PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by AKKOLADE »

Crosspost! Stats! Still need to add crossovers and tiebreakers! I think those scoresheets are a foot away from me!
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

Wow, State College and Southside getting 50% or more on stealing bonus questions in the superplayoffs... that's ridiculous.

EDIT: And St. Anselm's!
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

In that much-heralded St. Anselm's/Seven Lakes B game, they are marked as going 10-10 for all 20 tossups, but the stats say that they only heard 18 bonus questions. Is one of those wrong?

EDIT: That 28.33PPB for that round for St. Anselm's also appears to the highest single-game PPB of anybody for the entire tournament. That's amazing that it happened in a game where they got every tossup right...
Last edited by Down and out in Quintana Roo on Thu Jun 10, 2010 10:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by AKKOLADE »

I think I double checked the scoresheet, and I do think they got all 20 TU. I'll look once more later on.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by AlphaQuizBowler »

How does PACE feel it did at seeding the prelim brackets?
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Captain Sinico »

I'd say we're pretty happy with how they turned out. We worked very, very hard on seeding, with Fred and others working week after week to get us tournament results and many of our core members spending over 7 hours deliberating to rank every team in our field. Our brackets held serve or had one transposition in every case but one.

Unfortunately, some of our seeding was corrupted by our losing a couple teams at a very late stage in planning; in fact, at a point so late that we'd already printed the brackets. I do apologize for that, but there was little we could have done at that point and are taking steps to ensure that it won't occur in future years.

Even with all that understood, of course, it's easy to see in retrospect that there were a couple seeds too low and correspondingly a couple too high. I can't see an obvious place where we gave anyone the wrong seed, though there are some where they had the wrong rank within seed. The example most prominently brought to my attention was that Seven Lakes A was a low 3/the top 4 (due to the bracketing procedure, those positions are equivalent) and ought to have been a high 3. Even in that case, though, I don't think our brackets were grossly unfair in the sense that I think switching Seven Lakes A with the 3 in another bracket would likely have given the same result. So I'd call that a pretty good job.

If people are interested, I'll be glad to publish our initial seeding. Since the process by which we arrived at seeds was, as I said, very deliberate and I prefer to keep it private, I won't be spending much time commenting on individual seeds except where I think the final results were very different from what we expected.

M
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Unicolored Jay »

I'm a little curious as to how the standby teams were seeded, if at all. Like, was me replacing Mission San Jose A significant or anything?
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Edward Powers »

M,

I would be interested in your original seeding, and I imagine others would as well.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Joshua Rutsky »

Just to add to the praise-fest, I really appreciated the work that clearly went into this event's question set, and felt it was very playable.

The level of competition at this event was unreal, at least from our perspective. Hoover came into this tournament thinking that we could compete for a top-ten spot, especially with our strength areas, but we were absolutely crushed by St. Anselms in the prelims, and we got beaten twice more in the first round by Wilmington Charter (who we felt we could have beaten if we played again) and Walt Whitman (who was a one-player monster in lit and music, and killed us on those categories alone.) We played very poorly on day two, but honestly, I felt like the teams we played in most cases were just plain better prepared for the distribution and the question types than we were, and deserved to win. In short, we weren't ready for what we saw. :)

That, to me, is a good thing. As frustrated as I was by our team's performance after a year where we (I think rightly, based on what we did at HSNCT last year) were ranked among the top twenty in quiz bowl, it is a great thing when you can go to a tourney like this, play in a field like the one we were in, and not feel that you failed. Our younger players learned what they would need to do to make a move up in the quizbowl world, and our veterans got to go out playing against some of the best. I'm disappointed only that we didn't get to play some of the top squads this year more than once, and that's more of a function of our location and the incredible travel costs it entails than anything else.

I know that I will encourage our team to come back when we are ready to play at this level. You can't replicate the experience of playing the best. It makes a big difference to your kids.

