The Quizbowl Resource Center

jonpin

From Packet 5 For 15 points, determine the limit as x goes to 0 of cos(pi*x)/x^2 (cosine of quantity pi-x divided by x-squared). ANSWER: pi^2 divided by 2 [or pi-squared over 2] How is that correct...? I mean, the limit is positive infinity (it goes to 1/0). You can't use L'Hospital's Rule when the...

jonpin

I'm taking a round off, go to Jonah's blog. It's St. Josephs (NJ State champs apparently) vs. Zionsville A The champs of the NJ state tourny that qualified :chip: one for this was actually us, JP Stevens. In fact, the fact that we automatically qualified and the BRITE (the tourny) people were payin...

jonpin

"We have been going to Nationals in Chicago with the ----. Your tournament is so much better and more organized. We have now attended 3 different Nationals and none compare to the quality of your tournament organization and READERS!!!!" --Rae Gambler, Defiance High School [name of other t...

jonpin

If that's the biggest objection... But it wasn't. It was the least and last. The biggest was that it's an unnecessary fix to a problem that doesn't exist. With group play, everyone gets 7 games against a balanced schedule, is compared within a set of teams where there is no difference in schedule, ...

jonpin

I mean, the Old Testament shows what many scholars consider clear signs of amalgamation with Elohim, the tetragrammaton, El Shaddai, and perhaps some others I'm forgetting. A bonus on Adon/ Melekh/ Eloheinu or something would make my day. People who are better at Jew than I am, correct me if this i...

jonpin

Also note that your cut to the top 16 requires giving teams automatic spots based on paper tiebreakers. PACE doesn't do that. It's my understanding that they do not allow a team to automatically move on from a tie (correct me if I'm wrong but a 3-way tie for 2 spots results in a 1-v-2 half-game fol...

jonpin

By the way, split internal opinions regarding coach Reinstein's suggestion that those white cards also be used for consolation playoff pairing: The issue is the extent to which teams might change their minds overnight Saturday, and the extent to which they enjoy the freedom to enter, or exit, the c...

jonpin

Honestly, from my perspective, that long list of ideas just isn't worth a very marginal and debatable improvement in fairness and experience. For a large tournament like NAQT, using groups would require at least three stages (something like 24 groups of 8; 6 groups of 8; two groups of 6; final four)...

jonpin

PACE has never had a letter round or a lightning round format (and I've been here since almost the beginning). The rounds have always been as such since 1998: A look at the 1998 NSC questions would confirm this. http://quizbowlpackets.com/archive/pace_nsc/1998/ ~T~ OK, thanks. Must be mis-rememberi...

jonpin

Oh yeah, I remember what else I was going to say. The internal consistency will also allow bonus conversion to be used to seed the group champions into the semifinal groups instead of points-per-game which is significantly schedule-dependent, if desired.

jonpin

I like everything about this.* I realized (as I imagine PACE did) that the glaring flaw was that it was hard to tell if a second-place finish was deserved. If Maggie Walker beat Georgetown in the third-place game, they would have finished third behind State College despite having the same record, no...

jonpin

Question about rule G19- do questions on the elder Bush normally require more identifying information than "George Bush" (i.e. Bush the Elder, Bush 41, George *Herbert* Walker Bush)? If not, then I don't see how prompting on "George Bush" isn't an asymmetrical situation where th...

jonpin

Given that the overriding idea of the rules of QB is to reward clear knowledge, and that the purpose of the exception to the general rule is to avoid ambiguity, if someone buzzed in and said "Invisible Man by Wells", should it be accepted?

jonpin

True. Another place of explicit contradiction is that NAQT specifically prompts on Andrew Lloyd Webber and ACF specifically rejects Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

jonpin

The most similar situation I can think of off the top of my head is John Adams and John Quincy Adams, which should be handled similar to The Invisible Man/Invisible Man: if someone buzzes in with Quincy Adams, it's clear which one is being given. If someone buzzes in with Adams, it's similarly clea...

jonpin

I.8: In rare cases, an otherwise acceptable answer may be ruled incorrect when it creates ambiguity with another plausible answer (e.g., even though first and last names are almost always sufficient, John Adams would not be acceptable--or promptable--for John Quincy Adams, as it creates confusion w...

