2019 NAQT Canada SCT at Queen's (9 Feb 2019)

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2019 NAQT Canada SCT at Queen's (9 Feb 2019)

Post by cruzeiro »

The Queen's University Trivia Club is happy to announce the Canadian NAQT Sectional on February 9, 2019 in Kingston, Ontario.

Location & Logistics
We are once again in Jeffrey Hall, where most of our recent tournaments have been held. Please meet in the control room, Jeffrey Hall 126, for 9:30 AM for set-up and the opening meeting; games will start by 10:00 AM, per previous requests to accommodate out-of-town travellers.

A campus map can be found here.

Registration
Registration is through the NAQT portal.

Registration closes one week prior to the tournament date (February 2, 2019); changes after that date are at my discretion as TD.

Fees
The standard NAQT fee schedule applies and is replicated below for convenience. All figures are in Canadian dollars.
Base Fee $135.00
New Program Discount $20.00 per team
(A program is considered new if no team from its school competed in an SCT, CC SCT, ICT, or CCCT in either of the two previous full competition years).
Buzzer System Discount $10.00 per system
Staff Discount $40.00 per staffer
Multiple-Team Discount $25.00 per team after the first
The minimum fee is $40.00 per team.

Payment is via cash, cheque (made out to Queen's Quiz Team), or e-transfer.

We hope to see you in Kingston on February 9!
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Re: 2019 NAQT Canada SCT at Queen's (9 Feb 2019)

Post by cruzeiro »

Field

Division I
McGill A
Carleton A
Toronto A
Toronto B (aka Toronto J)
Toronto C

Division II
McGill B
Carleton B
Waterloo
McMaster
Toronto D
Toronto E
Toronto F
Last edited by cruzeiro on Tue Feb 05, 2019 2:38 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: 2019 NAQT Canada SCT at Queen's (9 Feb 2019)

Post by Theodore »

Is there a recommended parking lot? Would the ones beside and below Frank Tindall Field be fine?
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Re: 2019 NAQT Canada SCT at Queen's (9 Feb 2019)

Post by cruzeiro »

Theodore wrote: Fri Feb 01, 2019 7:18 am Is there a recommended parking lot? Would the ones beside and below Frank Tindall Field be fine?
Will be in your logistics email, but the recommended parking is the above-ground lot beside Tindall Field (the below-ground lot is permit-holders and locks on the weekend, so you can't get into it without swiping a permit card).
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Re: 2019 NAQT Canada SCT at Queen's (9 Feb 2019)

Post by cruzeiro »

Logistics have gone out to all the team contacts.

We'll be running house teams in each division to have six teams in D1 and eight in D2.
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Re: 2019 NAQT Canada SCT at Queen's (9 Feb 2019)

Post by cruzeiro »

This tournament happened. Stats: http://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/5617/.

McGill A cleared the field in Division 1 at 10-0; Toronto C did the same at 10-0 in Division 2.

Note that for NAQT reporting purposes, Toronto J is listed as Toronto B, which bumps down each subsequent Toronto team by one letter compared to the usual.

Thank you to all the teams who came to Kingston today and all the staff for helping this run relatively smoothly.
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Re: 2019 NAQT Canada SCT at Queen's (9 Feb 2019)

Post by otsasonr »

Anyone perusing the official NAQT results for this tournament will encounter a troubling peculiarity in the Div II results. Namely, that a 6-4 team is ranked second, ahead of a 7-3 team with better statistics across the board.

Dennis has passed on to us NAQT's position that in these situations, results are determined by only the outcomes in the top bracket, even though Div II at this tournament had a prelim format of a single round robin for all the competing teams. So, the final rankings are determined solely by three games, discarding the outcomes of the seven games played prior to those.

Due to this bizarre method of ranking, Toronto E's raw D-value of 378.130, good enough to place them 18th at time of writing, has been adjusted down to 335.463, leaving them languishing in 26th.

