NAQT State/UIUC Solo

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Tegan
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NAQT State/UIUC Solo

Post by Tegan »

I just want to give kudos to the Fenton staff for running a great tournament. Second big kudos to the UIUC folks for running a great solo tournament. I was there nearly 12, which was a long day, but I walked out after moderating with the feeling that there had been a lot of good play by a lot of great teams and individuals. I'm not sure what more you could have asked for.

I'm not sure Donald has had a chance to note it, but I know he would have wanted a notice to not discuss solo questions, as I think they are still in play. Donald can feel free to correct me on that if I am wrong.
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dtaylor4
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Re: NAQT State/UIUC Solo

Post by dtaylor4 »

Tom is right. Any discussion of question specifics will be removed from your post, and you will be chastised.
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JackGlerum
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Re: NAQT State/UIUC Solo

Post by JackGlerum »

Yesterday was a satisfying quizbowl experience. Eleven guaranteed rounds, all of which had both moderator and scorekeeper, made me smile. It's about time someone got this simple logistics concept down in Illinois. Also worth noting is lunch. By far the best I've had at a quizbowl tournament. All ten or so of us ordered custom subs from Fenton's sponsor deli on Thursday and nearly every order was right. Having my 10 inch turkey sub waiting for me after round seven was infinitely better than the ever popular (but admittedly budget friendly) "hmm let's get 34672769290972 boxes of cheap pizza" option. Donald's solo tournament afterwards was also fun. It was pleasant to have a break from the currenteventshockeygeographycompmathapalooza of NAQT and play 10 rounds of some solid ACFish-distro tossups. Furthermore, both tournaments made me happy for Illinois quizbowl in general. After playing high quality tournaments like EFT, HFT, TIT, and various HSAPQ events this year, it seemed that the top teams were hitting all cylinders on a "normal-to-easy" difficulty tournament like an IS set. Like Mr. Laudermith said in the original thread, I think our state's top teams--Carbondale, New Trier, and Auburn--will make noise in late May. Also, I thoroughly enjoyed losing to Auburn freshman Lloyd at Solo. It's totally awesome to see underclassmen competing and like I said earlier, makes me happy for the future.
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dtaylor4
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Re: NAQT State/UIUC Solo

Post by dtaylor4 »

Speaking of distribution, I'd like to solicit feedback on the fact that there was 0 computational math. Given how divided the issue of comp math in quizbowl is in Illinois, I'm curious to hear people's reactions.
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Re: NAQT State/UIUC Solo

Post by Dan-Don »

Will stats for either of these tourneys be posted?
JackGlerum wrote:Also, I thoroughly enjoyed losing to Auburn freshman Lloyd at Solo. It's totally awesome to see underclassmen competing and like I said earlier, makes me happy for the future.
Agreed. I had the same experience.
dtaylor4 wrote:Speaking of distribution, I'd like to solicit feedback on the fact that there was 0 computational math. Given how divided the issue of comp math in quizbowl is in Illinois, I'm curious to hear people's reactions.
Two big thumbs up from me! :grin:
Dan Donohue, Saint Viator ('10), Northwestern ('14), NAQT
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dtaylor4
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Re: NAQT State/UIUC Solo

Post by dtaylor4 »

DD60004 wrote:Will stats for either of these tourneys be posted?
As soon as I can get my computer connected to the internet, I will post them. However, my apartment has clogged tubes, and 99% of the campus has now power.
Siverus Snape
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Re: NAQT State/UIUC Solo

Post by Siverus Snape »

Most of the top players in Illinois got that way by playing extensively in formats other than IHSA, so we are generally very much okay with no computational math. For the field you drew on Saturday, I can't really see anyone who would take issue with the lack of calculation.
Siva Sundaram, Rockford Auburn High School '09
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Captain Sinico
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Re: NAQT State/UIUC Solo

Post by Captain Sinico »

I just wanted to apologize for our delaying the tournament (albeit I'm not positive to what extent) being very late, which was caused by my sleeping through both my alarms, which was caused by my not being able to sleep due to my idiotic neighbors' idiotic parties. I'm glad to say that I'll be shortly moving out of this building, which has caused me to miss one tournament entirely and made me late to two others.

