2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by setht »

justinfrench1728 wrote: Mon Feb 10, 2020 3:32 am
Vinjance wrote: Sun Feb 09, 2020 10:56 pm tossup on "three" in math: the object clued in the Hopf fibration and Poincare conjecture clues is a 3-sphere topologically, but it's considered a 4-sphere geometrically (as it is a hypersphere embedded in 4D euclidean space). Although Hopf and Poincare are topological concepts and both usually call them 3-spheres, I still think I would have been confused on what to answer with if I played this question. I also think that saying "the sphere of this many dimensions" seems to dissuade answers with 3 for being too obvious. I wonder if anyone else was thrown off by this too.
What was the specific phrasing in the question? I don't think there's any good argument for considering the 3-sphere a "sphere of four dimensions." While a 3-sphere can be embedded in 4-dimensional Euclidean space, that is not an argument for calling it a sphere of four dimensions. For instance, 3-dimensional Euclidean space can be embedded in 4-dimensional Euclidean space, but no one would call it "Euclidean space of four dimensions." The dimension of a space (such as a sphere) is a property of the space alone, not of spaces that the space may be mapped to. I think the functional ambiguity comes from the (bad) quiz bowl precedent of cluing the 3-sphere in tossups on 4.
2020 DI SCT wrote: The sphere of this many dimensions has a continuous map to the sphere in one fewer dimension, known as the Hopf fibration. Any simply connected, closed manifold with this many dimensions is homeomorphic [HOH-mee-oh-MOR-fik] to the (*) sphere of this many dimensions, per Poincar\'e's [pwahn-kar-ay'z] conjecture. The Cantor set is constructed by recursively splitting intervals into this many pieces and removing the middle piece. Spherical coordinates are used for Euclidean space with—for 10 points—what number of dimensions?

answer: 3 (accept 3-sphere(s))
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by setht »

jasongg17 wrote: Sun Feb 09, 2020 5:52 pm
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote: Sun Feb 09, 2020 5:43 pm The tossup on "hydrogen" that referred to it as "this substance" had a clue that Rafael, Noah, and I felt was ambiguously worded, referring to the "production of the 21 centimeter line in this substance." I gave an answer of "intergalactic medium" - I assume this doesn't fit all the clues, but I thought the clue was referring to matter that can be a source of the 21 centimeter line, not the hydrogen atoms itself. It's possible that saying "element" would have made the question too easy, but I think the clue could have been made clearer.
To add another point to the hydrogen thing, even if you bracket the fuzziness of using "substance" to refer to interstellar hydrogen, the first two clues in this tossup are pretty much the two most famous, well-known things about how inter-stellar gases/HII regions (incidentally, I'm fairly certain the first clue applied to literally any dust or gas in space) work and are used by astronomers. I was completely baffled those clues came first.
2020 DI SCT wrote: This substance produces the Fraunhofer C line at 6563 \oangstroms. In 1944 Hendrik van de Hulst predicted a radio wave feature produced when this substance undergoes a spin-flip transition, which is now known as the 21 centimeter line. The spectral classes of stars were originally arranged alphabetically based on the observed strength of (*) spectral lines in this element's Balmer ["BALL"-mur] series. The CNO ["C-N-O"] cycle and the proton-proton chain fuse—for 10 points—what element into helium?

answer: hydrogen (or H; do not accept or prompt on "H2" or "molecular hydrogen")
So first off, I did deliberately decide not to say "this element" right away because I thought that would narrow things down a bit much in DI. Given the confusion this apparently caused, I've gone ahead and changed to "this element" for future uses of the set.

I said something similar over in the DII question discussion, but to my mind phrases like "this substance produces a line at 6563 angstroms" and "this substance undergoes a spin-flip transition that generates the 21 centimeter line" clearly point to "(atomic) hydrogen" and not to "various things that contain atomic hydrogen." I guess at least some people who played the question had a different experience, and I apologize for the confusion—I didn't want to reveal "this element," but I really didn't want to make people wonder about answers like "the IGM."

