2018 ICT general discussion

[Important Bird Area]

This is your discussion thread for big-picture issues about the 2018 NAQT ICT (either division). If you'd like to discuss the specific text of a particular question, please use the two threads available for that purpose.

[ErikC]

I thought the history and trash tossups I heard in Div II were better this year than the older sets I played in practices and in the car ride before.

For history, it seemed much more varied in the sort of answerlines compared to older sets, which seem to be focused disproportionately on Named Events. The set reflected the general trend I've seen over the past few years of improvement in history tossups.

The trash in Div II (excluding sports which I can't comment on) was a good mix of note-worthy things that were similar in difficulty to the rest of the questions while avoiding the pitfall of random-indie-band some tournaments have fallen into in the past. The tossups had some great early clues as well.

[Auger recombination]

I really really really disliked the schedule format that this year's ICT used. The first five games having essentially the largest effect on final placing by a pretty huge margin didn't feel great, especially since for some reason we had to play a 2 seed vs 3 seed matchup as our very first game of the day. I'm not a scheduling expert, so I'm sure what other format NAQT could have used for 36 teams, but I would have liked for more than 5 games to differentiate between OU being in contention for the top bracket and being in contention for 13th place.

[a bird]

I really enjoyed the physics and physics-y astro in the DI set. It did a great job touching on important topics from classes and things people might know from general interest.

Here are some brief comments/observations. It seemed like there wasn't as much quantum mechanics as I might have expected. (Condensed matter was well represented, but I'm thinking of core quantum topics.) Also some of the answerlines (e.g. Babinet's principle) seem unnecessarily inaccessible to me, but these are minor issues. I imagine conversion data won't be available for a while, but I'm wondering if the science (particularly physics) in the set was less commonly powered than other topics. Anyway, thanks for all the hard work on the set!

[everdiso]

Some thoughts on the clock:

Playing in Div 2, we only missed one tossup all day, playing 23 in one game and 24 in our other 12. In many cases, we got through 13 before the half and finished with a minute or two to spare. This was in part due to many tossups being converted early, but also because the readers were generally very fast and capable. While it did not cut questions off, the clock did make games run in a very quick, up-tempo manner that I enjoyed a lot, and that kept me much more into games than the often dreary ACF style (where I find it easy to zone out on tossups about topics I know nothing about).

Overall, my positive experience with the clock here reinforced my view that it should remain at ICT, and further that it should return to SCT. It makes games more fun and keeps players more focused (and the speed makes close games more intense), and it's very hard for questions to be missed. It's true that SCT features many teams that won't be able to convert tossups early like those at ICT, but the questions are, of course, shorter, and missed tossups also speed games up.

One thing that I don't understand, however, is why Div 1 and Div 2 have equal-length halves. Division 1's tossups are, of course, both longer and harder to power, yet strong teams still generally get almost all tossups and have to listen to almost all bonuses. I think it would make sense for Division 1's half lengths to be increased to 12 minutes to account for the greater question length.

[Fado Alexandrino]

I think it would make sense for Division 1's half lengths to be increased to 12 minutes to account for the greater question length.

We missed 4 tossups. D1 readers are generally going to be faster.

The clock was almost useless at 11 mins. Kill it completely, or go back down to 10 mins in order run two more rounds with a 40 team field.

[everdiso]

The clock is most certainly not useless. Games would go much more slowly without it, as is attested to by every other quizbowl tournament that uses short questions.

[vinteuil]

every other quizbowl tournament that uses short questions.

...?

[everdiso]

...?

All other tournaments with relatively short questions have much longer games than NAQT tournaments that use the clock.

[Charbroil]

...?

All other tournaments with relatively short questions have much longer games than NAQT tournaments that use the clock.

I believe--and Jacob can correct me if I'm wrong--that Jacob is confused because there are no other mainstream collegiate tournaments whose questions are as short as NAQT's.

[Jason Cheng]

We're barely discussing ICT at this point, but even high school tournaments inc. ones on NAQT IS-sets manage to average more than 25 minutes a round in most cases. Timers limiting kvetching/comments between questions and standardizing round start and end times are pretty useful, especially with multiple rebrackets. The utility of this at college nationals which are always well-staffed in both quality and quantity and well-run is more debatable, but then I guess we don't get to post snarky and nitpicky comments with nothing but punctuation so

[setht]

I thought the history and trash tossups I heard in Div II were better this year than the older sets I played in practices and in the car ride before.

For history, it seemed much more varied in the sort of answerlines compared to older sets, which seem to be focused disproportionately on Named Events. The set reflected the general trend I've seen over the past few years of improvement in history tossups.

The trash in Div II (excluding sports which I can't comment on) was a good mix of note-worthy things that were similar in difficulty to the rest of the questions while avoiding the pitfall of random-indie-band some tournaments have fallen into in the past. The tossups had some great early clues as well.

I'm glad you enjoyed the set!