Now, my one complaint: There was one match where we ended up in a tie at the end of regulation, but where 10 points of bonus bounceback were in protest because our reader, who was the peerless Guy Tabachnik (whose name I've almost certainly misspelled, so forgive me, Guy), accidentally gave away the answer before the bounceback opportunity could occur. According to the rules, our opponents were then given a full set of bonuses, but with the caveat that they could only get 10 points total from them because that was all that was in dispute. The net result of this was that the opposing team was able to miss the first bonus in the series, but then get the second one, giving them the win. From our point of view, we felt that we had been penalized significantly by this mistake--if the opposing team had been given one bonus clue, just as they were prevented from answering one bonus clue, they would have missed it, and we would have played a tiebreaker series. Instead, they got three potential shots at the apple from one error. Couldn't a better solution to this problem be devised?

Thanks to all who made the effort on this event.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by nobthehobbit »

So as an add-on to what I said earlier about the varying approaches to bonus difficulty:

Looking through the stats, I'd say PACE got the PGA approach (let teams score points!) right. Not every team should be getting 20 PPB, but getting more than 60% of top-flight teams there (11 of 16 in prelims, 10 of 16 in playoffs, 5 of 8 in superplayoffs) is, in my view, far better than having only 3 of 192 teams there (HSNCT), or 1 of 32 (DII ICT), or none (D1 ICT, ACF Nationals). And even apart from "scoring points is more fun than not scoring points," the wider the range of bonus conversions, the more differentiation you can have between teams.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Joshua Rutsky wrote:Now, my one complaint: There was one match where we ended up in a tie at the end of regulation, but where 10 points of bonus bounceback were in protest because our reader, who was the peerless Guy Tabachnik (whose name I've almost certainly misspelled, so forgive me, Guy), accidentally gave away the answer before the bounceback opportunity could occur. According to the rules, our opponents were then given a full set of bonuses, but with the caveat that they could only get 10 points total from them because that was all that was in dispute. The net result of this was that the opposing team was able to miss the first bonus in the series, but then get the second one, giving them the win. From our point of view, we felt that we had been penalized significantly by this mistake--if the opposing team had been given one bonus clue, just as they were prevented from answering one bonus clue, they would have missed it, and we would have played a tiebreaker series. Instead, they got three potential shots at the apple from one error. Couldn't a better solution to this problem be devised?
Guy brought this up the weekend of the tournament and a couple of proposals of better ways to handle those situations have been floated. I'm sure we'll decide on one--or a third of some kind--sometime soon.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Captain Sinico »

Yeah, that to my mind is the rule that we ought most to change. I have what I think is a sensible proposal that we'll hopefully be discussing soon.

M
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by SoLegit12 »

I was just wondering if there is an ETA for the set (which was great in my opinion) being cleared. It would be great practice material
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by The Atom Strikes! »

Captain Sinico wrote: Since the process by which we arrived at seeds was, as I said, very deliberate and I prefer to keep it private, I won't be spending much time commenting on individual seeds except where I think the final results were very different from what we expected.
A brief question/comment about this remark: why should we keep the seeding process secret? Doing that is fundamentally no different from the secretly computed S-values that NAQT used for so long-- and that we as a community generally were unhappy with. I see no reason why PACE should not adopt a more transparent seeding process-- especially since the question of who makes playoffs is at least somewhat determined by seeding, and it appears that a few teams-- most notably Alpharetta and Seven Lakes-- were screwed over by poor seeding implementation.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Captain Sinico »

The set will be sent for archiving later today and should appear shortly. I will make a post and send an e-mail to all coaches once it's available. I apologize for the delay: some pagination and repeats replaced during the tournament had to be/are being fixed and NASAT editing was higher priority for me this week, which I hope is sensible.

