Illinois '07-'08

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Post by STPickrell »

styxman wrote:Thanks! :) I would have posted some sort of announcement if we'd thought of it. I think Facebook has pretty much usurped that position :)
Not all of us have Facebook. :)
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Bettendorf exists too...

Post by gack1224 »

mlaird wrote:Full Results from Sterling F/S:

1.) Loyola
2.) Auburn 'A'
3.) Lasalle-Peru
4.) Byron
5.) Geneseo
6.) Bettendorf
7.) Orion
8.) Moline

Top Scorer was Zahed from Auburn 'A', followed by Christian from Loyola.
Um... Cresston Gackle from Bettendorf got third, ahem ahem.
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Re: Bettendorf exists too...

Post by JackGlerum »

MY BAD
Last edited by JackGlerum on Thu Nov 08, 2007 12:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Matt Weiner »

This is the quizbowl forum, not the Illinois quizbowl forum. And you are not the moderator of either one. What your circle of friends has or has not heard of does not dictate allowable discussion here.
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Re: Bettendorf exists too...

Post by mlaird »

JohnGlerum wrote:We didn't mention you because you aren't from Illinois and nobody on this forum has heard of you because of this. Congrats on 3rd, keep it on the Iowa forum, please.
Whoa, chief.

In reality, we (I) didn't mention it be cause we (I) didn't remember who got it.
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Post by JackGlerum »

Ok, ok, I'm sorry... I jumped the gun.
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Re: Bettendorf exists too...

Post by Tegan »

JohnGlerum wrote:We didn't mention you because you aren't from Illinois and nobody on this forum has heard of you
On behalf of the State of Illinois, I offer an apology to the State of Iowa. The boy will be severely punished as soon as a fresh batch of scorpions arrives from my supplier.
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Bettendorf exists in Illinois

Post by gack1224 »

Since our coach is part of your organization and we do participate in your tournaments, we technically are part of Illinois. It's mostly because Iowa doesn't have much other than ISU. We don't participate in your "playoffs" though, since we're not technically from Illinois. We are on the border of Iowa and Illinois and simply want to come "play with you guys."
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Re: Bettendorf exists in Illinois

Post by Irreligion in Bangladesh »

gack1224 wrote:Since our coach is part of your organization and we do participate in your tournaments, we technically are part of Illinois. It's mostly because Iowa doesn't have much other than ISU. We don't participate in your "playoffs" though, since we're not technically from Illinois. We are on the border of Iowa and Illinois and simply want to come "play with you guys."
If Bettendorf is looking for another good tournament in Illinois, check out my tournament at Rock Valley College on December 1st!
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Post by Stained Diviner »

Why wait until December? Come to New Trier Saturday.
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Re: Bettendorf exists too...

Post by JackGlerum »

Tegan wrote:
JohnGlerum wrote: On behalf of the State of Illinois, I offer an apology to the State of Iowa. The boy will be severely punished as soon as a fresh batch of scorpions arrives from my supplier.
Noooooooo
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Re: Bettendorf exists in Illinois

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

gack1224 wrote:Since our coach is part of your organization and we do participate in your tournaments, we technically are part of Illinois. It's mostly because Iowa doesn't have much other than ISU. We don't participate in your "playoffs" though, since we're not technically from Illinois. We are on the border of Iowa and Illinois and simply want to come "play with you guys."
Hmm? You go to tournaments and only play the prelims? During regular season tournaments?
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Post by Trevkeeper »

I think he means they don't participate the IHSA State Series.
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Re: Bettendorf exists in Illinois

Post by gack1224 »

Deesy Does It wrote:
gack1224 wrote:Since our coach is part of your organization and we do participate in your tournaments, we technically are part of Illinois. It's mostly because Iowa doesn't have much other than ISU. We don't participate in your "playoffs" though, since we're not technically from Illinois. We are on the border of Iowa and Illinois and simply want to come "play with you guys."
Hmm? You go to tournaments and only play the prelims? During regular season tournaments?

