Claude Shannon Memorial Tournament

[Cody]

Today is the glorious birth day of the great Claude Shannon; in his honor, I am...moderately pleased to announce an electrical engineering side event. This tournament will have anywhere from four to ten packets of twenty tossups, powermarked and ranging from five to ten or more lines as I deem fit. I have most answers picked out, but no writing will commence until after NASAT, so expect this to be finished sometime in July or August.

I am writing this to explore topics I find interesting and care very little for answerability, so it will adhere fairly closely to my interests. Answerlines will vary from CO++ all the way down to ACF Regs level, but my guiding principle is "[important] things I'd've liked to answer a tossup on", so you can probably expect to have a good time if you've been wishing some electrical engineering topics would appear in quizbowl.

Since I imagine little interest in this, I will instead read this on Skype or IRC at a time that works for - at least - the players I think worthy. Obviously, there will be no fee. If you're interested, post below so that I don't forget to contact you in you in a few months.

Final Distribution:
5 Circuits + Microelectronics (3 semiconductor, 2 IC)
4 Comm. + Signals (2 digital, 1 comm., 1 any)
3 Microfabrication (1 misc., 1 M[O]EMS, 1 “materials”)
1 Computer
1 Controls
1 Electromagnetics
1 Neural Networks
1 Optoelectronics
1 Power
1 Any (of the above)
1 Electrician/Electrical Safety

[grapesmoker]

I'll play this.

[MLafer]

Hopefully I can get some points at this so I can say I didn't waste my time in college.

[Steeve Ho You Fat]

I will gladly lose games to actual engineers at this.

[Charbroil]

I'll play this.

[Auks Ran Ova]

Hopefully this will serve as adequate replacement for Jerry's never-fulfilled promise of an "electrical safety" packet.

[ScoBo]

If I'm not busy I might play just to see just how close to nothing I remember from the few EE classes I took. (It's been over 5 years now...!)

[touchpack]

I will gladly lose games to actual engineers at this.

Likewise, although maybe I'll get a tossup or two from my microelectronics processing class.

[grapesmoker]

Hopefully this will serve as adequate replacement for Jerry's never-fulfilled promise of an "electrical safety" packet.

Deep cuts from my posting record, Rob. Very deep. Perhaps I shall have to deliver after all...

[theMoMA]

Hopefully this will serve as adequate replacement for Jerry's never-fulfilled promise of an "electrical safety" packet.

Deep cuts from my posting record, Rob. Very deep. Perhaps I shall have to deliver after all...

I look forward to continuing my record, finely honed at Chip tournaments, of getting tossups on ground fault circuit interrupters.

[Lagotto Romagnolo]

YES! Sign me up.

[sephirothrr]

I absolutely want to play this tournament.

[Quantum Mushroom Billiard Hat]

I would love to play this.

[Galadedrid Damodred]

Thank you, Cody Voight, for giving me extra incentive to prepare for graduate school this summer. I will gladly play this tournament, although I expect that I'll do surprisingly poorly for an EE major. I don't see any photonics in your list - will there be any questions on lasers, opto-electronic devices, and the ilk? Please say yes!

[Cody]

I don't see any photonics in your list - will there be any questions on lasers, opto-electronic devices, and the ilk? Please say yes!

I just did an independent study in optoelectronics, so it will be well represented in various parts of the distribution :)

[Cody]

I've resumed work on this until other quizbowl commitments call me away, and have changed the distribution thusly:

6 Comm. & Signals (2 DSP-related, 3 comm.-related, 1 "concepts/methods")
6 Microelectronics (3 semiconductor-related, 3 IC/circuit-related)
3 Controls & Logic
3 Microfabrication (1 "misc.", 1 MEMS/MOEMS, 1 "materials") [all murderously hard unless you've set foot in a cleanroom]
2 Optoelectronics
2 Electromagnetics (1 "things I learned about in EGRE 309", 1 "things I didn't learn about in EGRE 309")
1 Computer
1 Neural Networks
1 Power
1 Electrical Safety [it struck my fancy]
1 Electrician [things that strike my fancy from my Electrician's Helper days. murderously hard unless you've worked in the field.]
----------
27 questions / packet

I've settled on six packets and have picked over 90% of my answers (with a few spare in some categories), so it's possible this may be the final distribution - though it may be changed to combine things or downsize if a lot of answers don't pan out.

As I have 130 questions left to write, on top of other quizbowl commitments, finishing it sometime in the fall is a tad optimistic. I'd expect a mid-/late-winter reading.