My intent with the 6563 angstrom clue was very much to draw on something that is "seared into the retinas of astronomers," to paraphrase James. To my mind, this sort of important-fact-known-to-all-astronomers clue is totally fine for a DI SCT lead-in (assuming it's not also known to all physicists/engineers/English majors/etc.). Jason, are you saying that you think 6563 angstroms is too widely known/will get too many buzzes to be an acceptable DI SCT lead-in?
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by Cheynem »

I only saw the "adventure" tossup in DII, but that seemed pretty clear to me. I am not sure if it was more confusing for DI.

I think Amahl and the Night Visitors is a decent thing to toss up historically, but the idea that, yes, it has enough collective knowledge that we need to go this deep on clues does seem questionable. That said, the tossup very clearly says right away it's an unnamed woman.
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by The Sawing-Off of Manhattan Island »

women, fire and dangerous things wrote: Mon Feb 10, 2020 10:02 pm Incidentally, I also wrote the machine learning tossup. I was careful to choose clues that pointed specifically to the phrase "machine learning" (including a lead-in saying it was a two-word phrase and describing its context of coinage), but it seems those were changed in editing.
I'm sad to hear these changes were made, since I do think they would help (especially the "two-word" warning), but I'm skeptical of the idea of tossups on concepts as general as "machine learning" (since I think its very unfair to call machine learning a single process.) CS is seen as a fairly small field by quizbowl, but I don't think that really excuses condensing an entire field of fairly disparate techniques/strategies etc. into a single four-or-five line tossup (especially at a difficulty where more specific and interesting facets of machine learning can be tossed up on their own!) I see this as the equivalent of tossing up "analytic philosophy" and then listing a bunch of random analytic philosophers with loosely connected work. Incidentally, I think that a tossup on "machine learning" shares problems with a surely hypothetical tossup on "analytic philosophy," in that it just seems impossible to pin down how specific the player's answer needs to be (a problem that was unfortunately super accentuated by the current question.) This isn't the only such tossup I've seen in an NAQT set - I thought the tossup on "remote sensing" from last year's D2 ICT finals was confusing for many of the same reasons, though I'll admit to knowing much less about that subject.

Anyways, sorry if any disrespect came through in either this post or my original one - I was quite frustrated at how that tossup played out in game but I don't mean to call out any specific writer or anything. CS is extremely hard to write well, from experience, and I'm glad that questions are trying to hit on applied things that are super important in modern CS rather than being attempt X at a sorting tossup.
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by Good Goblin Housekeeping »

setht wrote: Mon Feb 10, 2020 10:57 pm
jasongg17 wrote: Sun Feb 09, 2020 5:52 pm
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote: Sun Feb 09, 2020 5:43 pm The tossup on "hydrogen" that referred to it as "this substance" had a clue that Rafael, Noah, and I felt was ambiguously worded, referring to the "production of the 21 centimeter line in this substance." I gave an answer of "intergalactic medium" - I assume this doesn't fit all the clues, but I thought the clue was referring to matter that can be a source of the 21 centimeter line, not the hydrogen atoms itself. It's possible that saying "element" would have made the question too easy, but I think the clue could have been made clearer.
To add another point to the hydrogen thing, even if you bracket the fuzziness of using "substance" to refer to interstellar hydrogen, the first two clues in this tossup are pretty much the two most famous, well-known things about how inter-stellar gases/HII regions (incidentally, I'm fairly certain the first clue applied to literally any dust or gas in space) work and are used by astronomers. I was completely baffled those clues came first.
2020 DI SCT wrote: This substance produces the Fraunhofer C line at 6563 \oangstroms. In 1944 Hendrik van de Hulst predicted a radio wave feature produced when this substance undergoes a spin-flip transition, which is now known as the 21 centimeter line. The spectral classes of stars were originally arranged alphabetically based on the observed strength of (*) spectral lines in this element's Balmer ["BALL"-mur] series. The CNO ["C-N-O"] cycle and the proton-proton chain fuse—for 10 points—what element into helium?

answer: hydrogen (or H; do not accept or prompt on "H2" or "molecular hydrogen")
So first off, I did deliberately decide not to say "this element" right away because I thought that would narrow things down a bit much in DI. Given the confusion this apparently caused, I've gone ahead and changed to "this element" for future uses of the set.