Right. We don't participate in your masonic tournaments or your state competition since technically we have the NAQT thing at ISU.
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Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Not participating in their state tournaments makes 100% sense, but I can't understand why you don't do the playoffs of the regular season tournaments that you do attend, since they have no bearing on Illinois and I think every team at a tournament is allowed into the playoffs. We have played in many tournaments out of state and are allowed to go into the playoffs and potentially win, including one in Illinois where the teams in the finals were both from out of state. I see no reason why you can't play in the playoffs of tournaments you go to.
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Post by gack1224 »

Deesy Does It wrote:Not participating in their state tournaments makes 100% sense, but I can't understand why you don't do the playoffs of the regular season tournaments that you do attend, since they have no bearing on Illinois and I think every team at a tournament is allowed into the playoffs. We have played in many tournaments out of state and are allowed to go into the playoffs and potentially win, including one in Illinois where the teams in the finals were both from out of state. I see no reason why you can't play in the playoffs of tournaments you go to.
I think there is some misunderstanding here. We can win your tournaments. We can't compete in or win your state championship thing or even get rated comparatively (which is kind of annoying (not being rated)).
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Post by Stained Diviner »

Charlie, you are misreading.

Everything that you suggested should happen is what in fact happens.
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Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Yeah, it just looked for whatever reason liek they were saying "we can play in tournaments in Illinois, but not for awards, just for fun before the playoffs."
Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08
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Post by ecks »

gack1224 wrote:We can win your tournaments.
For clarification's sake, Charlie isn't from Illinois; he's from Missouri, so they wouldn't be "his" tournaments any more than they're yours. (As a permanent resident of Illinois and former player on the Illinois HS quizbowl circuit, however, I reserve the right to claim any tournament in Illinois as my own).
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Post by David Riley »

Hey, how about some commentary on the New Trier SchoBowl Solo? Post appropriately in the Regular Season Tournaments forum.
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Post by JackGlerum »

David Riley wrote:Hey, how about some commentary on the New Trier SchoBowl Solo? Post appropriately in the Regular Season Tournaments forum.
For me, never having seen Greg actually play in Illinois against Illinois opponents, I was extremely impressed. His game is not just math anymore, very well-rounded.

And Auburn having all three of their players in the finals, one of them being the morning champ? I know the common criticism is that they neg too hard, but I really don't see that being an issue... they are a force to be reckoned with.

Also impressed with Homewood-Flossmoor's top two... they garnered several category trophies and are a definite dark horse to knock off some people.

Can't wait for the reg season to start, see you all at WN.
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Post by Trevkeeper »

I feel either the questions were harder this year or the field was weaker, or maybe a mix of both -- in either case, the scores were definitely lower than normal.

The questions were well written, though I feel Technology should be combined with another category -- in the 11 rounds I read, I think a Technology question was answered twice.
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Post by Irreligion in Bangladesh »

Trevkeeper wrote:I feel either the questions were harder this year or the field was weaker, or maybe a mix of both -- in either case, the scores were definitely lower than normal.

The questions were well written, though I feel Technology should be combined with another category -- in the 11 rounds I read, I think a Technology question was answered twice.
I would agree that it's a mix of both harder questions and weaker field. I think there's a larger separation between the top 4 in the finals and the players in the desperation shot than there's been in the time I've been active.

In 10 rounds, I saw 0 tech tossups converted. 2 statements on this - 1: something probably needs to be done about this, and 2: watering down the content - to the kind of tech that has shown up in past IHSA state series, for example - is not an answer.
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Post by Stained Diviner »

The tech this year included more computer science and programming languages and code than in past years, at the expense of noncomputer technology and corporate news. It wasn't a complete switch--there was some comp sci in the past, and there were some corporate questions this year.

On the one hand, this rewards students who take programming classes or teach themselves to program. On the other hand, it leads to a lot of dead questions. I'm not sure how to solve that one.

