University of Georgia- Classic City Classic III (12/06/08)

[Esane]

The University of Georgia Quizbowl team will be hosting our Third Classic City Classic on the campus of the University of Georgia on Saturday, December 6th.

My name is Tim Boughey and I will be serving as Tournament Director. Questions will be house written and should be around the difficulty of last year's spring tournament. The distribution is basically typical mACF (albeit with some computational math thrown in), questions should be around 4-5 lines long, and we're definitely up for mirroring these questions anywhere else that needs a fresh set. Chris Chiego, Jonathan Okon and Steven Hanley will be serving as our main editors for this house written tournament.

Fees are:
$70 for the 1st team registered
$50 for each subsequent team registered
$-5 for each buzzer (each WORKING buzzer) (up to 3)
$-5 for a competent worker (up to 1, we should have plenty of staff already)
Teams 150+ miles away should contact us about possible travel discounts.

To register, simply send us an email at uga.quizbowl@gmail.com with your school's name, contact info, number of teams, and number of buzzers/workers. If you have any other questions, please feel free to send us an email as well.

Thanks for your interest in the earlier October date. We look forward to having a large turnout this year.

Tim Boughey- University of Georgia

[Esane]

I have listed teams that have e-mailed concrete confirmations for this tournament.

Chattahoochee -2
East Paulding- 1
Grayson-1
Ola High School- 3

Please e-mail uga.quizbowl@uga.edu if you are attending and not on this list.

Thanks.

[Esane]

Field Update:

Brookwood-1
Bleckley County-1
Collins Hill High School- 2
Chattahoochee- 2
East Paulding- 1
Grayson-1

LOCATION/TIME: The Fifth floor of the Journalism Building, where we usually host, with registration from 8:45 to 9:15 and play beginning as close to 9:30 as possible.

DIRECTIONS: Athens can be a kind of confusing place to navigate around, so here are instructions for teams once you get on the Perimeter Loop (SR 10) that circles Athens. If you're coming from the West (SR 316) or South (US 129), take the loop to the EAST (right) until you get to the College Station Rd. exit and turn left onto College Station Rd. If you're coming from the North (US 441, from I-85), take the loop to the SOUTHEAST (left) until you get to College Station Rd. and take the exit to the right onto College Station rd. Once on College Station Rd., cross the railroad tracks and take a right onto East Campus Road. Follow East Campus past the stadium and up a hill; just past the crest of the hill, turn left onto Hooper Rd. and then take an immediate right into the parking lot (the gates will be up since it's Saturday). Park here and you have the best access to the center of campus. The large brick building immediately adjacent to the lot is Psychology; keep walking past Psychology (away from East Campus Rd.) and the next big building (which is partially attached to Psychology) is Journalism.

[jburnsOHS]

Does this mean it is not V and JV, just varsity? Is there a possibility of cancellation?

[Esane]

Does this mean it is not V and JV, just varsity? Is there a possibility of cancellation?

There are schools bringing JV and Varsity teams. What we usually do for our Winter tournament is have a general round robin format and then for the playoffs we seed into JV and Varsity brackets.

I doubt there will be a cancellation.Confirmations have also been slower due to the Thanksgiving holiday. I am continuously updating the field information.

[RountreeCHS]

Will you keep with the general round robin if you have more than 8-10 teams, or move to 2 divisions and bracketed playoffs?

How many rounds of questions do you guys have? I only ask because, while I enjoy quiz bowl, it seems a bit superfluous to play 10+ rounds for a field of 10 or fewer teams, doesn't it? A general round robin should tell you who the best team is - this isn't the Big 12 South

[Horned Screamer]

Isn't getting the ability to play more questions and learn more something good? In fact, I think I'm going to say that if you have a format that maximizes that while still fairly determining a winner, then that format should be given priority over formats that don't do that but still fairly determine a winner.

[Mechanical Beasts]

I'm with Charlie. First priority should be getting as many rounds used as possible. (Of course, it's possible that you'll need tiebreaker packets at various point, but every packet should be used in some capacity).

[RountreeCHS]

Agreed Charlie. (BTW, good luck against Oklahoma this weekend - y'all will need it.) Playing more quiz bowl is, of course, preferable to playing less quiz bowl, but that is not what I was asking about or arguing for. I asked how the playoffs were going to work based on the number of teams in attendance and how many rounds of questions they had to use.