The one question we all want answered is simply this: why? What is the justification for throwing away the outcomes of prelim games played against a common field of opponents, and instead relying on an incredibly small sample of three games to determine the final ranking for this tournament? When and how did this poorly though-out policy come to be, and why did no one realized how stupid it is before a team that was very proud of its performance got blindsided by this result?
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Re: 2019 NAQT Canada SCT at Queen's (9 Feb 2019)

Post by Cody »

otsasonr wrote: Mon Feb 11, 2019 4:59 pmThe one question we all want answered is simply this: why? What is the justification for throwing away the outcomes of prelim games played against a common field of opponents, and instead relying on an incredibly small sample of three games to determine the final ranking for this tournament? When and how did this poorly though-out policy come to be, and why did no one realized how stupid it is before a team that was very proud of its performance got blindsided by this result?
I, too, am blindsided by this policy. Not only is it contrary to common sense and fair formats, it is contrary to the last public thread we had about this -- in March 2017. NAQT's stated policy was that all games always count even when it is contrary to standards of fairness because it counts non-common games.
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Re: 2019 NAQT Canada SCT at Queen's (9 Feb 2019)

Post by CPiGuy »

Well, this is news to me, as I announced to teams at my site that prelim games against common opponents would carry over. Thankfully it didn't end up screwing anyone.

NAQT, this policy is monumentally stupid. Full stop.
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Re: 2019 NAQT Canada SCT at Queen's (9 Feb 2019)

Post by cruzeiro »

otsasonr wrote: Mon Feb 11, 2019 4:59 pm Anyone perusing the official NAQT results for this tournament will encounter a troubling peculiarity in the Div II results. Namely, that a 6-4 team is ranked second, ahead of a 7-3 team with better statistics across the board.

Dennis has passed on to us NAQT's position that in these situations, results are determined by only the outcomes in the top bracket, even though Div II at this tournament had a prelim format of a single round robin for all the competing teams. So, the final rankings are determined solely by three games, discarding the outcomes of the seven games played prior to those.
In the interests of transparency/full disclosure, the following is what i was told:
I wrote: Looking at our site results, why is McGill B at 6-4 showing as second in Division 2 instead of Toronto E at 7-3 (and, even if it they were tied, having stronger PP20TU and PPB than McGill B?)
Nathan Murphy responded wrote: You know, it's possible I may have done that wrong.

For our normal events (mostly HS and MS), when the playoffs are a complete round robin (which these are), we rank by playoff record only. That's why McG B (2-1 in playoffs) is above Tor E (1-2). But I have this vague recollection that our college policy might be different. I'll ask someone who knows more about it.
Shortly thereafter, I got this follow-up from Nathan:
Nathan Murphy wrote: Dennis,

I'm informed my initial understanding was correct - when a full round robin is played in the playoff pool, results of those games only are the determinant of final rank.

Thanks for checking!
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Re: 2019 NAQT Canada SCT at Queen's (9 Feb 2019)

Post by Fado Alexandrino »

At last year's SCT, Toronto D had a playoff record of 4-2 and Toronto E had a playoff record of 5-1, yet Toronto D is listed ahead of Toronto E (as it should be, because they tied in record and Toronto D had a higher PP20).
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Re: 2019 NAQT Canada SCT at Queen's (9 Feb 2019)

Post by Cody »

NAQT needs to:
(a) Be transparent about how it counts games because it affects qualification at all levels, especially when that apparently changes.
(b) Actually inform hosts when it changes the final standings based on its policies.
(c) Institute the only fair policy, which is to determine final standings based on all games against a common field. (Insofar as the situation arises, as there are formats outside of pool-based / crossover-based play where this does not apply.)
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Re: 2019 NAQT Canada SCT at Queen's (9 Feb 2019)

Post by cruzeiro »

Nathan Murphy, emailing me a few minutes ago, wrote:
Fyi, I apparently asked the wrong question, and got the answer I told you as a result. When the field is common among the among the playoff bracket (as in this case), we rank first by playoff bracket, then by *total* record.

The rankings are being updated. I apologize for the confusion.
Problem solved, apparently.