jonpin

Seriously that "purring" q was barely a step above the infamous "banana" tus of CBI fame. Was there really a tossup on Keyboard Cat at this tournament? the god-awful LOLCATS tossup in an IS set Cri du chat? Whoever decided to make these answer choices is so out of touch with qui...

jonpin

Was there really a tossup on Keyboard Cat at this tournament? Wait, there was one of these distinct from the god-awful LOLCATS tossup in an IS set (I believe the state championship set)? I seriously considered posting something like "Whoever wrote tossup X in packet Y of IS-N should stop writi...

jonpin

Just my thoughts: I think it was Jim Valvano who emphasized that the value of a free throw at the end of a game is the same as the value of a free throw at the beginning. If one is to truly randomize packets and the distribution includes trash, one must accept the possibility a game would end on a ...

jonpin

I'll start by saying that NAQT did get some things right this year: the elimination of list bonuses, 30-20-10s, and A/B/both or neither bonuses was a positive improvement. And let's hope they stay away from these in next year's IS sets. -Second, (and this would help with players' perception of the ...

jonpin

NAQT has a better tournament format and match format. PACE has a better distribution and questions. Power matching is better than round robin divisions, double elimination is better than round robin divisions (especially if you don't have enough time for an advantaged final), not having one part bo...

jonpin

Guy, I certianly did not kill my argument. How can we say that Charter was better than Booker T? They lost! And here I am reading that Booker T was the 24th best team in the Nation. Well hold on a second! They beat Charter, arguably one of the best teams in the country. Booker T won! So they were t...

jonpin

I was a little disappointed in our Goldfish performance, myself, but it certainly would have helped if we had had either of our math-capable players present for that round. Those two mathcomps didn't help us at all. Plus, I'm actually willing to give my kids karma points for not knowing who Ryan Go...

jonpin

What was the correct answer? Bling? Baller? Hoo? Furthermore, it appears as if :chip: disregarded the correct rules of protests in the final. Having never gone to NAC, I am under the impression that teams get one protest for the entire tournament. The rules state: General 13. Appeals regarding answ...

jonpin

I've never been to HSNCT before, but as a small school player I echo this request. Since I count 27 small schools, maybe 8 or 12 (or 16 but I guess that would be stretching it) should qualify? This may be a reasonable idea, however the following need to be kept in mind: 1) If you're cutting off the...

jonpin

While obviously I can't comment on whether upholding the protest was right or wrong, if the protest was upheld giving the question just to your opponents is standard protest procedure AFAIK. The idea is that it should have gone (a) you buzz in and are called wrong, (b) other team only has a chance t...

jonpin

3. Losing a game to a New York-based team on a geography/current events question about New York. Remember, these questions are written months in advance ... I thought of this post when reading a question on California to Rancho Bernardo and then one on Georgia to Brookwood at NSC... For those who m...

jonpin

Between people begging for us not to refresh Taft and the chat having stopped, I'm thinking the network may have cut out again. Either that or everyone's at lunch. Either way, here's what's happened in the top playoff brackets: Didi : State College 6-1, Georgetown 6-1 , Stow-Munroe 4-3, Dorman 3-4, ...

jonpin

Is the Day 2 liveblog running yet? The link on the front page still says It will start at 8:30.

jonpin

3. Losing a game to a New York-based team on a geography/current events question about New York. Remember, these questions are written months in advance ... Choose how this sentence will be finished: (A) ...by other organizations. (B) ...and put into packets once we saw the schedule. (C) ...for las...

jonpin

For those of you who are interested the plan is play out the 4 rounds of power matching, and then take the top 2 people and the next 2 people and put them in a advantaged final for the placings. It doesn't seem like this plan will work. If you've got 16 people, you'll wind up with one 4-0 player an...

jonpin

The two playoff bracket champions will meet in an overall final to determine the 2009 PACE national champion. This will be a one-game final, with the exception of the case in which the two teams previously played in the tournament (that is, were in the same preliminary bracket). If that scenario oc...

jonpin

After our tournament I e-mailed about some errors in ACF-3, and they seem to still be there: 17. The Laplace transform of this function is equal to s over the quantity s squared plus one. Its Taylor series expansion is represented by the sum as n goes from zero to infinity of negative one to the n t...

jonpin

Just wondering, when do NAQT sets become live? After HSNCT?