I disagree with your statement Andrew - the first priority of any good tournament is not to use the most packets; it should be to fairly determine the winner - there are myriad ways to accomplish this feat, but it is the most basic task of any tournament of quality. If you use 9 rounds to fairly determine which team is the winner, then you have accomplished your main goal. If it takes you 12 packets, so be it. The point is, determine the winner in fair manner - the number of packets used should never take precedent over this single point.

If there are 10 or fewer teams at UGA and a complete round robin is played with one team running the table, that team should be the winner - clearly they were the best if they went undefeated against all the other teams. You don't need to play more rounds to figure that out, do you? If there is a tie, then you look at head-to-head. Whoever won the head-to-head match is the winner.

[Horned Screamer]

Right, I agree wholly with the point that you shouldn't create a bizarre, potentially unfair format just to make sure everyone plays all the packets you wrote. If you have 12 packets but the only way to fairly determine the winner given the number of teams you have involves 10 or 11 packets, then so be it, you now have some backup packets in case of emergency and some leftovers for teams to practice on in the future. However, if your alternatives are a format that fairly determines the winner after 7 rounds and a format that fairly determines the winner after 10 rounds (and you have the packets), I would always pick the 10 round option (I'm just using arbitrary numbers here).

[dtaylor4]

If there are 10 or fewer teams at UGA and a complete round robin is played with one team running the table, that team should be the winner - clearly they were the best if they went undefeated against all the other teams. You don't need to play more rounds to figure that out, do you? If there is a tie, then you look at head-to-head. Whoever won the head-to-head match is the winner.

Um, this is inherently not fair. In a full round robin, if there is a tie, you use PPG. PPG has a sample size of all games, while head-to-head has a sample size of one game. Which one is more fair?

[Mechanical Beasts]

Yeah, a tournament should certainly try to be fair first. I should actually listen to what I write!

[Captain Sinico]

The argument you're making here is dogmatic and unsupported. It also happens to be badly wrong: head-to-head is not inherently unfair. The conventional wisdom is that head-to-head is less fair than a differential statistic with a large sample size. While that's an argument that I buy (and, actually, one that I had a hand in framing in this context) it's not necessarily the case: all else equal, head-to-head is more predictive, but is subject to greater fluctuation due to smaller sample size, while something like PPG differential has a much lower fluctuation, but is less predictive. Consequently, unless I've missed something (which I doubt) nobody has any basis for telling a tournament to necessarily not use head-to-head in the way you're attempting to.

MaS

PS: To head off an argument that I suspect will follow, using PPG differential is double-counting every game, which is no less or more fair in-and-of itself than double counting a single game.

PPS: Actually, someone should measure the accuracy of these tiebreakers. Tournament have multiple matchups often enough that we should be able to. Anyone interested?

[RountreeCHS]

Well said Charlie.
Donald, I disagree, but let's leave this discussion for theory. (I wonder, though, are you talking about a tie between 2 teams or between multiple teams with the same record?)
No worries Andrew.
Well argued Mike - your knowledge of statistical analysis is far better than mine.

[Esane]

If there are 10 or fewer teams at UGA and a complete round robin is played with one team running the table, that team should be the winner - clearly they were the best if they went undefeated against all the other teams. You don't need to play more rounds to figure that out, do you? If there is a tie, then you look at head-to-head. Whoever won the head-to-head match is the winner.

I had a mental lapse and mentioned a double round-robin, Elliott. What I meant to say was that we would play a single round-robin and then reseed for possible playoffs if necessary between JV and Varsity teams. We certainly will have enough question to accommodate tie-breakers and playoff rounds if necessary.

Will you keep with the general round robin if you have more than 8-10 teams, or move to 2 divisions and bracketed playoffs?

How many rounds of questions do you guys have? I only ask because, while I enjoy quiz bowl, it seems a bit superfluous to play 10+ rounds for a field of 10 or fewer teams, doesn't it? A general round robin should tell you who the best team is - this isn't the Big 12 South

And, I agree. We all enjoy quiz bowl, but a double round-robin would be a bit much in terms a sheer time taken. We do however, have enough questions to field any teams above 10 who might happen to show up without confirming before-hand; And, we have everything taken care of in terms of logistically setting up matches for any field size we might encounter.

I hope that answers your question. :)

[Matt Weiner]

There's just so many anti-head-to-head arguments to choose from, that's it's not necessary to bring them all up in every thread where it's proposed. Here's one I'll mention today: head-to-head rewards losing to the inferior team.