I haven't analyzed the scores yet, but I think they are down. In past years, an average match had about 13 questions answered out of 20. I haven't figured out what the average was this year--I will soon. I did not purposely make the questions harder this year, though I did purposely refocus the Technology questions and include more classical music, both of which led to slightly lower scores. Going into the tournament, I didn't think that it was a weak field--a lot of the top players in Illinois were there, and every year there are many players present who are far from elite (including several frosh/newbies, players who don't start for their school's team, and players who very rarely go to tournaments).

One problem may be that I try very hard to avoid repeats of previous years' questions, and I also try to include topics that are appropriate for honors high school students. Now that I've written close to 3000 questions over the years, it might be time to accept a certain number of repeats in order to keep the questions from getting harder. There isn't much need to repeat history questions, where the answer space is vast, but perhaps in some of the other categories. I do not make an effort to write hard questions--in fact, quite the opposite is true--but I realize that my questions are more difficult than those by some other writers.

There were a lot of good matches between top players--I consider it a good match whenever the runner-up gets at least five questions. Also, there have been years when the Championship turned into a neg fest or almost nobody attempted the worksheets--the group on stage this year did significantly better than average.
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Post by leapfrog314 »

The problem is that the Technology questions are too hard.

The finals had a question about a virtual machine that hasn't even been released yet. Mashup is a term only used by technology pundits. The PHP question was entirely full of arcane information about PHP, with no clue that was both simple and uniquely identifying. Most people don't know about the Smart Car.

You can have questions about hardware, software, and computer science without making them that obscure. Answers in those subjects should be things like RAM, Linux, and bubble sort, respectively. Not SRAM, mashup, and Parrot.
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Post by harpersferry »

Technology is such a tricky subject.

I think at this point, you either know a lot about it or nothing.
The argument that it can't be asked about because it isn't taught in the required curriculum obviously can't hold water because the same holds for most literature art, music questions. The proportion of things that must be learned outside of school is growing in every category. Therefore, I think there is no reason that we should not be responsible for learning the basics at least of technology. Judging from what happened saturday, it is a significant gap in the knowledge of many people who are "generalists," including myself. Having an entire category for it highlights the gap.

I thought the change in technology category slant at solo was good. I'd rather earn a question on something from by A+ class or C coding days (I'd be more specific but the questions haven't been posted and I want to be sure there isn't a mirror) than fraud two on Xanga and iTunes (answers in 2006).

This category made me realize that I probably should pay closer attention to it in general.

Finally, it should be noted that some computer science overlaps with mathematics. For example, P v. NP or Turing machines. I can't remember if this is still under math in IHSA or if that's changed, but it's worth considering what constitutes "math" computer science, or the miscellaneous technology category. The two can be radically different with respect to the level of fraud knowledge susceptibility.
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Post by David Riley »

What's Linux? :grin:

Just kidding. . .

My reason for saying that is that obscure is often in the mind of the beholder...and whose to say some of the solo participants aren't computer geeks who might well be aware of that information.

I insist that all knowledge is fair game in such a tournament.
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Post by Tegan »

David Riley wrote:What's Linux? :grin:

Just kidding. . .
My reason for saying that is that obscure is often in the mind of the beholder...and whose to say some of the solo participants aren't computer geeks who might well be aware of that information.
I insist that all knowledge is fair game in such a tournament.
Bullocks! You don't agree with that any more than any of us, Mr. "It's too unfair for you to ask foreign language questions because none of my kids took French" :twisted: As I recall, one of hte other coaches in the meeting said "None of my kids took calculus, so we're even."

You could be a wonderful student of programming, and know little about the hardware. Conversely, you could be into hardware and applications, and know little about programming language.

Further: I could be a Mac guy and know everything about the inner workings of a Mac. Ask me about Microsoft and I know nothing.

This is why I think even at the high school level questions ike this are a bit unfiar: for the same reason indepth foreign language questions can be unfair: there are a multitude of approaches, and I don't think even your above average honors student ever gets exposed to more than a fraction of the total body of meterial, even if they go out and do a lot of independent study.

For an out-of-state tournament, I was recently asked to edit some technology questions. My advice on all but one of the 10 questions was to dump them because each had a problem that made it either too obscure, too one sided (PC vs. Mac, for instance), or just not fitting "technology". The one that I advised to keep needed to be rewritten so tha the final clue became the answer, and the answer became a clue.