I said something similar over in the DII question discussion, but to my mind phrases like "this substance produces a line at 6563 angstroms" and "this substance undergoes a spin-flip transition that generates the 21 centimeter line" clearly point to "(atomic) hydrogen" and not to "various things that contain atomic hydrogen." I guess at least some people who played the question had a different experience, and I apologize for the confusion—I didn't want to reveal "this element," but I really didn't want to make people wonder about answers like "the IGM."

My intent with the 6563 angstrom clue was very much to draw on something that is "seared into the retinas of astronomers," to paraphrase James. To my mind, this sort of important-fact-known-to-all-astronomers clue is totally fine for a DI SCT lead-in (assuming it's not also known to all physicists/engineers/English majors/etc.). Jason, are you saying that you think 6563 angstroms is too widely known/will get too many buzzes to be an acceptable DI SCT lead-in?
At least from someone who is looking at this with more of a chemistry eye but if you have a specific transition it seems pretty clearly indicative of something that is a specific molecule or atom (I of course did not have to play this in real time and make that observation)
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

2020 DI SCT round 1 wrote:Gregory Palamas formulated the distinction between this concept and the "energies" of God. According to John Locke, scientific knowledge is present when the "nominal" and "real" forms of this concept align. "Substance" and this word are the two standard English translations of the Greek word (*) ousia; another Greek expression for this concept is often translated as "quiddity." An existentialist motto states that "existence precedes"—for 10 points—what fundamental property that makes something what it is?

answer: essence (accept nominal essence or real essence; prompt on "ousia" before "nominal")
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by Vinjance »

Karansebes Schnapps Vendor wrote: Mon Feb 10, 2020 11:41 pm
women, fire and dangerous things wrote: Mon Feb 10, 2020 10:02 pm Incidentally, I also wrote the machine learning tossup. I was careful to choose clues that pointed specifically to the phrase "machine learning" (including a lead-in saying it was a two-word phrase and describing its context of coinage), but it seems those were changed in editing.
I'm sad to hear these changes were made, since I do think they would help (especially the "two-word" warning), but I'm skeptical of the idea of tossups on concepts as general as "machine learning" (since I think its very unfair to call machine learning a single process.) CS is seen as a fairly small field by quizbowl, but I don't think that really excuses condensing an entire field of fairly disparate techniques/strategies etc. into a single four-or-five line tossup (especially at a difficulty where more specific and interesting facets of machine learning can be tossed up on their own!) I see this as the equivalent of tossing up "analytic philosophy" and then listing a bunch of random analytic philosophers with loosely connected work. Incidentally, I think that a tossup on "machine learning" shares problems with a surely hypothetical tossup on "analytic philosophy," in that it just seems impossible to pin down how specific the player's answer needs to be (a problem that was unfortunately super accentuated by the current question.) This isn't the only such tossup I've seen in an NAQT set - I thought the tossup on "remote sensing" from last year's D2 ICT finals was confusing for many of the same reasons, though I'll admit to knowing much less about that subject.

Anyways, sorry if any disrespect came through in either this post or my original one - I was quite frustrated at how that tossup played out in game but I don't mean to call out any specific writer or anything. CS is extremely hard to write well, from experience, and I'm glad that questions are trying to hit on applied things that are super important in modern CS rather than being attempt X at a sorting tossup.
I think the main takeaway from this is that using a field or discipline as an answerline is almost never a good idea (unless your clues specifically quote the name of that field, such as a tossup on "metaphysics" that refers to the name of the Aristotle work). It's always better to ask for a concrete term used in that field (though I realize this is much harder to do if you're only writing from surface knowledge).
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by Cody »