Our seeding process is simple: we gathered all the published data from every tournament we could find, then deliberated as a group on IRC and reached a consensus or used a Condorcet vote when we couldn't. I don't want to disclose further details because, in the first place, they won't always exist; in the second place, because I don't want to make this too much about the seeds as there doesn't appear to be too much interest in that, which I feel is largely because most teams found the brackets largely unobjectionable (teams can feel free to correct me if they feel otherwise;) in the third place, because I don't want to disclose information that was understood to be shared in confidence; and in the fourth and most important place, because such discussion has a strong likelihood of devolving into a not especially useful or informative state, largely due to the previous three points.

To respond to your charges, in the first place, our seeding process is not particularly opaque. You are categorically wrong in saying that it's tantamount to using something like the old NAQT S-value: to refresh everyone's memory, the old S-value was a single-tournament-based number concocted more or less arbitrarily, verified by nobody, and trusted more or less completely to do all seeding. Our seeding procedure has few or none of those drawbacks.
In the second place, the data don't seem to substantiate the claim that any team was "screwed" particularly. With brackets, inevitably some teams wind up in a harder bracket, if for no other reason than because there are many ways of defining "hard" in this case. As I said, in retrospect, a small number of teams were somewhat underseeded; any claim beyond that seems tenuous. Consequently, I feel we did a good job balancing the brackets in every sense. What data are your claims of screwing based on? Which teams would you prefer to see switched?

M
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by AlphaQuizBowler »

So can you at least post the seeding without the deliberations?
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Edward Powers »

Hello M,

I support William's request---can you provide the seedings without the deliberations?

And I know you've been busy, but any chance the tie-breaking matches and crossover matches from the NSC will be published soon, along with a composite set of final results for all teams from 1-64, as the HSNCT does? With the exception of my own team's cross-over match against Loyola, I have no idea how the other teams in my flight did against their cross flight rivals for final placement, not to mention the cross-over results from the other 3 flights, and I imagine others share the same curiosity. So---what say you?

Meanwhile, William---are you an underclassman, or was this year's NSC your last HS Tournament?
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by AKKOLADE »

Edward Powers wrote:And I know you've been busy, but any chance the tie-breaking matches and crossover matches from the NSC will be published soon, along with a composite set of final results for all teams from 1-64, as the HSNCT does? With the exception of my own team's cross-over match against Loyola, I have no idea how the other teams in my flight did against their cross flight rivals for final placement, not to mention the cross-over results from the other 3 flights, and I imagine others share the same curiosity. So---what say you?
This is all me. I've yet to sit down and do this, and for that I'm sorry. I will try to do this ASAP.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Edward Powers »

Thanks, Fred---it would be greatly appreciated. For example, I do not even know who finished 2nd in our side of the 2nd flight, because Charter & Dorman B were tied, but I do not know who won the tie-breaker, and I know Loyola won tie-breakers on its side of our flight, but that's about all I know, and since we made some friends while in Virginia, I'd like to see how our new friends fared in their final matches---but you understand this I'm sure. so, good luck with your efforts.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by jonpin »

Edward Powers wrote:Thanks, Fred---it would be greatly appreciated. For example, I do not even know who finished 2nd in our side of the 2nd flight, because Charter & Dorman B were tied, but I do not know who won the tie-breaker, and I know Loyola won tie-breakers on its side of our flight, but that's about all I know, and since we made some friends while in Virginia, I'd like to see how our new friends fared in their final matches---but you understand this I'm sure. so, good luck with your efforts.
Charter won the tiebreaker for 2nd and then won the 19th place game.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Cassian »

I think the debate over the seeds is interesting, and I would also like to see the seeds and how they were reflected in the construction of the prelim brackets. It seems to me that with the format of the prelims and playoffs at NSC, unless you are one of the top 8 or 10 seeds your initial seeding matters a great deal. This is especially true of the teams fighting for the lower spots (8-16) in the top two playoff brackets.

I can't see any reason that the seeding would need to be kept secret. It would be like having the NCAA basketball tournament and not telling anyone who the #1 seeds were.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Edward Powers »

I agree, Coach Flowers.

