper common link on "epistolary novel".
To expand a bit on what Douglas is saying about the epistolary TU: would it have been so difficult to start "one work in this form," then stuff about Young Werther, The Color Purple, and Pamela, with a New Testament and letters clue at the end? You mentioned you only had 4 vocab TUs and didn't seem crazy about them; why not just convert them into good TUs on legitimate information? No one's going to learn anything from that list of epistolary novels. Also, it seems like there are probably other adjectives that could apply to that first work. Note that I don't know about it and thus could be wrong, but I think mentioning "form" would have been very worth doing. It doesn't seem to me like all that much editing would have been necessary to make this acceptable, if still questionable answer selection.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by pblessman »

Cornfused- Thanks for the explanation. After you explained it again, I now remember the set-up. I thought it was well done, actually, so "wonderfully complex" was meant as a compliment (and I have to disagree with you- compared to 99.9% of all QB tournaments, this system is incredibly complex). What I liked about your set-up was that it honored the morning results for the power-matched rounds by awarding byes, but at the same time potentially allowed some of the 3-2 teams to play into the Championship bracket. I always include afternoon round robins in my tournaments to make sure all the top teams get to play eachother. The one suggestion I would have is to tack on a Championship match at the end next time- that would have possibly help resolve any questions whether Auburn or Loyola A was the best team.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by mlaird »

pblessman wrote: What I liked about your set-up was that it honored the morning results for the power-matched rounds by awarding byes, but at the same time potentially allowed some of the 3-2 teams to play into the Championship bracket.
It actually didn't. The 3-2 teams were playing for the right to play in the Consolation championship bracket, which is where the 4-1s who lose the play-in match also go. The 3-2 teams who lose the play-in match in the afternoon were done for the day. So out of 10 teams who advanced, 2 went home after only one match in the afternoon, and the other 8 were split into two pools for round-robins.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by pblessman »

Wow... I'm just slow, I guess... and I have another question! Why was Maine South declared the winner of the Consolation Bracket? Wheaton Warrenville South looks like the team that should have won the Consolation bracket based on the previous statement about why Auburn beat Loyola A out in the standings (MS and WWS both were 2-1 in the Consolation Bracket, but WWS had the better record overall... but I might be missing something...).
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Maxwell Sniffingwell »

pblessman wrote:Wow... I'm just slow, I guess... and I have another question! Why was Maine South declared the winner of the Consolation Bracket? Wheaton Warrenville South looks like the team that should have won the Consolation bracket based on the previous statement about why Auburn beat Loyola A out in the standings (MS and WWS both were 2-1 in the Consolation Bracket, but WWS had the better record overall... but I might be missing something...).
Both teams were 6-3, actually, with a 4-1 morning record, a loss in the seeding round, and a 2-1 record in the round robin. It looks like MS has a game against Fenwick that hasn't been recorded (the third game of the RR involving Fenwick, WWS, BG, and MS.) I guess the tie was broken by point differential or PPG or something, then. But yeah, WWS had the same record as MS.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Irreligion in Bangladesh »

cornfused wrote:
pblessman wrote:Wow... I'm just slow, I guess... and I have another question! Why was Maine South declared the winner of the Consolation Bracket? Wheaton Warrenville South looks like the team that should have won the Consolation bracket based on the previous statement about why Auburn beat Loyola A out in the standings (MS and WWS both were 2-1 in the Consolation Bracket, but WWS had the better record overall... but I might be missing something...).
Both teams were 6-3, actually, with a 4-1 morning record, a loss in the seeding round, and a 2-1 record in the round robin. It looks like MS has a game against Fenwick that hasn't been recorded (the third game of the RR involving Fenwick, WWS, BG, and MS.) I guess the tie was broken by point differential or PPG or something, then. But yeah, WWS had the same record as MS.
If they were both 2-1, and the other two teams were 1-2, then winner of head-to-head between MS and WWS wins the bracket.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Stained Diviner »

Both 2nd Place and the Consolation Championship were decided by median points scored in the three-game round robin. I realize that that is not as good as playing the ties off, but producing another round of questions would have made the quality control issue with questions significantly worse. Basically, we wanted the teams interested in playing the whole day to play all the decent rounds we created, and we created nine of them.