Banned Tiny Toon Adventures Episode wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 12:23 am
setht wrote: Mon Feb 10, 2020 10:57 pm
jasongg17 wrote: Sun Feb 09, 2020 5:52 pm
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote: Sun Feb 09, 2020 5:43 pm The tossup on "hydrogen" that referred to it as "this substance" had a clue that Rafael, Noah, and I felt was ambiguously worded, referring to the "production of the 21 centimeter line in this substance." I gave an answer of "intergalactic medium" - I assume this doesn't fit all the clues, but I thought the clue was referring to matter that can be a source of the 21 centimeter line, not the hydrogen atoms itself. It's possible that saying "element" would have made the question too easy, but I think the clue could have been made clearer.
To add another point to the hydrogen thing, even if you bracket the fuzziness of using "substance" to refer to interstellar hydrogen, the first two clues in this tossup are pretty much the two most famous, well-known things about how inter-stellar gases/HII regions (incidentally, I'm fairly certain the first clue applied to literally any dust or gas in space) work and are used by astronomers. I was completely baffled those clues came first.
2020 DI SCT wrote: This substance produces the Fraunhofer C line at 6563 \oangstroms. In 1944 Hendrik van de Hulst predicted a radio wave feature produced when this substance undergoes a spin-flip transition, which is now known as the 21 centimeter line. The spectral classes of stars were originally arranged alphabetically based on the observed strength of (*) spectral lines in this element's Balmer ["BALL"-mur] series. The CNO ["C-N-O"] cycle and the proton-proton chain fuse—for 10 points—what element into helium?

answer: hydrogen (or H; do not accept or prompt on "H2" or "molecular hydrogen")
So first off, I did deliberately decide not to say "this element" right away because I thought that would narrow things down a bit much in DI. Given the confusion this apparently caused, I've gone ahead and changed to "this element" for future uses of the set.

I said something similar over in the DII question discussion, but to my mind phrases like "this substance produces a line at 6563 angstroms" and "this substance undergoes a spin-flip transition that generates the 21 centimeter line" clearly point to "(atomic) hydrogen" and not to "various things that contain atomic hydrogen." I guess at least some people who played the question had a different experience, and I apologize for the confusion—I didn't want to reveal "this element," but I really didn't want to make people wonder about answers like "the IGM."

My intent with the 6563 angstrom clue was very much to draw on something that is "seared into the retinas of astronomers," to paraphrase James. To my mind, this sort of important-fact-known-to-all-astronomers clue is totally fine for a DI SCT lead-in (assuming it's not also known to all physicists/engineers/English majors/etc.). Jason, are you saying that you think 6563 angstroms is too widely known/will get too many buzzes to be an acceptable DI SCT lead-in?
At least from someone who is looking at this with more of a chemistry eye but if you have a specific transition it seems pretty clearly indicative of something that is a specific molecule or atom (I of course did not have to play this in real time and make that observation)
I disagree: I think the use of substance, specifically, is too generic and its connotative aspect points away from an answer like an atom of hydrogen or the element hydrogden. And, in broadening the available answer space, the use of substance makes this tossup difficult to pin down. For example, it's accurate to say that the Sun's plasma produces the Fraunhofer C line, and the Sun is where the Fraunhofer lines were discovered (as noted many times in quizbowl questions). While the second sentence is more straightforward, it's not that easy to finely parse it at game speed because the pronoun is at odds with the specificity of the clue.
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

Now that I see the phrasing of the 21-centimeter clue, it does seem to point to hydrogen more specifically than I had parsed in-game, though it's exactly that - the in-game parsing - that I think is really challenging, and it had never occurred to me to think of hydrogen as a "substance" we could be going for.
Important Bird Area wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 12:51 am
2020 DI SCT round 1 wrote:Gregory Palamas formulated the distinction between this concept and the "energies" of God. According to John Locke, scientific knowledge is present when the "nominal" and "real" forms of this concept align. "Substance" and this word are the two standard English translations of the Greek word (*) ousia; another Greek expression for this concept is often translated as "quiddity." An existentialist motto states that "existence precedes"—for 10 points—what fundamental property that makes something what it is?

answer: essence (accept nominal essence or real essence; prompt on "ousia" before "nominal")
I'm a bit confused as to why "ousia" is a prompt when that is the word used by some of the original language authors here? That aside, this is a strong philosophy tossup - as were all of the set's philosophy questions that I can remember.
Vishwa wrote:Anyways, sorry if any disrespect came through in either this post or my original one - I was quite frustrated at how that tossup played out in game but I don't mean to call out any specific writer or anything. CS is extremely hard to write well, from experience, and I'm glad that questions are trying to hit on applied things that are super important in modern CS rather than being attempt X at a sorting tossup.
As the team that got the tossup in said game, we were equally frustrated by it. Credit of course is due to Rafael who was able to see what was up, but it was pretty sad to have spent a bunch of time learning about ML stuff for my career and hear this question.
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by heterodyne »