And thanks Jon for the update on Charter & Dorman B.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Captain Sinico »

Sure, I can agree with that. I'll publish our full seeding tomorrow since there's clearly a high degree of interest in that.

Since we take the top two from each bracket and initial bracket records don't count after the initial bracket, I don't think it's necessary to get a top 10 seed to have a good shot at the top bracket. Rather, it's definitely true that seeds though 16 would be expected to make the top bracket if our seeding were perfect. Further, our seeding and bracketing procedure reflects that we expect at least up to the top 4 seed to have a good shot at the top bracket. What I mean is that seeds to that point have to pull only one real seed upset and win their games against lesser seeds to be guaranteed at least a tiebreaker to get into the top bracket. To put it another way, no team is eliminated without having lost at least a full game and a tiebreaker.

Finally, full order of finish will be published Monday. I apologize that it's not up yet.

M
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Edward Powers »

M---or Fred,

Any word on the original seedings yet? Or the results of the tie-breakers & crossover matches? Or a composite result with the final standings?
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by AKKOLADE »

Edward Powers wrote:Or the results of the tie-breakers & crossover matches? Or a composite result with the final standings?
Speaking to my parts:

1) I'm working on inputting those results
2) I believe a composite result will be available once those are done (we can then merge all the stats)
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Edward Powers »

Thanks Fred.

I do not wish to seem to be a pest, but I am curious how some fairly good teams finished beyond the top 8 in the field, and right now I only know a smattering of the final results a full 8 days after the tournament's end, and almost nothing of the results for the bottom 3 flights. Now it is certainly understandable for the very best teams in the top flight to get most of the ink and publicity, but there really were many good teams whose results are known only to them. But again I know you understand, so I will stop here---except to ask Mike if he will follow up on his promise to publish the original seedings for this year's tournament?
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Captain Sinico »

Hi,
You're right to call me on that and I'm sorry for taking longer than I said. A different project has been taking most of my PACE time. Here are the results of our seeding meeting:

- 1's
1. Maggie Walker A
2. State College A
3. Southside A
4. St. Anselm's
5. LASA
6. Dorman A.
7. Georgetown Day
8. Torrey Pines A
- 2's
9. Hunter A
10. duPont Manual A
11. Detroit Central Catholic A
12. Thomas Jefferson A
13. Wilmington Charter
14. Dunbar A
15. Auburn
16. Alpharetta
- 3's
17. Stevenson
18. Dorman B
19. Hoover
20. St. Joseph A
21. Richard Montgomery A
22. Loyola
23. St. Ignatius
24. Carbondale
- 4's
25. Seven Lakes A
26. Mission San Jose A
27. Walter Johnson
28. Montgomery Blair
29. Walt Whitman
30. Northmont
31. Quince Orchard
32. Lisle
- 5's
33. Detroit Central Catholic B
34. Copley
35. Thomas Jefferson B
36. St. Joseph B
37. Hunter B
38. Early College A
39. Blake
40. Dan Donohue
- 6's
41. Dorman C
42. Ransom Everglades
43. Richard Montgomery B
44. Johnson Central
45. duPont Manual B
46. Seven Lakes B
47. Norcross
48. Torrey Pines B
- 7's
49. Ocean Lakes
50. Thomas Jefferson C
51. Maggie Walker B
52. Danville
53. Simon Kenton
54. Shady Side
55. State College B
56. Warren G. Harding
- 8's
57. Early College B
58. Holden
59. Mission San Jose B
60. Frenchtown
61. Southside B
62. Robinson
63. Hoggard
64. Robert Patton.