Thanks for the Epistolary comments--Sarah's in particular make a lot of sense, though I don't think I'll use that as the answer to a tossup ever again.

As far as the computational math is concerned, we've been through this before. I want it to stay.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Captain Sinico »

Merry Christmas! As my present to you, I'll gift you some question-writing knowledge by way of rebutting some of the replies to my own post.
First, regarding the Arnolfini tossup, even supposing the clue is as easy as Douglas says is so that players generally know which painting's being referred to from that clue, they can't rule out "van Eyck" or "weddings in art/other stuff" or any number of other answers until later. That's bad: in some ways, that's actually worse than their having no idea. The appropriateness of this particular clue for this field and your assessment of the possibility of writing a good question on this topic are irrelevant.
The solution to this is simple. Every question should basically start with a signifying phrase, e.g. "This work," "This artist," "This law," etc.
Secondly, regarding the "epistolary" tossup, I don't think adding more works is going to make a better question. I really fail to see any clues that will uniquely specify that answer at this level: I mean, we could go look up some work with "epistolary" in the title or with a chapter with that word in it or something, but all we're doing there is finding a way to justify screwing people later since nobody's going to know those clues and, later, we're going to bait the guess in the exact same way.
To me, the solution is again simple. Don't write these kinds of questions: if you can't find uniquely identifying clues, abandon the question. Just write a tossup on Pamela, or maybe a bonus on epistolary works (as suggested above.)

MaS
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by the return of AHAN »

Shcool wrote: As far as the computational math is concerned, we've been through this before. I want it to stay.
Careful, Dr. Reinstein. You're going to have your membership in the Holy Circle of the Guardians of Good Quizbowl revoked! :wink:
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Captain Sinico »

Actually, I had something to say on that front, too! Okay: I obviously can't stop your having calculation and you're evidently not swayed by my various arguments about why it blows, so you're going to keep it. That's fine; it would seem that reasonable people will act differently here.
However, it seems to me that, if you're going to include calculation and still run a bona fide academic quizbowl tournament, you're compelled to include it in addition to a solid, conventional academic distribution, not in lieu of one. I argue that your tournament as distributed currently features the latter: you have like 16/20ths of what the rest of the world would call an academic distribution, but you've abrogated a full 20% of the questions players should expect and you're consequently effectively missing a lot of questions from worthwhile, solidly academic areas. Doing this also means that the negative effect of bad questions in conventionally academic areas is magnified by concentration.
You'll note that this isn't an argument about the character of calculation in se. Replacement of this kind is a bad idea independent of the character of the replacing questions: taking a 20/20 distribution and altering it by replacing 4/4 with any single subject (literature, history, trash, geography, calculation... anything) results in an unbalanced, inferior distribution. I doubt that anyone disagrees there.
Okay, so you're probably saying "What does this mean?" It means that, as I see it, if you want to write calculation at a clip of 4/4 a round, you'd better write rounds of at least 24/24, with 20/20 solid, conventional academic stuff. If not, I don't think you're running a real, balanced academic quizbowl tournament by most people's standards. I know we can do better than that and I hope this state's players demand better.