-Seth

[setht]

I really really really disliked the schedule format that this year's ICT used. The first five games having essentially the largest effect on final placing by a pretty huge margin didn't feel great, especially since for some reason we had to play a 2 seed vs 3 seed matchup as our very first game of the day. I'm not a scheduling expert, so I'm sure what other format NAQT could have used for 36 teams, but I would have liked for more than 5 games to differentiate between OU being in contention for the top bracket and being in contention for 13th place.

I'm also not a scheduling wizard, so I won't rule out the possibility that there's some good alternative schedule that would do what you want. And I'm sympathetic to the feeling that being blocked from the top brackets after 5 games is too abrupt a cut-off—but I think that feeling doesn't have much of a basis in the cold reality of how playoff placements are decided.

This year's DI format took a third of the field into the top brackets; I think that's pretty generous. Since we had more prelim brackets, there was also a larger average gap in seed number between the first and second seed, and between the second and third seed, in each bracket (compared with our four-bracket set-up in previous years). That means we expect somewhat fewer upsets during the prelims; I think that's a good thing.

If you imagine starting with our 6-team brackets and expanding back to the old 8-team brackets (so you get two more prelim games), I don't think that has much real impact on the number of critical games for playoff placement—everything is still focused on probably 2 or 3 games. (E.g. for the third seed in a given bracket, playoff placement is almost always decided by how you fare against the second seed and fourth seed; you also get a long shot at improving your placement when playing the first seed, and a long shot at hurting your placement when playing the fifth seed.)

If you're one of the top three seeds in a prelim bracket, and you lose to the two other top seeds, you are almost certainly not going to make the top bracket. That doesn't change whether you're playing 5 games in a 6-team prelim bracket, or 7 games in an 8-team prelim bracket.

-Seth

[setht]

I really enjoyed the physics and physics-y astro in the DI set. It did a great job touching on important topics from classes and things people might know from general interest.

Here are some brief comments/observations. It seemed like there wasn't as much quantum mechanics as I might have expected. (Condensed matter was well represented, but I'm thinking of core quantum topics.) Also some of the answerlines (e.g. Babinet's principle) seem unnecessarily inaccessible to me, but these are minor issues. I imagine conversion data won't be available for a while, but I'm wondering if the science (particularly physics) in the set was less commonly powered than other topics. Anyway, thanks for all the hard work on the set!

I'm very glad to hear you enjoyed those questions, Graham.

I counted about 3/3 quantum mechanics in the physics section (out of 17/16), but I'll admit that some of those questions may not be core quantum topics. (We also had 0/1 quantum chemistry.)

I will try to remember to check out the conversion data for the science (and especially physics) tossups, once it's available. It's very possible that I was too stingy with the power marks there (or with the selection of middle clues).

-Seth

[setht]

One point in favor of the clock at ICT is that it helps keep rooms (nearly) synchronized, even across brackets and divisions. Since the DI and DII sets share converted questions, avoiding situations where one division is way ahead of the other is important.

This year we did have a scheduled mismatch between the divisions, because of the difference in prelim bracket size. I believe the staggered lunchtimes took care of that, so that rounds were more or less synchronized between DI and DII after the DII teams returned from lunch.

In any event, I think at ICT the clock has important benefits independent of affecting how many questions a team hears in a given round. And one of those important benefits requires that match lengths remain identical in both divisions.

-Seth

[a bird]

I really enjoyed the physics and physics-y astro in the DI set. It did a great job touching on important topics from classes and things people might know from general interest.

Here are some brief comments/observations. It seemed like there wasn't as much quantum mechanics as I might have expected. (Condensed matter was well represented, but I'm thinking of core quantum topics.) Also some of the answerlines (e.g. Babinet's principle) seem unnecessarily inaccessible to me, but these are minor issues. I imagine conversion data won't be available for a while, but I'm wondering if the science (particularly physics) in the set was less commonly powered than other topics. Anyway, thanks for all the hard work on the set!

I'm very glad to hear you enjoyed those questions, Graham.

I counted about 3/3 quantum mechanics in the physics section (out of 17/16), but I'll admit that some of those questions may not be core quantum topics. (We also had 0/1 quantum chemistry.)

I will try to remember to check out the conversion data for the science (and especially physics) tossups, once it's available. It's very possible that I was too stingy with the power marks there (or with the selection of middle clues).

-Seth

I'm curious which questions fall in the 3/3 quantum you mention. I guess I overlooked the delta function questions in my first post because I buzzed on the vector calc clue, but maybe it had more quantum clues; the identical particles tossup in the finals could count as well, though that seems more like a stat mech topic to me. The quantum chem bonus was a nice addition!

Again, this was not really a shortcoming of the set--I'm just wondering if any part of my original observation is correct.

[Borrowing 100,000 Arrows]

I really really really disliked the schedule format that this year's ICT used. The first five games having essentially the largest effect on final placing by a pretty huge margin didn't feel great, especially since for some reason we had to play a 2 seed vs 3 seed matchup as our very first game of the day. I'm not a scheduling expert, so I'm sure what other format NAQT could have used for 36 teams, but I would have liked for more than 5 games to differentiate between OU being in contention for the top bracket and being in contention for 13th place.