MaS
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Geringer
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Re: NAQT State/UIUC Solo

Post by Geringer »

Siverus Snape wrote:For the field you drew on Saturday, I can't really see anyone who would take issue with the lack of calculation.
*cough cough* I have a special place in my heart for those beautiful 30 second questions. Playing non-Illinois style tournaments has only brought me pain, feelings of inadequacy, and beatdowns from literary and historical masterminds like yourself.
R. Jeffrey Geringer
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AKKOLADE
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Re: NAQT State/UIUC Solo

Post by AKKOLADE »

man, a new gimmick would be useful
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dtaylor4
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Re: NAQT State/UIUC Solo

Post by dtaylor4 »

SaveComputationalMath wrote:*cough cough* I have a special place in my heart for those beautiful 30 second questions. Playing non-Illinois style tournaments has only brought me pain, feelings of inadequacy, and beatdowns from literary and historical masterminds like yourself.
I'm curious. How many of the math theory questions did you get?
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Re: NAQT State/UIUC Solo

Post by Dan-Don »

This is Dan from Viator posting, against my better judgment, at the behest of "Silent Jeff."

Although Jeff and my teammates got a considerable amount of math theory questions right, Jeff especially felt that some of the pyramidal math computation questions were poorly written. In one question, for example, the clues at the beginning gave a good math student enough time to compute the answer before the give-away at the end. However, in a few, more prevalent instances, the eager math student fell victim to the dead giveaway (something like "Compute 81 divided by 15") at the end of the question.

And I quote Jeff, "I didn't really have an issue with the lack of math, it was more the fact that there was not enough time to compute before the give-away, and in some cases I should have just waited for such a give-away. I didn't play individual, so it's no criticism of your well-written questions."

PLEASE NOTE, the views and opinions expressed in this post DO NOT reflect the rest of our team's views on the place of computational math in Scholastic Bowl. Please direct any positive or negative feedback to Jeff's username, Save ComputationalMath. Thank you.
Dan Donohue, Saint Viator ('10), Northwestern ('14), NAQT
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Re: NAQT State/UIUC Solo

Post by Siverus Snape »

Let's be clear what we're talking about here, Dan and Jeff. Donald asked about the lack of comp math in the solo, not the NAQT tournament, the two of which were written by very different sets of people. It is a general opinion I have seen expressed around here that NAQT comp math fails too much in trying to be pyramidal to really work well.
Siva Sundaram, Rockford Auburn High School '09
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dtaylor4
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Re: NAQT State/UIUC Solo

Post by dtaylor4 »

Stats can be found here:

http://www.illinoisabt.org/results/2009hs_solo/

For the rebracketing: The top bracket consisted of the four group winners, followed by the top two non-winners with the highest PPG. The rest of the top three from each bracket were put into the second bracket. Repeat for positions 4-6.
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Re: NAQT State/UIUC Solo

Post by Dan-Don »

Siverus Snape wrote:Let's be clear what we're talking about here, Dan and Jeff.

Whoa whoa whoa. I don't think computational math has any place in quiz bowl. Address your comments to Jeff. He needs to be convinced that math is stupid.
Dan Donohue, Saint Viator ('10), Northwestern ('14), NAQT
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Geringer
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Re: NAQT State/UIUC Solo

Post by Geringer »

Yeah, to Donald and the rest of the U of I crew, I was never referring to the individual tournament. I sat in on 5 or 6 rounds and enjoyed the questions. My only issue was with the morning tournament questions, and even then only with a few. But then again, IHSA told me to get my pencil and paper ready for about 4 questions that a 4th grader could figure out in their head, so I'm not quite as upset with NAQT's pyramidal math questions.

On a related note, I really think that the math question writing, computational and otherwise, for regionals was very poor. I really think that someone opened up a college math book from the 18th century, flipped to the glossary, and started writing questions about things that are no longer taught in math class (I am in BC Calculus, so I've been taught what most high schools consider an accelerated curriculum, and I have never even heard of half of this stuff, and some of it isn't even in my book). On top of that, I do not remember very many math questions going the full 30 seconds (except for a God-awful Pascal triangle from hell). If computational math can't be written better, I, yes, me, a staunch defender of 30-second masterpieces, think that it needs to be eliminated from IHSA-sanctioned events.
R. Jeffrey Geringer
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Jane Fairfax
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Re: NAQT State/UIUC Solo

Post by Jane Fairfax »

thank you for the praise.

Anyway, I don't like comp math much, but--

I wish we had more questions on horse racing.

But what do I know, I'm just a freshman. I miss the questions we had in middle school like "Where do you put odor eaters?"
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