MaS
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by jonah »

Captain Scipio wrote:Actually, I had something to say on that front, too! Okay: I obviously can't stop your having calculation and you're evidently not swayed by my various arguments about why it blows, so you're going to keep it. That's fine; it would seem that reasonable people will act differently here.
However, it seems to me that, if you're going to include calculation and still run a bona fide academic quizbowl tournament, you're compelled to include it in addition to a solid, conventional academic distribution, not in lieu of one. I argue that your tournament as distributed currently features the latter: you have like 16/20ths of what the rest of the world would call an academic distribution, but you've abrogated a full 20% of the questions players should expect and you're consequently effectively missing a lot of questions from worthwhile, solidly academic areas. Doing this also means that the negative effect of bad questions in conventionally academic areas is magnified by concentration.
I'm confused by your use of the phrase bona fide here. As I'm sure you know, it's Latin for "good faith". Are you seriously claiming that NT Varsity or any other tournament (i.e., Solo) with which Mr. Reinstein's deeply involved isn't written/run/whatever in good faith with respect to quizbowl? If so, your misunderstanding is apparently too deep to be reasoned with. Mr. Reinstein doesn't agree with many people on a few specific aspects of what constitutes good quizbowl, including you and me with respect to computational math, but in broad terms I think it's a ridiculous and insulting statement that he generally doesn't understand good quizbowl or, especially, that he isn't making a good faith effort to promote it.
Captain Scipio wrote:You'll note that this isn't an argument about the character of calculation in se. Replacement of this kind is a bad idea independent of the character of the replacing questions: taking a 20/20 distribution and altering it by replacing 4/4 with any single subject (literature, history, trash, geography, calculation... anything) results in an unbalanced, inferior distribution. I doubt that anyone disagrees there.
Okay, so you're probably saying "What does this mean?" It means that, as I see it, if you want to write calculation at a clip of 4/4 a round, you'd better write rounds of at least 24/24, with 20/20 solid, conventional academic stuff. If not, I don't think you're running a real, balanced academic quizbowl tournament by most people's standards. I know we can do better than that and I hope this state's players demand better.
Here, I'm wondering what decree has been issued that 20/20 is the correct number of questions in a packet. Yes, it's a common standard, but that nonwithstanding—what categories would you say were utterly abrogated in NTV? You also are referencing a "conventional academic distribution", but that doesn't exist at the high school level. Indeed, it could be argued that we did as close to that as possible by using the IHSA distribution, which is in some sense conventional for the state. And what categories would you say we abrogated? Looking at the ACF distribution for the sake of comparison, we have 4/4 each literature, history, and science, which were present in each round. 3/3 arts was represented by a large number of music and painting tossups (you wrote many of the former and we have already discussed the Arnolfini tossup which was among the many paintings questions, as well as some sculpture (Fountain of the Four Rivers) and architecture (Frank Lloyd Wright works bonus, etc.). 2/2 RMP was represented in my shabbat tossup, Donald's several myth questions, the John Stuart Mill and Rousseau tossups, among others. 1/1 social science included the Bush Doctrine tossup (international relations) and the constitution parts bonus among, I think, a few others. There was also trash in each packet.

So we didn't use that distribution, but every part of it was represented in the tournament. The distribution used was different from many others, but I don't agree with your claim that we abrogated any "questions players should expect". Perhaps fewer questions in each category were used than other tournaments might have done, but every category often featured in quizbowl tournaments was, I believe, represented.

Also, your abrogation statement featured "players should expect", which is confusing to me: players knew precisely what to expect in terms of distribution for this tournament. So the "should expect" statement must be broader; are you stating that there exists a precise distribution that players are to expect at every tournament? If so, what is it?

All that said, discussions have already started regarding next year's tournament. I will be working to the end of less computational math if any, and have some ideas about how to achieve that, but at the same time, I still feel it's important to better understand some of Mike's criticisms that I feel are unfair. Perhaps I'm misreading or misinterpreting them, or perhaps they actually are unfair, but I think it's only decent to the objects of criticism and other people associated with the tournament being criticized that they be understood.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Sir Thopas »

jonah wrote:I'm confused by your use of the phrase bona fide here. As I'm sure you know, it's Latin for "good faith". Are you seriously claiming that NT Varsity or any other tournament (i.e., Solo) with which Mr. Reinstein's deeply involved isn't written/run/whatever in good faith with respect to quizbowl? If so, your misunderstanding is apparently too deep to be reasoned with. Mr. Reinstein doesn't agree with many people on a few specific aspects of what constitutes good quizbowl, including you and me with respect to computational math, but in broad terms I think it's a ridiculous and insulting statement that he generally doesn't understand good quizbowl or, especially, that he isn't making a good faith effort to promote it.
I have no doubt Mr. Reinstein is acting in good faith to promote what he sees as good quizbowl. However, it is not at all ridiculous, given all the evidence available, to conjecture that he just doesn't know what good quizbowl is.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by at your pleasure »