I think the clue about English translations of "ousia" is potentially misleading, since Heidegger's argument for translating "ousia" as "Being" is pretty significant and has been taken up by a good swathe of subsequent continental metaphysics.
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by gerbilownage »

Could I see the tossups on Maggie the Cat and Lily Bart? I was wondering what the first clues were again.
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

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2020 DI SCT round 4 wrote:This woman joyfully remembers watching Susie McPheeters get a "squirt of tobacco juice" spat onto her face. This woman tells her husband that he has the "charm of the defeated," and later promises to get drunk with him and make love so they can "make the (*) lie true." This woman hates a group of children that she calls "no-neck monsters," who belong to her brother-in-law Gooper. Tennessee Williams created—for 10 points—what wife of Brick Pollitt, who feels "all the time like a cat on a hot tin roof"?

answer: Maggie Pollitt (or Maggie the Cat or Margaret Pollitt; prompt on "Pollitt"; prompt on "The (Cat)" or "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" before "cat")
2020 DI SCT round 7 wrote:This woman lies about visiting a dressmaker at the Benedick, and she learns about an affair involving Ned Silverton while on vacation in the Mediterranean. This woman is disinherited by her aunt, Julia Peniston, after she is accused of adultery by (*) Bertha Dorset. At this close of the novel in which this woman appears, Lawrence Selden discovers that she has died from an overdose of sleeping draught. For 10 points—name this protagonist of Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth.
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

Could I please see the bonus on Witold Gombrowicz and Anais Nin's diaries? To my recollection, the last bonus part asked for "a work of this type" when referring to Nin's erotic diaries - we weren't sure whether to say "erotica" or "diaries" and there didn't seem to be enough information to distinguish between the two if you didn't know the Gombrowicz clue (and his stuff is pretty racy, so that was even more confounding) since, to my understanding, many of Nin diaries are erotica describing her affairs. I felt like that was another example of a question that was way too vague and needed to use a better identifier to point the player towards what the question writer wanted you to say.

I also thought the identifier on the liquidity tossup (maybe it was on money demand?) was potentially misleading for some of the clues - at the very least, there was a clue about "liquidity preference" so I buzzed and said liquidity, even though liquidity is really a property in the common use of the term as I've encountered it. I still got points, and understand that in context it's talking about Keynes using the term "liquidity preference" for money demand, but I still think the choice of clues here has the potential to confuse players.
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

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Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 5:40 pm Could I please see the bonus on Witold Gombrowicz and Anais Nin's diaries? To my recollection, the last bonus part asked for "a work of this type" when referring to Nin's erotic diaries - we weren't sure whether to say "erotica" or "diaries" and there didn't seem to be enough information to distinguish between the two if you didn't know the Gombrowicz clue (and his stuff is pretty racy, so that was even more confounding) since, to my understanding, many of Nin diaries are erotica describing her affairs. I felt like that was another example of a question that was way too vague and needed to use a better identifier to point the player towards what the question writer wanted you to say.
Nin's erotica and her diaries are two separate bodies of work and there is a crucial (and obvious!) distinction between a sexually explicit personal journal and erotica written for others (money).
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

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2020 DI SCT round 4 wrote:This author explained that he titled his books "for the same reason that a person names his dogs—to distinguish them from others." For 10 points each—

A. Name this author who titled his collection Bacacay for the street he lived on in exile in Buenos Aires. He may have titled his most famous novel for a minor character in Babbitt.

answer: Witold (Marian) Gombrowicz [Some scholars believe that the title of Gombrowicz's novel Ferdydurke was inspired by the character Freddy Durkee in Babbitt.]

B. Gombrowicz arrived in Argentina just before Germany invaded this home country of his.

answer: Poland (or Republic of Poland or Rzeczpospolita Polska)

C. Gombrowicz is also known for a 700-page work of this type. Henry and June is based on some of these works by Anais Nin.