Note that these do not reflect our final field in several places, namely, Mission San Jose A and B and Dorman C were not actually in our field. Since we discovered those facts after seeding and printing brackets (due to no fault on the part of Dorman and... uhm... some fault on the part of Mission San Jose,) I decided that it would be best to insert the replacement teams into MSJ A and B and Dorman C's originals slots, which is not ideal - ideally, we'd like to have re-seeded and printed new brackets. Also, we manually moved some teams of seeds numerically 5 or higher between brackets to achieve some geographical diversity.

Excepting those changes, the bracket construction was a simple snake through the seeds, so one bracket was 1, 16, 17, 24, 25; a second was 2, 15, 18, 23, 26; etc.

M
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Captain Sinico »

I also want to apologize for the continued delay in disseminating the set. Having completed my work on it, I discovered that Chris had some other things he wanted to do with it before release. Chris assures me it will be sent for archiving today.

M
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Edward Powers »

This is interesting, and it seems that for the most part your top 4 or 5 seeds in each bracket held up falrly well, with some modest upsets here or there, which was to be expected.

I suppose we could all nit-pick about a seeding here or there, but I only see one seeding that truly puzzles, and, ironically, it is Mission San Jose as a 4 seed instead of a reasonably strong 2 seed. Given the recent fine performances of California teams at nationals----for example, only the week before at the HSNCT, Bellarmine, Torrey Pines, MSJ, La Jolla and Berkeley all finished in the top 17, with Santa Monica, Rancho Bernardo and Arcadia not too far behind. Further, I think most on the West Coast would have seeded MSJ ahead of Bellarmine prior to either of the Nationals, and Bellarmine's outstanding performance at the HSNCT would have, I thought, engendered greater respect for MSJ in your seeding meetings. But I will also concede that there might have been factors of which your committee was aware that outsiders like myself would not know about the actual team MSJ was planning to bring. Finally, MSJ ultimately decided not to participate, so in the final analysis it becomes a moot point. And if Jasper Lee replaced MSJ in its respective bracket, he certainly acquitted himself nicely and kept that bracket wonderfully competitive, which is all you can ask. So, overall, I think the committee did an excellent job in grouping teams as # 1's or #2's or# 3's, etc, etc.

EDIT: I just noticed---Dunbar B, a very good team, is not in your original list of 64, but were registered as being so in your master registration list. So, is this an error in the original seeding list?
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by AKKOLADE »

If I recall correctly (I was logged in to the seeding meeting, but I was not a very active participant due to needing to leave the next day): the "Mission San Jose A" we were getting was supposed to actually be Mission San Jose B, according to various sources. Of course, these sources then started saying they might not be coming...
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Angry Babies in Love »

Wait, maybe I'm reading this wrong, but if it was a snake shouldn't have Torrey Pines's bracket contained Carbondale and Ocean Lakes instead of Richard Montgomery A and Gov B
EDIt: Never mind, I should try reading the whole post next time
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Down and out in Quintana Roo »

The Granny wrote:If I recall correctly (I was logged in to the seeding meeting, but I was not a very active participant due to needing to leave the next day): the "Mission San Jose A" we were getting was supposed to actually be Mission San Jose B, according to various sources. Of course, these sources then started saying they might not be coming...
Well, true, but this supposed B Team also played awesome at HSNCT the week before with almost 17ppb, 10 wins, and victories against Seven Lakes A, Solon, Ransom Everglades, Pensacola, and duPont Manual.

I guess it's a moot point now, though.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by AKKOLADE »

I'm not saying they're not a good team (we would have been very happy if MSJ showed up) - they were seeded as the 26th best team in the tourney. That's definitely not a bad team.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

The Granny wrote:I'm not saying they're not a good team (we would have been very happy if MSJ showed up) - they were seeded as the 26th best team in the tourney. That's definitely not a bad team.
Yeah, I'm surprised that twenty-sixth is a terribly controversial seed for a team that is not as good as the A team that finished T-17.

