POMMSS A HS regular difficulty housewritten packet set

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Ciorwrong
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POMMSS A HS regular difficulty housewritten packet set

Post by Ciorwrong »

Hello,

The MSU Academic Competition Team is pleased to announce POMMSS (Packet of Michigan, Michigan State Students)—a high school regular difficulty question set. We want POMMSS to be mirrored across the quizbowl world and the questions will be used at the Michigan State Tournament this year. This means that the State Tournament will be running pyramidal questions for the first time in several years.

The set will be head-edited by myself with assistance from Dillon Edwards and copy editing from Sarah Wrase. Questions were written by myself, Dillon Edwards, Trent Koch, Sarah Wrase, Austin Foos, Lucas Weingartz, Siddhant Dogra, Erik Bubolz and Dominic Aluia.

Difficulty: POMMS is meant to be a high school, regular difficulty tournament. There will be powers. Tossups will be capped at 6 lines Times New Roman 10 before powermarking. When writing 20 packets, there will be a wide range of answerlines, but this set will be heavily difficulty controlled and bonus hard parts will be reasonable. That said, powers and 30s on bonus are supposed to show exemplary knowledge on a topic. We are aiming for a similar difficulty as Harvard Fall Tournament or BHSAT. These questions should be an excellent warm up for HSNCT or PACE for teams attending those events.

Distribution: Each packet will consist of the following 20 tossup/20 bonus distribution. There will be 2 extra tossups per packet from the Big Four categories of Literature, History, Science and Fine Arts and 1 extra bonus per packet from those same categories.

Literature 4/4- 1/1 American, 1/1 British, 1/1, .5/.5 World .5/.5 Literature from any of above categories with emphasis on American, British literature
History 4/4- 1/1 American, 1/1 European, 1/1 World, 1/1 British/Ancient/Miscellaneous questions that transcend geographical categorization and more American, European and World. Teams should expect a British and Ancient history question at least once every other packet.
Science 4/4 -1/1 Biology, 1/1 Chemistry, 1/1 Physics, 1/0 or 0/1 Non-computational Math, 0/1 or 1/0 Other Science (Astronomy, Comp. Sci., Geology & Earth Science)
Fine Arts 2.5/2.5- 1.25/1.25 Visual Fine Arts including approximately 1/1 Painting/Sculpture .25/.25 Architecture/Film/Photography/more Sculpture, 1.25/1.25 Auditory Fine Arts including 1/1 Classical music and .25/.25 Jazz/Opera/Musicals/more Classical music
Mythology 1/1
Religion 1/1
Philosophy .5/.5
Social Science .5/.5
Geography .75/.75
Current Events .75/.75
Pop Culture .75/.75
Misc. Academic .25/.25 overflow category and includes questions that don’t neatly fit into one of the above.

Mirroring: We are writing 20 packets for the State Tournament in April but will not have 20 packets written and edited for some time due to the sheer volume. For 13 packets, we will be charging a mirror fee of $10/team attending. Mirrors can occur after February 1 for the 13 packet set. Mirrors are free to play with or without the powers in the set. If a mirror needs more packets, we are willing to offer more but will discuss specifics and prices with the host., Mirrors can occur throughout the spring and I’m willing to let some occur over the summer and into the fall if there is interest. Please email me at [email protected] and CC [email protected] if your schools is interested in mirroring. We’d appreciate comments and constructive criticism from schools mirroring our set and can provide the first few packets if requested by a potential host.

No mirror at this time is allowed to host teams from the state of Michigan because the questions will be used at the State Tournament.

Writing: Because we are writing such a large amount of questions in over 400 tossups and 400 bonuses, we are still in need of some experienced writers. If you are an experienced writer or are willing to offer some editing advice especially in the categories of biology and chemistry, we would very much appreciate it. (We are primarily interested in writers who can write questions in Literature/History/Science and Fine Arts because those are the biggest categories.) Experienced writers or editors can get paid by the MSU Academic Competition depending on how much they write. Please email or PM me ASAP if you are interested in writing.

Edit: Because of the difficulty of writing 90/85 literature questions, some of the .5/.5 other lit questions will be genre fiction such as classic science fiction and modern (like past 20 years) novels. There will be no trash lit like Harry Potter or the Hunger Games though.
Last edited by Ciorwrong on Mon Mar 06, 2017 6:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Harris Bunker
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Re: POMMSS A HS regular difficulty housewritten packet set

Post by Ciorwrong »

Mirrors:

February 11,Tiger Bowl at The University of Missouri in Columbia, MO
March 11, Gar-Field High School Woodbridge, VA
April 22, SSNCT prep tournament in Rootstown, OH THIS WAS CANCELED
Last edited by Ciorwrong on Mon Apr 10, 2017 3:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Harris Bunker
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Re: POMMSS A HS regular difficulty housewritten packet set

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The POMMSS sub-forum is up after our first mirror. People who heard or read the set at Tiger Bowl are encouraged to request to join the usergroup in the control panel and give constructive feedback.
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Re: POMMSS A HS regular difficulty housewritten packet set

Post by LaurenJernstadt »