answer: diary (or diaries; prompt on "journal(s)" or similar answers)
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

vinteuil wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 10:12 pm
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 5:40 pm Could I please see the bonus on Witold Gombrowicz and Anais Nin's diaries? To my recollection, the last bonus part asked for "a work of this type" when referring to Nin's erotic diaries - we weren't sure whether to say "erotica" or "diaries" and there didn't seem to be enough information to distinguish between the two if you didn't know the Gombrowicz clue (and his stuff is pretty racy, so that was even more confounding) since, to my understanding, many of Nin diaries are erotica describing her affairs. I felt like that was another example of a question that was way too vague and needed to use a better identifier to point the player towards what the question writer wanted you to say.
Nin's erotica and her diaries are two separate bodies of work and there is a crucial (and obvious!) distinction between a sexually explicit personal journal and erotica written for others (money).
This statement isn't wrong, but I still don't see why this is an argument for not at least prompting on "erotica," considering that they are often (unsurprisingly) referred to as "erotic diaries." The Gombrowicz clue seems to rule this answer out technically, but it still strikes me as really player-unfriendly if you know only the (much easier) Nin part of the bonus. I don't see why this question couldn't have been much more straightforward about to avoid this issue.

I had a similar issue with the "black dog" question, which gave no information on what characteristic was desired if prompted on "dog" - I was familiar with all the mythological creatures mentioned, so this was rather disappointing. I get that the motif is often referred to as "black dog" and there's a Wikipedia article with that title, but I'm not sure why similar answers such as "deathly dog" aren't correctly identifying creatures that represent the same motif, and if the answer "black dog" was desired, then a more specific prompt would have helped.
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

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Important Bird Area wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 10:34 pm
2020 DI SCT round 4 wrote:This author explained that he titled his books "for the same reason that a person names his dogs—to distinguish them from others." For 10 points each—

A. Name this author who titled his collection Bacacay for the street he lived on in exile in Buenos Aires. He may have titled his most famous novel for a minor character in Babbitt.

answer: Witold (Marian) Gombrowicz [Some scholars believe that the title of Gombrowicz's novel Ferdydurke was inspired by the character Freddy Durkee in Babbitt.]

B. Gombrowicz arrived in Argentina just before Germany invaded this home country of his.

answer: Poland (or Republic of Poland or Rzeczpospolita Polska)

C. Gombrowicz is also known for a 700-page work of this type. Henry and June is based on some of these works by Anais Nin.

answer: diary (or diaries; prompt on "journal(s)" or similar answers)
Also, this bonus is wildly hard.
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by warum »

Could I see the tossups on "rotation" and "Peter Grimes"?
They both seemed to have a relatively easy clue placed early in the question, leading to buzzer races (a description of rotation matrices, and "The Great Bear and Pleiades").
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

2020 DI SCT round 10 wrote:Gustav Herglotz showed that this process must be generated by a Killing vector field for an object to maintain Born rigidity. The special orthogonal group of dimension three, or SO(3), is the group of these motions. The 2-by-2 matrix with first row "cosine x, negative sine x" and second row "sine x, cosine x" represents this (*) type of motion, which has three degrees of freedom in a device containing three gimbals. Precession alters the axis of—for 10 points—what kind of motion seen in gyroscopes?

answer: rotation (or rotating; accept spinning)
2020 DI SCT round 7 wrote:This opera's protagonist asks "who can turn skies back and begin again?" in an aria about "the Great Bear and the Pleiades" that unnerves tavern-goers. A Passacaglia splits the second act of this opera. A tuba mimics a fog horn at this opera's climax, in which the protagonist's (*) apprentice's death prompts Balstrode to convince the protagonist to kill himself by sinking his own boat. The Four Sea Interludes are taken from—for 10 points—what opera about a disgraced fisherman by Benjamin Britten?
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by Borrowing 100,000 Arrows »

Important Bird Area wrote: Mon Feb 10, 2020 6:30 pm
2020 DI SCT round 10 wrote:A Guadalupe Valdes paper is titled for these people's "profiles and possibilities." A 2008 Maria Polinsky paper attributes their knowledge of Spanish gender to incomplete acquisition. A paper by Joshua Fishman distinguishes between colonial, indigenous, and immigrant populations of them. By definition, these people are (*) fluent in a dominant language, in which they have formal training. For 10 points—name these people, distinguished from native speakers, who learn a minority language at home.