You also are referencing a "conventional academic distribution", but that doesn't exist at the high school level.
It may be true that the precise numbers are not fixed, but I would say it is generally accepted that a acceptable distribution should be the same as or closely approximate the ACF distribution.
So we didn't use that distribution, but every part of it was represented in the tournament.
The point of a distribution, however, is not merely to garuantee that certain categories are represented, but to garuantee that categories are represented in proportion to their relative importance.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Stained Diviner »

Getting back to Mike's suggestion, it is true that having a significant amount of math means either having more questions or fewer categories in other questions. One possible way to fix that in the future would be to get rid of the Miscellaneous category as it currently stands (ie lots of trash) an replace it with a more academic Miscellaneous category. A potential 20 question distribution would be 4/4 each in History, Lit, Math, and Science, and 2/2 each in Fine Arts and Miscellaneous, with Miscellaneous meaning Religion, Philosophy, Social Science, Econ, Geography, and Current Events. (I'm picturing material that is clearly Mythology going in the Lit distribution.)

If we went to 24/24, due to time constraints we would have to go to true ACF style bonuses without bouncebacks.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by at your pleasure »

If we went to 24/24, due to time constraints we would have to go to true ACF style bonuses without bouncebacks
Would this necessarily be a problem, though?
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Stained Diviner »

Anti-Climacus wrote:
If we went to 24/24, due to time constraints we would have to go to true ACF style bonuses without bouncebacks
Would this necessarily be a problem, though?
Some teams wouldn't like it, but that's not the end of the world, since there are always teams unhappy when you play around with the format, just like there are some teams unhappy when you don't play around with the format.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by David Riley »

I'm coming late to this discussion, but I did enjoy the tournament. And Glerum embracing computational math is as likely as me embracing bounebacks. :grin:

I would reiterate that if we continue to have computational math then we either get rid of miscellaneous (trash) or replace it with more academic, interdisciplinary miscellaneous questions.

Given the projected future of the tournament, I would also suggest coordinating the writing of the questions as soon as possible. I would propose that coaches associated with the tournament might be asked to write questions, as I think some of us can be trusted not to share questions with our students and (with a little knifing?) not to write in our pet areas; maybe he has already done this.
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Captain Sinico »

By "should expect," I am making a normative statement, not a positive one. Thus, I mean something like "have a right to expect/ought to expect, given the national standards for quality quizbowl at the high school level." I further take this to impute on an editor, whatever else that editor may do or have done, precisely what I said above. That is to say I claim that an editor wishing to include questions beyond the national standard for good quizbowl (of whatever kind) experiences a moral imperative to do so in the way that I said if they're to make a good faith effort at running a quality tournament.
If you just want to run an Illinois tournament, you can say that but, given what Illinois tournaments are and have been, I expect you'll be as unsatisfied with that outcome as I would be. My claim here is that I expect better from you and that you should expect better from yourselves than that.
As this precise issue hadn't been raised before (at least to my knowledge) it doesn't reflect on past conduct, only future. I hope that nobody's character as an exponent of what this game should be is at question here, least of all my own or Coach Reinstein's. His intentions are unquestionably positive in my view.
Finally, as for the issue of the distribution, that's a good, relevant issue. I do not claim there's a precise, perfect distribution, even in a normative sense. I do claim, however, that taking even unassailably good questions and exchanging 20% of each round for anything whatsoever* seems to me to remove those questions beyond whatever imprecise, imperfect standards exist. Obviously, the point where the replacement becomes unacceptable is likewise imprecise, but the point is that we have to draw the line somewhere. I say: why bother flirting with the line at all?

