2015 SCT Errata

[Excelsior (smack)]

I have some errata for division 2.

Packet 1, tossup 22: "Fear of Trembling" sounds like a great thing to read, but I don't think Kierkegaard ever wrote such a thing.
Packet 3, tossup 18: "zip" and "map" only return lists in some versions of Python. Specifically, only in Python 2. In Python 3, they (notably) return iterators, which are not lists. If you want to fix this clue, I guess just replace "Python" with "Python 2".
Packet 5, tossup 3: "appears in collection" -> "appears in a collection"
Packet 5, tossup 19: "died fighting in Battle of..." -> "died fighting in the Battle of..."
Packet 6, bonus 10: I notice that one part mentions "Khoi" and then "Khoi" is given as one of the acceptable answers. I don't know anything about the topic of this particular bonus, but that looks a little funny to me.
Packet 8, bonus 10: "an 1909 experiment" -> "a 1909 experiment"
Packet 8, bonus 3: "of a electrochemical cell" -> "of an electrochemical cell"
Packet 9, tossup 23: "S & P 500" -> "S & P 500"

[Important Bird Area]

Packet 6, bonus 10: I notice that one part mentions "Khoi" and then "Khoi" is given as one of the acceptable answers. I don't know anything about the topic of this particular bonus, but that looks a little funny to me.

This was indeed a mistake and has been fixed. I'll take a look at the others tomorrow.

[Ike]

In D1, there was an error with falsifiability coming up in the bonus leadin and being an answer. At least my memory says so.

I have some errata for division 2.
Python 2. In Python 3, they (notably) return iterators, which are not lists. If you want to fix this clue, I guess just replace "Python" with "Python 2".

Oops my apologies, though iterators are not data structures in any sense of the term, (linked) lists are. If this caused anyone to neg with iterators, I apologize.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

A few DI things:
Packet 2: Barack Obama also repealed the Mexico City Policy/"Global Gag Rule" on his first day in office or so (after George W. Bush reinstated it), so something like "was the first president to repeal the Mexico City Policy..." might be necessary to specify Clinton.
Packet 2: "formula algebraic formula"
Packet 3: After I read the computational capacitors bonus, I heard complaints that the last part was written misleadingly, or was simply hard to parse on the fly, so it was hard to get to the right answer in 5 seconds. Checking back over it with people who know their stuff, it does seem to have been correct, but could that be posted just to make sure? Also, what was a pencil and paper ready bonus doing in this set? Even if the idea is that this bonus could be done "conceptually" in the normal 5-second time limit, I suspect that there are ways it could have been refurbished such that no teams felt the need to compute (and there were many other great "equationy" physics parts across the set which this could have been brought in line with). Can we see the full bonus and discuss how bonuses like it could be redone to be more forgiving and less of a throwback to 2006?
Packet 4: From what I heard in a class that I attended like 3 sessions of, Classical Sanskrit is so conservative and changes so little across time that we're actually very uncertain when Kalidasa lived, with a comically wide range of possible dates spanning from the first century BC to about 1300 AD (source). "Gupta period" is an educated guess, not a known fact.
Packet 8: When this philosophy bonus on science was edited, you changed the middle part to falsifiability but kept a mention of falsifiability in the bonus leadin.
Packet 9: The highlighted word in the phrase "solutions to this system depend on this coefficient of friction" led many teams away from the demonstrative pointing towards the real answer (i.e. the second "this") and was confusing. Saying "solutions to the system" (i.e. the cylinder on the ramp) would be very helpful.

Packet 1, tossup 22: "Fear of Trembling" sounds like a great thing to read, but I don't think Kierkegaard ever wrote such a thing.

To be honest, though, Kierkegaard as re-imagined by Erica Jong would be lolarious.

[vinteuil]

The Packet 11 music tossup on Italy claims that "German noblemen Baron d'Holbach and Melchior Grimm supported this country's style, and opposed Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in an 18th-century operatic dispute." The beginning is correct, but the "opposed" is not—I was confused into negging with "France," since Rousseau most famously attacked Rameau's version of the French style in the Querelle.

[Aaron's Rod]

Packet 11, tossup 22–"resistance in ac circuits" is usually "AC circuits"

[conker]

Div 1, Packet 2, Tossup 11: Gangsta's Paradise
The quote from the song is slightly off. Perhaps someone tried to write this question from memory?
"we've been living most of our lives" => "we've been spending most our lives, living"

[Ike]

Oh also, Ligeti is from Romania, not Hungary.

[Auks Ran Ova]

Oh also, Ligeti is from Romania, not Hungary.

Not sure what the question said, but he's ethnically Hungarian--it's not inaccurate to say "Hungarian composer", but it is inaccurate to say "Hungarian-born composer".

[ThisIsMyUsername]

The Packet 11 music tossup on Italy claims that "German noblemen Baron d'Holbach and Melchior Grimm supported this country's style, and opposed Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in an 18th-century operatic dispute." The beginning is correct, but the "opposed" is not—I was confused into negging with "France," since Rousseau most famously attacked Rameau's version of the French style in the Querelle.

Yeah, you're right, that clue about Rousseau has his role in the War of the Buffoons exactly backwards. While I wan't the writer/editor for this question, I definitely should have caught that mistake during proofreading; so, that's on me.

Oh also, Ligeti is from Romania, not Hungary.

Because I'd never heard anyone refer to Ligeti as anything other than Hungarian (and he identified as Hungarian, and not as Romanian), it didn't occur to me that someone could say "Romania", since the part of Transylvania that Ligeti was born in was part of Romania at the time. The question does use the phrase "country of origin", which I agree can be interpreted to mean "country of birth" rather than "country of ethnic origin". So, that should be clarified, in case someone decides to interrupt the bonus, before the Bartok clause that follows.

[bmcke]

Were there supposed to be pencil-and-paper questions in the tournament?