answer: heritage speakers (or heritage language learners; prompt on "bilinguals" or "multilinguals"; prompt on "migrants" before "immigrants"; prompt on "indigenous people" before "indigenous"; accept home-background speakers)
2020 DI SCT round 11 wrote:In one aria, this unnamed woman ponders whether other characters know "how to fill a courtyard with doves" or "how to milk a clover-fed goat." Rosemary Kuhlmann originated this role, who reminds a male character that he once claimed there was a "leopard with a woman's head." A page catches this woman attempting to steal gold before her child offers to give his crutch as a gift and is (*) miraculously healed. For 10 points—what character and her son receive "night visitors" in a Gian Carlo Menotti opera?

answer: Amahl's mother (accept answers indicating the mother of Amahl or the mother from Amahl and the Night Visitors)
I didn't like either of these tossups. Maria Polinsky is a professor at UMD who I've actually met a few times, and, no offense to her, she's probably not famous enough to ever warrant coming up. Secondly, the Amahl tossup is a very bad idea, ou're asking for a tertiary character from an opera that's rarely performed, and isn't really known outside of quizbowl.
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by vinteuil »

Important Bird Area wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 6:05 pm
2020 DI SCT round 7 wrote:A Passacaglia splits the second act of this opera.
Let the record note that this is also, famously, true of Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth (which inspired Britten).

And, while I think Amahl's mother is unnecessarily hard (and unnecessarily "I can prep for this tournament by studying the stuff that you'd have to physically restrain Jason Thompson to stop him from writing about"), she does sing like, most of the opera—hardly "tertiary." (Also: yes, this opera isn't in the repertory of any major house, but it is performed somewhat often by/at churches. Not saying it should come up as much as it does though.)
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

We played the "prescription drugs" tossup in practice today and I wasn't sure what to say when prompted on "drugs" on the clue about step therapy. I'm to understand that this is a standard practice in managed care models that reduces the costs of medication, but I think this prompt is one of those things that's implied by the context if you know the clue, and potentially very confusing to somebody who's used to thinking about the context of drugs within the medical system (as I do in my career) as opposed to in other contexts. Is there a reason "drugs" can't be accepted outright, aside from distinguishing from recreationals and OTCs? I think that could also lead to confusion on the "orphan drugs" clue.
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by TylerV »

Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 11:43 pm We played the "prescription drugs" tossup in practice today and I wasn't sure what to say when prompted on "drugs" on the clue about step therapy. I'm to understand that this is a standard practice in managed care models that reduces the costs of medication, but I think this prompt is one of those things that's implied by the context if you know the clue, and potentially very confusing to somebody who's used to thinking about the context of drugs within the medical system (as I do in my career) as opposed to in other contexts. Is there a reason "drugs" can't be accepted outright, aside from distinguishing from recreationals and OTCs? I think that could also lead to confusion on the "orphan drugs" clue.
We also played this question in practice, and we had the same issues. One of our players said drugs, was prompted, muttered to himself about orphan drugs, and then said generic drugs which I ultimately took because I felt it distinguished it from recreational (although not OTC which I didn't think of at the time).
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by Marcion of Sinope »

Minor error noticed while reading unused packets in practice: the answerline to packet 15, question 23 ("felons") contains a specific prompt instruction that refers to a phrase ("racial discrimination") that does not occur in the current version of the question in either DI or DII. (Unlikely to affect gameplay, of course, but would help shorten an already complex answerline.)
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by rahulkeyal »

_nestorius wrote: Fri Feb 14, 2020 12:48 pm Minor error noticed while reading unused packets in practice: the answerline to packet 15, question 23 ("felons") contains a specific prompt instruction that refers to a phrase ("racial discrimination") that does not occur in the current version of the question in either DI or DII. (Unlikely to affect gameplay, of course, but would help shorten an already complex answerline.)
On a similar note, our moderator said the bonus part on "Karnataka" instructed to explicitly accept "Carnatic music," despite there being no description of such in the question.
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

Thanks for reporting these; we have fixed both errors for future users of the sets.
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by Fado Alexandrino »

The D2 tossup on the influenza virus prompts on "flu virus" but the D1 tossup does not.
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

Fixed.
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Re: 2020 Division I SCT: specific question discussion

Post by at your pleasure »

RE: Anais Nin's diaries, could the question just be reworded by dropping "erotic" in the question (i.e. "Anais Nin's erotic ones of these")? That would seem to disambiguate what you want nicely,
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