Ben Cole wrote:Carangoides ciliarius wrote:Xerxes wrote:Results (as told to me):
1) Centennial
2) Brookwood
3) Walton
4) Chattahoochee
And people questioned my mid-season vote for Centennial but leaving Alpharetta off the list, hm?
I have been told that this set was some sort of eccentric alteration of NAQT, which might mean the results are not the same which would be yielded on a more academic set. Alpharetta seems to do better on sets like HSAPQ sets, Prison Bowl and so on, the kind of sets that will be used at PACE. Where they should be ranked would most likely depend on what kind of questions one believes to be the most legitimate.
Yeah, this pretty much sums it up. Regardless of what one thinks of the quality of NAQT or GATA questions versus HSAPQ/Prison Bowl type questions, I'm pretty sure everyone can agree that they're different. My team tends to do better on the latter kind, due both to distribution and question style.
gwaustin4 wrote:grashid wrote:Congrats to Centennial for going undefeated in one of the toughest fields I've seen at state. I'm sure that the "unexpected" results speaks more towards the quality of the GA teams, especially since there was no clear favorite this year.
It also speaks to the variable nature of two part bonuses and 18 tossup rounds, as well some unpredictability associated with having 2 pure computational math tossups each round. Having a round robin was a step in the right direction, but I feel there's still much that can be done to improve the quality of this event, especially in the area of clearly distinguishing between top-tier teams.
These factors all contributed to a certain "variable nature" at states, to be sure. One needs only to look at the almost nonsensical pattern in which teams 2-5 beat or lost to each other to see that something was up. There certainly needs to be, next year, the use of three-part bonuses, a standard (more on this later) per-round distribution, and a reduction in (or elimination of) computational math.
jrbarry wrote:I understand the disdain for computational math by many on this board. That disdain is not shared by the quiz bowl people who run GATA.
The disdain may not be shared by those who
run GATA, but I'm pretty sure most of the people who
competed on Saturday, including the champions Centennial, were upset with the comp math. Maybe GATA could do more research into how the players feel about the issue.
Rountree wrote:While I prefer 3-part bonuses to 2-part ones, at least I can say that many of the bonuses were NOT automatic 20s like they seemed to be so many times at last year's Varsity State Championship.
I actually thought they produced a worse effect than what automatic 20s would have. This year, the bonuses were exactly like what you would expect if someone indiscriminantly chopped off the last part of an intended three-part bonus: most were automatic 20s (as the most common bonuses are medium-easy-hard or easy-medium-hard), but sometimes a team got screwed when the hard part snuck in. This contributed to the variability of matches, which essentially still turned into tossup shootouts (with an unfortunate twist).
So here are some suggestions I have for GATA for next year's state tournament:
1. Ties (at least for the top 4 spots) should be played off at the state championship.
There is no reason that paper tiebreakers of any kind should be used to determine spots 2-4 at a state championship, especially when the tournament ends at 3 in the afternoon. This is especially relevant, as in two situations, the team with higher PPG fell behind the other team because of head-to-head.
2. A fair distribution should be enumerated before the tournament and followed in the packets.
I don't mean 25% "Language Arts" and the like. I mean, spelled out, like all major question writers (both NAQT and HSAPQ, ACF, most housewrites) do. It should include the following categories (enumerated by number of questions per packet [or tournament], not by percentages):
Literature
Science
History
Fine Arts (with specific numbers of Visual Arts versus Music)
Religion, Mythology, Philosophy (specific numbers for each)
Social Science
Geography
Math comp [if GATA decides to retain this category]
This should ensure less packet-to-packet variation. Also, there should not be uneven numbers of tossups from the Big 3. Having 5 science and 3 mathcomp tossups in an 18-question round was less than equitable this year.
3. The number of math computation questions should be decreased or eliminated.
Honestly, I don't think there are any major writers out there that still support computational tossups. In modern quizbowl, it is not a debate anymore: computation tossups are incompatible with the game. Even NAQT eliminated computational tossups from its championship event, showing that they don't think them appropriate for upper-level play, which GATA State is (or should be). GATA can choose to keep computational bonuses (though I hope they improve them from this year), and replace the computational tossups with math theory, a subject that has seen some quality questions written in it this year.
4. The use of three-part bonuses.
Finally, congratulations to Centennial. They truly deserve the title of GATA 5A State Champions this year.