Certainly, technology is an important subject, but I don't think it lends itself as easily as other subjects to write fir, challenging quizbowl questions.
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Post by David Riley »

The foreign language analogy doesn't apply...that comment at the time was made with respect to curricula, and there, I still say language is a chocie wheeas everyone studies U.S. History...at least in the U.S. but possibly not in foreign countries such as Alsip :smile:

Seriously though, while some of the tech questions might be too hard, I would rather that than too easy.
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Post by Trevkeeper »

pasedpawn wrote:Technology is such a tricky subject.

I think at this point, you either know a lot about it or nothing.
I'll have to disagree. I know pretty much nothing about technology, but if the ending clue was something about memory, I could get RAM, instead of it being a certain type of memory storage (SRAM), and then I would have no idea.
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Post by Stained Diviner »

Feel free to discuss specific questions. There are no mirrors, and everything should be online within 24 hours from now.
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Post by Stained Diviner »

The technology answer space:
Mashup, SQL, PHP, Macro, Corel, Compiler, Apache, Static (keyword), Cathode Ray Tube, Smart Car, Span (tag), Analog, Heap, (Adobe) Acrobat, Parrot, Try/Catch, Quicken, and a handout involving BIOS/CPU/DRAM/EISA/PCI/SRAM.

The PHP tossup: Version 5 now allows users to make directory creation recursive, and it switched to Zend Engine 2. Programs using it can now be debugged using APD. Identify this reflective programming language created by a man born in Greenland to design dynamic web pages.

(Note to moderators: Feel free to spin this off as you wish.)
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Post by Alejandro »

ReinsteinD wrote:The technology answer space:
Mashup, SQL, PHP, Macro, Corel, Compiler, Apache, Static (keyword), Cathode Ray Tube, Smart Car, Span (tag), Analog, Heap, (Adobe) Acrobat, Parrot, Try/Catch, Quicken, and a handout involving BIOS/CPU/DRAM/EISA/PCI/SRAM.

The PHP tossup: Version 5 now allows users to make directory creation recursive, and it switched to Zend Engine 2. Programs using it can now be debugged using APD. Identify this reflective programming language created by a man born in Greenland to design dynamic web pages.

(Note to moderators: Feel free to spin this off as you wish.)
I would say that's a very difficult question on PHP. Also, the easiest clue before the giveaway (that it is on version 5) is at the beginning.
Also, I agree with Carlo that mashup/Parrot is too obscure. However, I believe that the handout on BIOS/CPU/SRAM is appropriate, since they teach this material in computer repair classes in high school.
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Post by Siverus Snape »

I've heard the term mashup, but only in reference to the pop-culture usage, not programming. The only times before the Solo that I had heard mashup, the word was used in reference to a video (like the anti-Hillary ad adapted from the classic Apple '1984' ad) that was created from other sources of video.
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Post by JackGlerum »

SIVster716 wrote:I've heard the term mashup, but only in reference to the pop-culture usage, not programming.
Same, I only know of "MTV Mashup" Ex. Jay-z & Linkin Park.
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Post by Tegan »

SIVster716 wrote:The only times before the Solo that I had heard mashup, the word was used in reference to a video (like the anti-Hillary ad adapted from the classic Apple '1984' ad)
Obviously, this technology is verboten at Maine South, rendering the question blatantly unfair. I see this tournament as nothing more than a giant right wing conspiracy.

eh..... not really .... its not like Donald Rumsfeld would have any connection to this tournament. :wink:

We now return you to this neo-Luddist thread.
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Post by BGSO »

Are there any trash tournaments in the Chicago area?
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Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

FOGHAT I'm pretty sure is at Northwestern, but I doubt there are any high school trash tournaments.
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Post by David Riley »

Good luck to everyone tomorrow at the Kickoffs!
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Post by Tegan »

Northern Site Kickoff:

1. Wheaton North
2. New Trier
3. Auburn
4. Naperville North

SF: WN def. NN; NT def Auburn
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Post by Irreligion in Bangladesh »