EDIT: I am informed that hypothetical MSJ A at PACE was MSJ B which might have also been MSJ A at HSNCT, which means we might have been seeding a team that finished 17th at HSNCT 26th. Given that the seeders almost certainly had statistics to use besides a finish that only happened the prior week, I'm still not too upset.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Edward Powers »

I am not upset either. My post was simply based upon the true MSJ A team, and I conceded that the PACE seeding committee might have had info to which outsiders like myself were not privy. And if that information indicated that the MSJ Team that might be coming was in fact its B Team, then your seeding is quite understandable. Further, looking at the seeding AS A WHOLE, it seems the seeding committee did an excellent job when one looks at the actual results. Of course teams like Alpharetta were going to have a rough time seeded at # 16, for they would have to play the # 1 & # 17 seeds---and what in reality is the difference between 16 & 17? Still, Alpharetta justified its seed in the 2nd flight, finishing first in its bracket and then winning the crossover to take #17 overall. As Mike said, teams seeded as low as # 4 or possibly even # 5 in each bracket had chances to advance to the first flight if they pulled off one upset. Whitman and Jasper Lee are cases in point---Whitman did "upset" Charter & Hoover, if you can call any team with Doug playing hot a 4th seed, and although Jasper did not make the first bracket, he got himself a chance to do so by defeating St. Ignatius and forcing a 3 way tie-breaker. So, the Top 4 seeds in each bracket surely had their chances, yet on the whole the seedings generally held form throughout---I think 13 of the top 16 seeds entered the top flight after preliminaries, while something similar occurred in the 2nd flight, and we all know when teams are so close in ability anything can happen in one match in the Prelims. And, teams can simply get hot or cold---witness Adair at the HSNCT, a very good team that played phenomenally for 5 or 6 rounds while facing elimnation in every match against some very good teams.

So, I do not think there is any reason for complaint; instead I think the committee has earned some well deserved kudos. Of course if I am missing something, I would not mind learning what it is.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by nobthehobbit »

Edward Powers wrote:So, I do not think there is any reason for complaint; instead I think the committee has earned some well deserved kudos. Of course if I am missing something, I would not mind learning what it is.
This is not a criticism of the seeding process, but one must be skeptical in comparing seedings to final results, as the former most definitely influence the latter. To me, it's a bit fallacious to say the final results "justified" the seeding.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by SoLegit12 »

Captain Sinico wrote:Hi,
You're right to call me on that and I'm sorry for taking longer than I said. A different project has been taking most of my PACE time. Here are the results of our seeding meeting:

- 1's
1. Maggie Walker A
2. State College A
3. Southside A
4. St. Anselm's
5. LASA
6. Dorman A.
7. Georgetown Day
8. Torrey Pines A
- 2's
9. Hunter A
10. duPont Manual A
11. Detroit Central Catholic A
12. Thomas Jefferson A
13. Wilmington Charter
14. Dunbar A
15. Auburn
16. Alpharetta
- 3's
17. Stevenson
18. Dorman B
19. Hoover
20. St. Joseph A
21. Richard Montgomery A
22. Loyola
23. St. Ignatius
24. Carbondale
- 4's
25. Seven Lakes A
26. Mission San Jose A
27. Walter Johnson
28. Montgomery Blair
29. Walt Whitman
30. Northmont
31. Quince Orchard
32. Lisle
- 5's
33. Detroit Central Catholic B
34. Copley
35. Thomas Jefferson B
36. St. Joseph B
37. Hunter B
38. Early College A
39. Blake
40. Dan Donohue
- 6's
41. Dorman C
42. Ransom Everglades
43. Richard Montgomery B
44. Johnson Central
45. duPont Manual B
46. Seven Lakes B
47. Norcross
48. Torrey Pines B
- 7's
49. Ocean Lakes
50. Thomas Jefferson C
51. Maggie Walker B
52. Danville
53. Simon Kenton
54. Shady Side
55. State College B
56. Warren G. Harding
- 8's
57. Early College B
58. Holden
59. Mission San Jose B
60. Frenchtown
61. Southside B
62. Robinson
63. Hoggard
64. Robert Patton.