Team A (9-1, lost to Team B)
Team B (9-1, lost to Team C, beat Team A)
Team C (8-2, lost to Team A, beat Team B, lost to Team D)
Team D (7-3) etc

Team B lost to an 8-2 team that's not even good enough to be in the tie. Should we punish Team A for suffering its one loss to Team B, who is clearly better than Team C by our win-loss metric, and reward Team B for losing to someone who has 2 losses instead of losing to its equal opponent? No, we shouldn't.

The use of win-loss record alone has produced a tie. The W-L performance, or a section thereof, cannot be called up again to break the tie. We must either go to some other statistic (PPG) or play the tie off.

(Note that a radical alternative interpretation of my argument here is that the team which lost the head-to-head matchup should, in fact, win the tiebreaker. I do not endorse this because I do not endorse giving any tiebreaking meaning whatsoever to head-to-head results, but it seems somewhat more logically grounded than "let's do it the way the NFL does because we all like football.")

[jrbarry]

Tim:

Of course we'll go along with whatever you guys decide for Saturday, BUT puhlease do NOT subject us to any matches past a true round robin. (I am assuming a small field of no more than 10 teams.) Elliott is right and our Georgia tradition is to use head-to-head as tiebreaker #1 and points as tiebreaker #2 in a true round robin situation.

JRB

[Ukonvasara]

our Georgia tradition

Ah, everyone seems to have forgotten that tradition is always correct. Silly us!

[Sir Thopas]

our Georgia tradition

Ah, everyone seems to have forgotten that tradition is always correct. Silly us!

Rob Carson means that at some level the explanation for every action must be reducible to the form that the preconditions for its manifestations must have tended to enhance the reproduction of the actor's ancestors.

[jrbarry]

Rob:

Thanks for your "helpful" commentary. It is always good to know that a person or two in MInnesota care about what we do in Georgia.

JRB

I will say that the debate about head-to-head versus ppg in round robin tiebreakers was argued vociferously many years ago in Georgia. Over time, we gained a consensus that head-to-head was preferrable. It was the same with pyramidal tossups here.

As I posted earlier, the good folks at UGA can do whatever they please. But most Georgia quiz bowl people are going to expect pyramidal tossups and head-to-head tiebreakers in true round robin situations in these parts. Knowing the college bowl people at UGA as I do, I just wanted them to be aware of that. Santayana, and all that...

Admin: User was banned for this post for 2 days for making a "you can't understand things because you're from a different region" non-argument, which is explicitly forbidden by the rules.

[Ukonvasara]

Rob:

Thanks for your "helpful" commentary. It is always good to know that a person or two in MInnesota care about what we do in Georgia.

You're "welcome"! I care about promoting good quizbowl everywhere.

[Grams's Go-Go Boots]

I will say that the debate about head-to-head versus ppg in round robin tiebreakers was argued vociferously many years ago in Georgia.

The problem is that while your idea of head to head being superior could be valid, the way it's established is not. Just because something was decided in the 1980s (or 70s, or 60s, etc.) does not make it right or wrong. If you want to enter into a discussion of head-to-head vs. total ppg vs. other tiebreakers*, please do so while using reasoning that defends the ideas of head-to-head tiebreakers rather than the decision process that lead to the establishment of head-to-head tiebreakers as the status quo in Georgia "back in the day".

*Which I truly hope you do, because I think seeing your ideas side by side with others will help educate those who are fairly undecided on it, such as myself.

Edit: Also, yes, it's not entirely uncommon for people to care about the quality and state of quiz bowl outside of their immediate area!

[Esane]

Tim:

Of course we'll go along with whatever you guys decide for Saturday, BUT puhlease do NOT subject us to any matches past a true round robin. (I am assuming a small field of no more than 10 teams.) Elliott is right and our Georgia tradition is to use head-to-head as tiebreaker #1 and points as tiebreaker #2 in a true round robin situation.

JRB

I'm just sorry that I had a momentary lapse of judgment by typing "double round-robin" and sparking this whole debate. I think everyone will be pleased with the content and format of the tournament.

Plus, I know everyone wants to spend the evening watching Florida win the SEC and Mizzou upsetting Oklahoma. :)

[Captain Sinico]

Thanks for your "helpful" commentary. It is always good to know that a person or two in MInnesota care about what we do in Georgia.

No, no; thanks for your "helpful" "commentary!" It's good to know that this Illinoisan won't have to deal with your arguments for a couple days!