Just wondering: since the Michigan High School State Quiz Bowl Championships typically had the rule in place of ending the macth after two fifteen halves or until all questions in the packet are read (since there were usually many questions in each packet due to the KMO style), will the pyrimidial style of questions affect this rule? As in, will the rule change to two halves of X amount of questions or still reamin two timed halves with the stipulation that a macth can end once the whole packet set has been read? I've went to two pyramidal toss-up/bonus tournaments in 2016 (SSNCT and the Hicksville Invitational), each running on two separate formats with each having the same amount of questions per packet. SSNCT ran on two 9 minute halves while Hicksville ran on two 12 question halves. Will this new packet style have any affect on when a macth can be declared ended?
Lauren Jernstadt
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Re: POMMSS A HS regular difficulty housewritten packet set

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LaurenJernstadt wrote:Just wondering: since the Michigan High School State Quiz Bowl Championships typically had the rule in place of ending the macth after two fifteen halves or until all questions in the packet are read (since there were usually many questions in each packet due to the KMO style), will the pyrimidial style of questions affect this rule? As in, will the rule change to two halves of X amount of questions or still reamin two timed halves with the stipulation that a macth can end once the whole packet set has been read? I've went to two pyramidal toss-up/bonus tournaments in 2016 (SSNCT and the Hicksville Invitational), each running on two separate formats with each having the same amount of questions per packet. SSNCT ran on two 9 minute halves while Hicksville ran on two 12 question halves. Will this new packet style have any affect on when a macth can be declared ended?
Hi. I'm meeting with a person at the honors college about rules changes the Monday after our spring break. The rules I proposed to him, and that the honors college accepted, are to have to the game end after 20 tossups are read. There will be a scorecheck at half time, and if the game is tied after 20 tossups, winner-take-all tossups will be read. There should also not be a clock because rounds should last around 30 minutes anyway assuming most bonuses are read.
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Re: POMMSS A HS regular difficulty housewritten packet set

Post by LaurenJernstadt »

Also wondering: would it be too much of a burden to inquire about writing up a sample packet so teams can get familiarized with the difficulty of the set and how certain questions are built? I know you referneced BHSAT and Harvard Fall Invitational for difficulty standards, but (I don't know if its just me) a teammate and I found both sets vastly different in terms of difficulty. A sample packet could probably help teams around the state get used to the pyramidal style of good quiz bowl rather than the KMO questions from years past (especially considering that not all teams may be familiar with pyrimidial questions).
Also, I kinda want to thank you for writing the packet for this years tournament. Although my team finished 6th in the Class C/D bracket last year, we lost our first round of the first day by 15 points due to the misleading nature of some of the questions. pyramidal questions are great for rewarding superior teams because they are not misleading for the most part, and they reward exemplery knowledge on a topic. I think this will be a positive change for the tournament in the years to come!
Lauren Jernstadt
Fulton High School Varsity Captain
2016-2017 Quiz Bowl Season
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Re: POMMSS A HS regular difficulty housewritten packet set

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LaurenJernstadt wrote:Also wondering: would it be too much of a burden to inquire about writing up a sample packet so teams can get familiarized with the difficulty of the set and how certain questions are built? I know you referneced BHSAT and Harvard Fall Invitational for difficulty standards, but (I don't know if its just me) a teammate and I found both sets vastly different in terms of difficulty. A sample packet could probably help teams around the state get used to the pyramidal style of good quiz bowl rather than the KMO questions from years past (especially considering that not all teams may be familiar with pyrimidial questions).
Also, I kinda want to thank you for writing the packet for this years tournament. Although my team finished 6th in the Class C/D bracket last year, we lost our first round of the first day by 15 points due to the misleading nature of some of the questions. pyramidal questions are great for rewarding superior teams because they are not misleading for the most part, and they reward exemplery knowledge on a topic. I think this will be a positive change for the tournament in the years to come!
Thank you saying that your team would prefer these questions to KMO. We felt that teams throughout the state would be better rewarded by pyramidal questions. I also lost a close game my senior year in the State Tournament due to bad questions (and me playing stupidly) so I know how it feels to get penalized by poorly written questions.

You bring up a good point about giving teams sample questions but that is pretty low on my priorities at this moment. I'm editing 20 packets of 22/21 and I'm writing a lot of the questions myself. I won't get into the number here but let's just say I've written a lot more than I thought I would. As such, I'm focused on getting 20 packets written and edited before I'm willing to write sample questions. However, I can tell you and all other teams that the questions that are in POMMSS are similar in difficulty to regular season questions written by HSAPQ, past iterations of BHSAT, HFT, etc. I believe the stats from Tiger Bowl reflect that the set was right about where it should be on difficulty as teams averaged just a hair under 15 ppb. Tossups are 6 lines and have power as I mentioned.

If I have time, I could use some leftover questions for a sample half packet or something but I won't get around to doing that for a while. Please PM or email me if you have any more questions about the State Tournament.
Harris Bunker
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Re: POMMSS A HS regular difficulty housewritten packet set

Post by Ciorwrong »

So the 20 packet set is finally done and we are just polishing it. Is there any interest for a 20 packet mirror during the summer or in the fall? Schools are free to use less than 20 packets, and I'd be wiling to let the set--or part of the set-- be used a collegiate novice set for college freshmen who are new to pyramidal quizbowl. I was also thinking of running some summer quizbowl league on Skype for high schoolers on these 20 packets. How popular would this be?

Please email or PM if you are interested and the mirror fee is negotiable.
Harris Bunker
Grosse Pointe North High School '15
Michigan State University '19
UC San Diego Economics 2019 -

at least semi-retired
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