From Goldfish...
Correct answer: Yttrium
Not an element: Yibittrium

jonpin

EDIT: Also, Bergen powered the last 6 TUs? Nice... Yeah, we joked that it was probably too little too late. Some of the powers were creepy-good, like [#30] on the [first] clue, the [#25] and [#27] powers were literally on the last word. I said afterwards that [the thought process I'd have on #28 wa...

jonpin

I guess that can be taken as a general reminder that even when you're writing a question on your favorite song/lab procedure/author/mythological deity, you should still be looking things up as you write to check your facts.

jonpin

I was flipping through some of these packets and there are many problems with this bonus part (Packet 4, Bonus 7c): My own favorite Deathcab song is this minor hit off "Plans," whose first title entity tells its second title entity "I do believe it's true/ That There are rocks left in...

jonpin

Probably, Nick. Probably, Dan (depending on your definition of "right off"). It'll be a few weeks before I'm confirmed interested, because if I can't find a job before then, I might need to be spending my summer weekends looking for/working towards one. Also, while I'm open to giving peopl...

jonpin

I might try to come down to Maryland for this. New Jersey carpool FTW?

Disclaimer: I will probably be close to useless as a teammate on a nationals-level set.

jonpin

For anyone who's interested, we'll actually be doing round robin prelim brackets of 4 and 6 playoff crossover rounds, because I know teams are interested in maximizing games against similarly-skilled opponents at this point in the year. Do I see four brackets of 4 followed by double round-robin in ...

jonpin

While this is in the early planning stages, was any thought given to making this function similar to ARML* minus single-school teams? By that I mean Northern California and Southern California could, for example, each have their own team, and other geographically/populationally large states could al...

jonpin

Full results are now available here: http://results.scobo.net/BergenCountyAcademies

jonpin

What's the deadline for playing the packets? Sorry about the slow response to the above questions: 1. "On or about" means that you can do it on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday (or maybe even Friday if you ask nicely...). I normally start running results Friday night. 2. Ties are resolved ...

jonpin

Third, Jon, prelim ties were played off (as were all ties in record throughout the tournament, except for the Ike/VCU tie in record, which was discovered after it was found that I mis-entered a playoff game.) This procedure was made known in advance, please review the relevant tiebreaking procedure...

jonpin

dtaylor4 wrote:Please do not protest (a neg that is given on account of moderator discretion and) anything that does not affect the outcome of a game.

Isn't this standard procedure, especially if PPG tiebreakers can't eliminate anyone?

jonpin

Steve Fineman decided upon the format and announced at the start that ties would obviously be played off, but that would be it. My guess is that part of the reason behind this was that due to a small number of staff, it actually took 12 rounds (instead of 11). If there had been one or two fewer upse...

jonpin

Just to supplement Coach Fineman's post, here are the top-to-bottom team standings: 1. St. Joseph A 9-1 (lost to Hills) 2. Columbia 8-2 (lost to SJ-A and Berg-B) 3. Bergen Academies A 7-3 (lost to SJ-A, Col and Hills) 3. Bergen Academies B 7-3 (lost to SJ-A, Berg-A and Liv-C) 3. Half Hollow Hills We...

jonpin

What's the format for what's happening after these two prelim groups? Crossover playoffs tomorrow?

jonpin

Raleigh Charter had 1827. Congratulations. Official Results 1. Raleigh Charter NC 1827 2. State College PA 1811 3. NCSSM NC 1792 4. Montgomery Blair MD 1780 5. Bellarmine CA 1773 6. Bergen Academies NJ 1772 7. Hoover AL 1762 8. Kellenberg NY 1760 9. Rockford Auburn IL 1759 (198) 10. Torrey Pines CA...

jonpin

Depends what you mean by downtown. For the Hampton Inn, it looks like Convention Center is the closest Metro stop, a few blocks west, but there's also Arch/Laclede, a few blocks east.

Search found 1383 matches