So I've been reading through my team's drafted questions for ACF Fall and through some questions my club has written for fun, and I've noticed a couple of instances (in my questions and in others') where a clue points towards the correct answer in a manner that clearly rewards "real knowledge," but not in the category of the question.
For example, take a painting question on a mythological subject: is it necessary to separate a player's knowledge of the myth in question from a player's knowledge of the work of art. And if so, how does a writer accomplish this without resorting to difficulty cliffs and abstract clues that are much harder to follow?
Or, should a writer choose to not write about such topics, pre-empting the problem in the first place?
Long story short, is frauding also a problem within the academic subjects, and should writers try to head off that possibility by discriminating choice of answerlines? What's the conventional wisdom on this? Thanks
Where to Cry "Fraud!"
- Tale of Mac Datho's Pachycephalosaur
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Where to Cry "Fraud!"
Zach Pace
Clarence High School '10, University at Buffalo '14
Writer, NAQT; Reader, NY MasterMinds
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You don't want me anywhere near literature that's not sci-fi or written in Latin. Seriously.
Clarence High School '10, University at Buffalo '14
Writer, NAQT; Reader, NY MasterMinds
Space Advocate, Amateur Astronomer, and Occasional STEM Pundit
You don't want me anywhere near literature that's not sci-fi or written in Latin. Seriously.
Re: Where to Cry "Fraud!"
It is always acceptable to use academic clues in academic questions.
Auroni Gupta (she/her)
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Re: Where to Cry "Fraud!"
True, but that doesn't entirely answer the question, because it relies on a presupposed idea of academic clues that you don't elucidate and that the poster is confused about.Tokyo Sex Whale wrote:It is always acceptable to use academic clues in academic questions.
It's inevitable that if you mention a figure holding a head people are going to go for something involving Judith/Holofernes or Perseus/Medusa, rather than, I don't know, Kali/Horus, because two of those happened and one isn't even possible. In Renaissance painting, there are also kind of standard scenes that are painted, it's my understanding. So it's even tougher--not even character combinations but entire events are easily "betrayed" in that manner. They're all valuable academic clues and legitimate ways to approach the art--some of my old myth books had the Cellini Perseus/Medusa in them.Tale of Mac Datho's Pachycephalosaur wrote:So I've been reading through my team's drafted questions for ACF Fall and through some questions my club has written for fun, and I've noticed a couple of instances (in my questions and in others') where a clue points towards the correct answer in a manner that clearly rewards "real knowledge," but not in the category of the question.
For example, take a painting question on a mythological subject: is it necessary to separate a player's knowledge of the myth in question from a player's knowledge of the work of art. And if so, how does a writer accomplish this without resorting to difficulty cliffs and abstract clues that are much harder to follow?
Frauding is a problem in academic subjects--it's best not to drop a lot of Finnish-sounding names early, or whatever--but the fact that the world is more cross-disciplinary than quizbowl categorizes it to be isn't a problem. After all, our distribution is arbitrary. Much as NAQT groups lit and myth, what if ACF-2 were to group all the humanities together as a top-level category? Then it would be far less a crime, just because of renumbering.
Andrew Watkins
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Re: Where to Cry "Fraud!"
If Andy Watkins Buzzes.
Janet Berry
[email protected]
she/they
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J. Sargeant Reynolds CC 2008, 2009, 2014
Virginia Commonwealth 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013,
Douglas Freeman 2005, 2006, 2007
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J. Sargeant Reynolds CC 2008, 2009, 2014
Virginia Commonwealth 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013,
Douglas Freeman 2005, 2006, 2007
- Kilroy Was Here
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Re: Where to Cry "Fraud!"
Hey, he just wanted to have real knowledge of the questions.Frater Taciturnus wrote:If Andy Watkins Buzzes.
Collin Parks
University of Michigan '18
"Aragorn was the famed king of Gondor, while the Iberian kingdom was Aragon. Both parties were aware of this coincidence: we have a journal entry from Aragorn that expresses his anger at receiving mail meant for King Peter IV of Aragon for the umpteenth time."~ CommodoreCoCo
University of Michigan '18
"Aragorn was the famed king of Gondor, while the Iberian kingdom was Aragon. Both parties were aware of this coincidence: we have a journal entry from Aragorn that expresses his anger at receiving mail meant for King Peter IV of Aragon for the umpteenth time."~ CommodoreCoCo