I'm also not a scheduling wizard, so I won't rule out the possibility that there's some good alternative schedule that would do what you want. And I'm sympathetic to the feeling that being blocked from the top brackets after 5 games is too abrupt a cut-off—but I think that feeling doesn't have much of a basis in the cold reality of how playoff placements are decided.

This year's DI format took a third of the field into the top brackets; I think that's pretty generous. Since we had more prelim brackets, there was also a larger average gap in seed number between the first and second seed, and between the second and third seed, in each bracket (compared with our four-bracket set-up in previous years). That means we expect somewhat fewer upsets during the prelims; I think that's a good thing.

If you imagine starting with our 6-team brackets and expanding back to the old 8-team brackets (so you get two more prelim games), I don't think that has much real impact on the number of critical games for playoff placement—everything is still focused on probably 2 or 3 games. (E.g. for the third seed in a given bracket, playoff placement is almost always decided by how you fare against the second seed and fourth seed; you also get a long shot at improving your placement when playing the first seed, and a long shot at hurting your placement when playing the fifth seed.)

If you're one of the top three seeds in a prelim bracket, and you lose to the two other top seeds, you are almost certainly not going to make the top bracket. That doesn't change whether you're playing 5 games in a 6-team prelim bracket, or 7 games in an 8-team prelim bracket.

-Seth

I think one of the really frustrating aspects of the current format is that if you end up in a bracket with one of the best teams in the tournament (like Chicago in our case) ICT becomes single elimination for your team. Perhaps this format is optimal, but it can really punish teams for playing one bad game. Also, I think that in the future NAQT should really really make an effort to avoid 2 v. 3 match-ups in the first round. It's not fun to play for your tournament life completely cold.

[Fado Alexandrino]

I think one of the really frustrating aspects of the current format is that if you end up in a bracket with one of the best teams in the tournament (like Chicago in our case) ICT becomes single elimination for your team. Perhaps this format is optimal, but it can really punish teams for playing one bad game. Also, I think that in the future NAQT should really really make an effort to avoid 2 v. 3 match-ups in the first round. It's not fun to play for your tournament life completely cold.

This doesn't change with an 8 team bracket, whether it's the 32 team ICT format or what the ACF nationals format is this year. The only way to prevent this is to bring 3+ teams into the top bracket.

[setht]

I'm curious which questions fall in the 3/3 quantum you mention. I guess I overlooked the delta function questions in my first post because I buzzed on the vector calc clue, but maybe it had more quantum clues; the identical particles tossup in the finals could count as well, though that seems more like a stat mech topic to me. The quantum chem bonus was a nice addition!

Again, this was not really a shortcoming of the set--I'm just wondering if any part of my original observation is correct.

I counted the tossups on (optical) pumping, ladder, and indistinguishable, and the bonuses on Lamb shift/Hans Bethe/qed and measurement/von Neumann/Wigner as quantum mechanics. (And looking at things again I feel like the bonus on Compton scattering/1 - cos theta/rest energy isn't quantum mech.) I actually counted the delta function tossup as "misc." physics since it had some EM clues, but then again the pumping, ladder, and indistinguishable tossups also mixed in non-QM clues as well.

-Seth

[setht]

I think one of the really frustrating aspects of the current format is that if you end up in a bracket with one of the best teams in the tournament (like Chicago in our case) ICT becomes single elimination for your team. Perhaps this format is optimal, but it can really punish teams for playing one bad game.

As Joe said, this all seems pretty similar to what happens in the previous 32-team format. In the previous format, ever 3 seed (and every 2 seed) is going to be in a bracket with one of the best teams in the tournament: specifically, one of the top 4 seeded teams. If anything, the current format seems slightly better on this front, since some teams get a crack at team #5 or 6 instead of trying to upset teams 1-4.

If you take it as given that a 3 seed (or 2 seed) is going to lose to the 1 seed in their bracket, and beat everyone with a 4 seed or below, then yes, playoff placement for 2 and 3 seeds is decided by a single game. That's exactly how things worked with the previous format too.

There's a tension between giving teams enough chances to "prove themselves" in the prelims, giving top teams enough games against each other in the playoffs, and the logistical constraints of time/packets/rooms. I tend to think that shifting the balance towards more prelim games and fewer playoff games would give a format inferior to the current one.

Also, I think that in the future NAQT should really really make an effort to avoid 2 v. 3 match-ups in the first round. It's not fun to play for your tournament life completely cold.

This, I completely support.

-Seth

[Borrowing 100,000 Arrows]

There's a tension between giving teams enough chances to "prove themselves" in the prelims, giving top teams enough games against each other in the playoffs, and the logistical constraints of time/packets/rooms. I tend to think that shifting the balance towards more prelim games and fewer playoff games would give a format inferior to the current one.

That's a fair point.