MaS

*I say this to re-emphasize that this argument is independent of anyone's assessment of the fitness of calculation as quizbowl. The fact that the replacement questions are of an ambivalent character is an exacerbating aggravator, but not of central importance to my argument. If, for example, you had 8/8 literature per round, I would find that unacceptable as well.
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Member, ACF (Emeritus), IHSSBCA, & PACE
Ringil
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Ringil »

A quick comment on a small error that I found in one of the bonuses.

From Round 8, Question 7
Considered by some people to be the last non-Christian Roman Emperor, he actually received Chris-
tian training but hated it. He was the half-brother of Constantine the Great.
ANSWER: Julian the Apostate or Flavius Claudius Julianus
Julian the Apostate was actually the son of the half-brother of Constantine the Great, making him Constantine's nephew.

But otherwise, your questions have been pretty good :)
Libo
Washington '14, Michigan '13, Troy High School '09
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by Stained Diviner »

Thanks, Libo.

Looking ahead to next year, it now looks like this tournament will not have computational math, by request of the writers. The head writer/editor probably will be Jonah. We are considering a distribution that would be roughly 5/5 Lit, 5/5 Science, 4/4 History, 2/2 Fine Arts, 1/1 RMP, 1/1 Social Science, 1/1 Miscellaneous, and 1/1 Current Events, Geography, and Government. We are also considering eliminating bonus bouncebacks so that we can get another round or two in by 5:00.

People interested in contributing and/or mirroring should contact Jonah. Mirrors probably would have to be around mid-December. We have not picked our date yet.
David Reinstein
Head Writer and Editor for Scobol Solo, Masonics, and IESA; TD for Scobol Solo and Reinstein Varsity; IHSSBCA Board Member; IHSSBCA Chair (2004-2014); PACE President (2016-2018)
jonah
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Re: New Trier Varsity 12/20 (IL)

Post by jonah »

Here is the current plan for New Trier Varsity 2009. If it is again the Saturday before Winter Break, that'll be December 19.
I will be the head editor. Contributors will include Carlo Angiuli and Ben Cohen. Any person who will have graduated high school by the end of the 2008–2009 school year is also welcome to contribute and should contact me; I will be very grateful for anyone who wishes to. Current Illinois seniors, I'm especially looking at you! Students who will be attending New Trier in the 2009–2010 school year might also contribute some questions.

The distribution will probably be the following. I'm open to change and suggestions; this is what I have in mind at present:
  • 5/5 literature: 1/1 United States, 1/1 British, 3/3 world, ancient, other (could include more US or British)
  • 4/4 history: 1/1 United States, 1/1 European, 2/2 world, ancient, other (could include more US or European)
  • 5/5 science: 1/1 each physics, chemistry, biology; 2/2 other including at least 1 noncomputational math question (could include more physics, chemistry, or biology)
  • 1/1 religion, mythology, philosophy
  • 1/1 current events, government, geography
  • 1/1 trash, interdisciplinary
  • 2/2 fine arts
  • 1/1 social science (economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology)
The format will be essentially ACF with a few minor changes — essentially, the same rules as 2008 New Trier Varsity except we're getting rid of all rules about computation questions. We might get rid of rebounding bonuses also.

There will be enough packets for a real final match between the top two teams (by whatever metric we end up using; it'll probably be similar to 2008 NTV).

I would love it if other places wanted to mirror this. I do expect it to be a very good, difficult tournament.

If anyone has questions, wants to mirror or contribute, or anything else, please contact me at jonah at jonahgreenthal punto com.
Last edited by jonah on Thu Jan 08, 2009 2:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
Jonah Greenthal
National Academic Quiz Tournaments
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