Note that these do not reflect our final field in several places, namely, Mission San Jose A and B and Dorman C were not actually in our field. Since we discovered those facts after seeding and printing brackets (due to no fault on the part of Dorman and... uhm... some fault on the part of Mission San Jose,) I decided that it would be best to insert the replacement teams into MSJ A and B and Dorman C's originals slots, which is not ideal - ideally, we'd like to have re-seeded and printed new brackets. Also, we manually moved some teams of seeds numerically 5 or higher between brackets to achieve some geographical diversity.

Excepting those changes, the bracket construction was a simple snake through the seeds, so one bracket was 1, 16, 17, 24, 25; a second was 2, 15, 18, 23, 26; etc.

M
it seems we were overrated as we were shorthanded (missing our science, music, and myth player).
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by cvdwightw »

Crazy Andy Watkins wrote:EDIT: I am informed that hypothetical MSJ A at PACE was MSJ B which might have also been MSJ A at HSNCT, which means we might have been seeding a team that finished 17th at HSNCT 26th. Given that the seeders almost certainly had statistics to use besides a finish that only happened the prior week, I'm still not too upset.
1. MSJ finished T-11th at HSNCT with their so-called "B team."

2. As far as I can tell the NorCal circuit this year consisted of two A-series tournaments, a sparsely attended State Championship, and an indeterminate number of Gaius-run tournaments that lack stats and are almost certainly in a Bizarre Local Format(TM). This makes accurately seeding NorCal teams (and any other teams whose season stats are incomplete, missing, and/or in a Bizarre Local Format(TM)) exceedingly difficult.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Edward Powers »

Of course seedings influence outcomes---but they do not DETERMINE them. Further, and more important, informed seedings are not arbitrary---most of the teams at PACE were outstanding teams in their home states and regions and they compiled records throughout the year, often against each other. Imagine if the seeding committee ignored these results and instead created a bracket in the prelims which included the 8 teams that ended up in the superplayoffs. Suddenly 6 of the top 8 teams in the country would not have a chance to get to the first flight after one round robin.

So of course seedings "influence" outcomes---that is self-evident--they are supposed to, in order to keep the tournament fair for everyone, giving everyone a shot against a reasonably equtable array of opponents in the prelims, but not virutally impossible opposition due to laziness and a failure to study the seasons results, while othe teams might have cake-walks to the top flight due to being placed with let's say 5 or 6 of the waekest teams in the field based upon the entire season's performance.

Take any 2nd seed as seeded by the committee---each one was going to face a national powerhouse in the # 1 seed in its bracket, but also very gifted 3rd & 4th and possibly even 5th seeds capable of knocking them off if they were not on top of their games. Look at DCC, a # 2 seed, and Walter Johnson, a 4 seed---the game finished tied and DCC only prevailed in overtime, 410-390. Clearly DCC was on its game against an excellent 4 seed who almost defeated it but did not. Conversely, Charter had a great season and surely earned its number 2 seed---but that guaranteed nothing---it lost to Whitman, a 4 seed, and Whitman also "upset" an excellent 3 seed, Hoover , to earn its way into the first flight. And Ignatius, upset by Jasper Lee, in turn upset duPont Manual, then won out in the 3 way tie breaker when each ended prlims 5-2. Then, in the 2nd flight match-ups, Charter was upset again in its first two matches, by Dunbar B and Dorman B, before it ran off 6 wins in a row, I beleive, to take the 19th spot---a disappoinment for Charter based on its original seeding and expectations---but the Charter kids and coach would tell you seeding helps, of course, but guarantees nothing---hence, it influences---agreed---but determines nothing.