Northwestern site
1. Byron
2. Bettendorf
3. Boylan
4. Winnebago
5. Sterling
6. Kaneland
7. Guilford
8. Geneseo
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Byron 1st, Bettendorf 2nd

Post by gack1224 »

styxman wrote:Northwestern site
1. Byron
2. Bettendorf
3. Boylan
4. Winnebago
5. Sterling
6. Kaneland
7. Guilford
8. Geneseo
Congratulations to Byron! Sorry to Sterling though. It was a less than likable round.
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Re: Byron 1st, Bettendorf 2nd

Post by Irreligion in Bangladesh »

gack1224 wrote:
styxman wrote:Northwestern site
1. Byron
2. Bettendorf
3. Boylan
4. Winnebago
5. Sterling
6. Kaneland
7. Guilford
8. Geneseo
Congratulations to Byron! Sorry to Sterling though. It was a less than likable round.
How so? We're interested in feedback on the questions! (Which are now cleared for discussion, after the final three Kickoffs yesterday)
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Post by gack1224 »

Basically it was a really low scoring game. It was very exciting for us (we won by 8 points) but poor for them. Bettendorf was 8th seed and they were 1st. It was a bit of an upset and came down to the last question.
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Post by JackGlerum »

Greg own3d n00bs.
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Post by BGSO »

No truer words have ever been spoken
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Post by Trevkeeper »

gack1224 wrote:Basically it was a really low scoring game. It was very exciting for us (we won by 8 points) but poor for them. Bettendorf was 8th seed and they were 1st. It was a bit of an upset and came down to the last question.
Would you mind telling us specifically what you thought was hard about it? As in, were the tossups too difficult, the bonuses uneven, etc.? As Brad said, we appreciate feedback on our questions.
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Post by gack1224 »

Would you mind telling us specifically what you thought was hard about it? As in, were the tossups too difficult, the bonuses uneven, etc.? As Brad said, we appreciate feedback on our questions.
Well, throughout the day, it was VERY VERY difficult to answer ANY of the computational math questions. Even though there were given ways of solving them, most people got the answer too late (probably could have done it in a minute). All in all the physics and calculus questions were difficult except when they were almost a little easy (friction and inertia).

The world history ones were alright, but my team thought there were too many Russians.

The bonus questions were good overall. However, there were some that were way too easy and slanted the round. For example, the MLB playoffs bonus questions were an EASY 20 points. Same thing with the iPod question.

Good questions overall, but maybe a little more variety. I'd rather be asked to name generals than name the forts in certain states.
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Post by David Riley »

Hmmm, my perception was that the variety was pretty good. Of course, if people used my subject guide as an outline, we'd know for sure. :grin:

Bit seriously, this does raise an issue....as the kickoffs, should the questions be accessible to everyone, or should the questions be written such that the most compeititve teams rise to the top?

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the return of AHAN
Auron
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Post by the return of AHAN »

As a coach who didn't have a team involved in yesterday's event, I can't address the level of questions used. But to toss in my 2 cents to Mr. Riley's question, it's probably appropriate to have some more accessible questions for a "kick-off" kind of event. I know there were 50+ teams in the WN event, and I'm sure you had some teams that were way out of their league, no? Well, if you threw in some easier toss-ups, I think the lower-level teams would lose to the Wheaton North's of the world anyway, but you could at least hang your hat on the fact that you just weren't quick enough or didn't have enough detailed info about some topic to ring in the fastest. It just seems like to lose that kind of game would give you some hope of getting better. If, on the other hand, you're getting your butt handed to you and you don't have a clue about the questions... well... I can't think of a better way to discourage a kid who just started playing scholastic bowl and doesn't have but a fraction of the canon at his/her disposal.
Jeff Price
Barrington High School Coach (2021 & 2023 HSNCT Champions, 2023 PACE Champions, 2023 Illinois Masonic Bowl Class 3A State Champions)
Barrington Station Middle School Coach (2013 MSNCT Champions, 2013 & 2017 Illinois Class AA State Champions)
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