MaS

[Margo Magee]

[RountreeCHS]

Tim:
Thanks for the clarification. We certainly want to play the rounds you guys have taken the time to produce (as long as that results in a winner determined in a fair manner.) For instance, if we play a single round-robin and Team A is 9-0 while Team B is 8-1, I do not see the point in playing more games just for the sake of playing more games - you can name Team A the winner and you will hear no complaints from us (or anyone else at the tournament for that matter).

Matt:
In your hypothetical Team A-D scenario, Teams C and D are immediately taken out of the discussion of determining the winner as they lost 2 and 3 times more games, respectively, as Team A and B. Once you are down to 2 teams, head-to-head is a fair determiner of who should be declared the winner. Thus, Team B would be declared the winner as they defeated Team A. However, since you mentioned a playoff in your scenario to break the tie - and assuming the tournament has another round or two of questions - I am guessing you would only include Teams A and B in the playoff, correct? If you did, would you play a single game tie-breaker, or give Team B a 1 game advantage even though they have the same record as Team A? Of course,if your hypothetical scenario had a 3-team tie at 9-1, and each 9-1 team had beaten the other 9-1 team, you could certainly use PPG or some other metric to break the tie, and you would be fair in doing so.

Rob, Fred, Mike:
We greatly appreciate your insights. Thanks!

[Captain Sinico]

Once you are down to 2 teams, head-to-head is a fair determiner of who should be declared the winner. Thus, Team B would be declared the winner as they defeated Team A.

Well, I think you've missed Matt's argument here: he's saying that head-to-head seems unfair because, in his scenario (which happens all the time,) it rewards Team B for having lost to the apparently softer team rather than the harder one, and effectively places the entire outcome of the tournament on a game between a contending team and a non-contending one, both of which which are unreasonable and undesirable. However, one can present a congruent argument against using something like PPG differential instead of head-to-head: supposing Team A holds a PPG differential over Team B, the PPG differential then rewards Team A for playing well against apparently softer teams and nearly ignores the fact of Team A's having lost to the other best team, which is irrational, too. We can get away from this by using PPB differential, which is opponent-independent to a high degree of approximation, but that introduces other problems, for example that PPB is probably a weaker correlate to actual game performance. So, there's no theoretically perfect tiebreaker: one can present arguments of about equal strength against any of them*.
Anyway, the upshot of all this, I think, is that any such tiebreaker isn't really fair for declaring a champion or kicking someone out of the playoffs or something; you should use a playoff game to figure that out. Obviously, if you don't want to or can't and your field doesn't care, I can't make you, but it's clear that's what's right.

MaS

*I've started this thread to see if we can't figure out which common tiebreaker is the best using actual data. We'll see if that project makes any headway; you're welcome to contribute any data you might have.

[RountreeCHS]

Tim:
Do we have a field update coming, or are the 8 teams you have already posted going to be the final field? Also, given all the discussion on this thread about round-robins, playoffs, tie-breakers, etc., have y'all determined a final schedule for the tournament? If so, could you let me know? (If you prefer to email me directly, my email address is below.) Thanks!

[Esane]

Field Update:

This is still the most up to date, confirmed team list. Although, we are still accepting confirmations and/or signups for any teams that don't appear here.

Brookwood-1
Bleckley County-1
Collins Hill High School- 2
Chattahoochee- 2
East Paulding- 1
Grayson-1

LOCATION/TIME: The Fifth floor of the Journalism Building, where we usually host, with registration from 8:45 to 9:15 and play beginning as close to 9:30 as possible.

Also, given all the discussion on this thread about round-robins, playoffs, tie-breakers, etc., have y'all determined a final schedule for the tournament? If so, could you let me know?

It will most likely be the single round-robin with PPG as a tie breaker. Like I said before, we have enough space and questions to accommodate just about anything.

[AdamL]

Any update on this?

Partial results I heard from Chattahoochee: CHS A going undefeated with Brookwood taking second and CHS B losing to those teams for, presumably, third.

I also had a CHS player wondering if stats were kept and will be posted, as individual stats were apparently kept during the tournament but no prizes/acknowledgements were doled out.

Edit: weird grammar

[Esane]

Any update on this?

Partial results I heard from Chattahoochee: CHS A going undefeated with Brookwood taking second and CHS B losing to those teams for, presumably, third.

I also had a CHS player wondering if stats were kept and will be posted, as individual stats were apparently kept during the tournament but no prizes/acknowledgements were doled out.

Results will be posted. We're having a bit of a problem with our webspace at the moment.

In lieu of out space being back up and running:

1. Chattahoochee A
2. Brookwood
3. Chattahoochee B

We also have individual stats to post. I should have those up by tomorrow depending on our webspace situation.