So---when I suggest that the results suggest the committee did a good job, understand seeding is designed to reward teams for their relative excellence throughout the year, and all I was suggesting was that I think the committee did this without harming competitve balance or preventing any team that had the abilty to make it to a higher flight from getting there by imposing a punishing set of opponents all in one bracket due to a silly refusal to reward teams for the relaitve merits of the seasons they put together. And still, as upsets seems to show, seeding is not and can never be an exact science.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Important Bird Area »

cvdwightw wrote:1. MSJ finished T-11th at HSNCT with their so-called "B team."

2. As far as I can tell the NorCal circuit this year consisted of two A-series tournaments, a sparsely attended State Championship, and an indeterminate number of Gaius-run tournaments that lack stats and are almost certainly in a Bizarre Local Format(TM). This makes accurately seeding NorCal teams (and any other teams whose season stats are incomplete, missing, and/or in a Bizarre Local Format(TM)) exceedingly difficult.
The three leading scorers from the MSJ A team at HSNCT played together at the state championship on IS#95, so I thought I was able to seed them accurately for HSNCT purposes. At least: northern California was far easier for me to deal with than parts of the country that didn't keep stats at all.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Captain Sinico »

Yeah, MSJ was one of our most difficult seeding decisions, since we didn't know the composition of their team. I saw their HSNCT A team and was suitably impressed - I have to believe they would have had a higher seed if we had faith they'd show with that same team. In the end, their seed was a compromise/hedge against their not sending as strong a team (which paid off a bit too well...)

M
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Unicolored Jay »

Edward Powers wrote:
EDIT: I just noticed---Dunbar B, a very good team, is not in your original list of 64, but were registered as being so in your master registration list. So, is this an error in the original seeding list?
Maybe they replaced Johnson Central, which was in the original seeding but did not attend? Just a hypothesis.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Captain Sinico »

I'm not sure. Let me check what happened with that.

M
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Captain Sinico »

Hi guys,
At what I consider a fair request for privacy, I've split all posts about the NSC cheating issue to special forum. This was not in the least done to squelch discussion, nor in a foolish attempt to hide any facts (which are already widely known.) In order to access the form, you have to join the usergroup "2010 PACE Cheating Information." This is the same as the private usergroups used to discuss tournaments with pending mirrors. As a refresher, to get there:

From your user control panel, select usergroups. Find 2010 PACE Cheating Information at the bottom of the list, then click the radio button and submit as "join selected."

I am in sole control of access to this group. If you want in, please follow the above instructions. You might consider sending me a message as well regarding your request; I may not let you in if I don't recognize you.

M
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Charbroil »

Captain Sinico wrote:Hi guys,
At what I consider a fair request for privacy, I've split all posts about the NSC cheating issue to special forum. This was not in the least done to squelch discussion, nor in a foolish attempt to hide any facts (which are already widely known.) In order to access the form, you have to join the usergroup "2010 PACE Cheating Information." This is the same as the private usergroups used to discuss tournaments with pending mirrors. As a refresher, to get there:

From your user control panel, select usergroups. Find 2010 PACE Cheating Information at the bottom of the list, then click the radio button and submit as "join selected."

I am in sole control of access to this group. If you want in, please follow the above instructions. You might consider sending me a message as well regarding your request; I may not let you in if I don't recognize you.

M
Just out of curiousity, what are your criteria for membership of this group?
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

That you are a person who pushes the buttons to join.
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Captain Sinico »

Charbroil wrote:Just out of curiousity, what are your criteria for membership of this group?
I'm planning on letting anyone who asks in unless I have a good reason to keep them out. If people make asinine posts or whatever, I'll consider removing them.

M
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Edward Powers »

M,

I followed the steps outlined in order to join the PACE Cheating Group & it brought me to a screen suggesting that my membership was "pending".

How long a wait does "pending" entail?
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Captain Sinico »

"Pending" means I'm waiting to approve your request. As I'm approving all manually, it might take a while, so please try to be patient.

M
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Re: PACE NSC: format changes, 2010 information

Post by Edward Powers »

Fair enough. And thanks for your swift response.
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