[Cody]

Another update:

I've written a few more questions for this and have condensed the distribution to 20 questions to make the tournament more manageable:

5 Comm. & Signals (2 DSP-related, 2 comm.-related, 1 "concepts/methods")
5 Microelectronics (3 semiconductor-related, 2 IC/circuit-related)
3 Microfabrication (1 "misc.", 1 MEMS/MOEMS, 1 "materials")
1 Computer
1 Controls & Logic
1 Electromagnetics (split between "things I learned about in EGRE 309" & "things I didn't learn about in EGRE 309")
1 Neural Networks
1 Optoelectronics
1 Power
1 Electrical Safety + Electrician (things that strike my fancy from my Electrician's Helper days)

6 packets seems a safe bet as all answers are picked and 40 of 120 questions are written. A late-winter reading seems on track.

[alexdz]

If the timing works out I'd pop in and play just to be clobbered but learn a few things along the way.

[Harpie's Feather Duster]

Seeing as I will have taken approximately TWO Electrical Engineering classes plus general engineering background by the time this is happening, I will gladly play this.

[Mnemosyne]

Any update on the set? My school's electrical engineering club totally wanted to do something with this.

[Cody]

45/120. Assuming my other quizbowl commitments allow, I'm trying to finish by early March.

[Cody]

In the interest of full disclosure, here is a nice 2D histogram of the current difficulty of the tournament. Its source is the 68 answerlines currently in my master document, which I've categorized by quizbowl difficulty and EE difficulty. EE difficulty is a bit of a guessing game given the differences in when people do certain work in the curriculum, the value is "by x year" and assumes that one actually took a class in the fields represented (such as power). A few of the easier things haven't been included in my answer document yet, but...heads up.

[Cody]

I put in all but 2 answers, so here's a new image (thumbnail, click for larger view). (Electrian / Electrical Safety is not categorized). And since I'm here, an update on the tournament status: 53/120 written.

[Cody]

Big announcement: the current plan is to make this available for George Oppen, with an online reading sometime soon after for those who won't be at Oppen. As noted in the original post, this is completely free; I recommend a shootout among interested parties, which I think should take around an hour and a half. I plan to somewhat evenly distribute difficulty per packet, so anyone with some EE background should be able to sit in if they wish and not be totally lost. Though, as a reminder, only 21% of the tournament is what I'd consider below-CO level difficulty, so don't come in expecting tossups on, like, “inductors” or “MOSFETs”.

The final distribution is as follows:
5 Circuits + Microelectronics (3 semiconductor, 2 IC) – 47% complete
4 Comm. + Signals (2 digital, 1 comm., 1 any) – 30% complete
3 Microfabrication (1 misc., 1 M[O]EMS, 1 “materials”) – 78% complete
1 Computer – 50% complete
1 Controls – 100% complete
1 Electromagnetics – 17% complete
1 Neural Networks – 50% complete
1 Optoelectronics – 83% complete
1 Power – 17% complete
1 Any (of the above) – 50% complete
1 Electrician/Electrical Safety – 50% complete

6 packets. 20 tossups per packet. 50% complete overall.

A quick note on format: all questions have powers. Anything rated as “F” in the packet (corresponding to “should show up Nowhere as a tossup” in the 2D histogram above) is worth 20 points inside power, 10 points outside of it. Anything rated “B” through “E” (Regs through CO) is worth 15 points inside power, 10 points outside of it. This will be noted at the top of packets.

I'll post some nice paper scoresheets sometime before Oppen if any sites want them.

[Cody]

The fabled scoresheet..

[Captain Sinico]

I'd sure like to play such an event.

[Cody]

The first part of this was received with such effusive praise as "that was kind of fun". Much thanks to my players for sticking it out.

Scores:
Jerry Vinokurov 0/0/1/3; 0/0/4/1; 0/0/5/0 - 80 points
Aaron Rosenberg 1/1/4/1; 0/1/3/0; 1/4/3/3 - 210 points
James Lasker 0/0/1/0; 0/0/0/1; 0/0/1/0 - 15 points
Austin Brownlow - 1/0/1/1; 0/1/2/2; 0/0/2/1 - 65 points
Matt Lafer - 0/0/2/1; 0/0/0/0; 0/1/0/0 - 40 points

The first three packets are attached. I'll tone down the difficulty slightly in uncompleted areas (especially Communications) for "part 2" (3 more packets), which will probably be completed some time in the late spring / early summer.

[Lagotto Romagnolo]

FWIW, I thought it was a blast, niche though it was.

[grapesmoker]

This was fun as hell. Thanks for doing it, Cody.

[Galadedrid Damodred]

I would like to echo Aaron and Jerry in expressing my enjoyment of this side event. I look forward to part 2 and would prefer for it to be read online if possible, since I won't be attending any high school nationals or summer tournaments.