I should add that D2 D-Values now show Toronto E second and well ahead of McGill B.
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Re: 2019 NAQT Canada SCT at Queen's (9 Feb 2019)

Post by Important Bird Area »

We would like to apologize to the community for the recent miscommunication about our team-ranking policies. For the case involved here (full round-robin prelims followed by split round-robin playoffs), our policy is indeed to use overall record to rank the teams (not just playoff record). I have updated the rankings for the two 2019 SCT sites affected by this error (Rice and Queen's).

Cody is right that we, as a company, need to do a better job of documenting our ranking policies and communicating those policies to tournament hosts. I hope to have more news on this subject in the medium-term future (which probably means summer 2019 after the conclusion of HSNCT).
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Re: 2019 NAQT Canada SCT at Queen's (9 Feb 2019)

Post by person361 »

I think there are some related issues.

Miami-Ohio A and Notre Dame A are listed as tied for 5th in the Michigan site despite Miami-Ohio having a better record. It seems like the teams played a double round robin, then the two teams in question played each other twice (going 1-1), so by the policy, teams should be ranked by total record.

At the Virginia Tech site, Liberty C is ahead of Liberty B and Roanoke. It seems like the rest of the rankings at this site are based on counting all games played (despite not being common field) and ignoring the forfeiture wins against West Virginia, which would make Liberty C, Liberty B, and Roanoke tied at 2-8.

The Berkeley site seems to have something weird going on. I'm guessing that a win originally given to Berkeley A over Stanford in "overtime" was changed to a win by Stanford, after the tournament? If this is the case, shouldn't Berkeley A and Berkeley B be tied for first? Putting Berkeley A ahead of Berkeley B goes against NAQT's elimination policy of "the result of a single playoff game cannot be used to eliminate a team from achieving a higher final position if the losing team originally had a better win-loss record." (I realize this doesn't affect D-values.)

At Auburn, Georgia A and Alabama A are tied for the D1 title, even though it seems like they explicitly played a D1 title game that Georgia won.

I apologize if I'm saying something incorrect, or if these have been resolved already, since I didn't attend any of the sites that I mentioned.
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Re: 2019 NAQT Canada SCT at Queen's (9 Feb 2019)

Post by Cody »

Important Bird Area wrote: Mon Feb 11, 2019 8:11 pmCody is right that we, as a company, need to do a better job of documenting our ranking policies and communicating those policies to tournament hosts. I hope to have more news on this subject in the medium-term future (which probably means summer 2019 after the conclusion of HSNCT).
Thank you, Jeff.

Perhaps you can answer a series of related questions now: based on the communications posted in this thread from Nathan Murphy, is it NAQT's policy to only count games against a common field for the purposes of SCT final standings? (Restricted by the usual metrics, such as playoff bracket, of course.) Specifically, based on the communications, it seems that NAQT may do this for playoff round robins that don't carry-over games -- is it restricted to this instance or is it the same for bracketed prelims -> crossovers that would normally carry over 1 or more games from prelims? Will ICT determine final standings based on all games played or only games against a common field? (Based on my reading of the format from last year, this would be 2 games from the playoffs and 3 games from the superplayoffs. The document from last year states that teams are ranked on overall record, which I would take to mean all games.)
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Re: 2019 NAQT Canada SCT at Queen's (9 Feb 2019)

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person361 wrote: Mon Feb 11, 2019 8:58 pmMiami-Ohio A and Notre Dame A are listed as tied for 5th in the Michigan site despite Miami-Ohio having a better record. It seems like the teams played a double round robin, then the two teams in question played each other twice (going 1-1), so by the policy, teams should be ranked by total record.
As the director of that tournament, Miami should be fifth outright, with Notre Dame sixth.
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Re: 2019 NAQT Canada SCT at Queen's (9 Feb 2019)

Post by jonah »

NAQT has been trying to get in touch with the organizers of this tournament regarding some unfinished business. Could anyone involved in the running of the tournament, preferably Dennis, please e-mail me at [email protected] promptly? Thanks!
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