The Quizbowl Resource Center

Wartortullian

I’m sure this has most likely been mentioned at some point or another on the forums before, but I’m not sure how people can keep up with players/teams outside of their local circuit. There are stats to look at, but you wouldn’t be able to know what a given player specializes in. I’ve found that’s e...

Wartortullian

QBNotify now lists online tournaments, and you can enable notifications for new ones! Apologies for not rolling this out sooner. Apparently, passing "Online" (and other random words) to the Google geocoding API turns up an unincorporated community in southern KS. If any of you had notifica...

Wartortullian

As an indirect competitor, I say let capitalism/competition reign, and good luck! Note that NAQT wouldn't be what it is today if its founders 25 years ago hadn't put a lot of time and effort (and probably, money) behind their belief that they could do better than existing quizbowl organizations. Th...

Wartortullian

I can't endorse this post enough. I'm currently taking a break from the main quizbowl Discord (and most other online spaces) for mental health reasons. While I was still a regular member there, it was easy to get into intense, deeply personal political arguments without realizing that you were argui...

Wartortullian

Would it be possible for the HSQB admin to execute search-and-replace on submitted stat reports, per the request of someone who's changed their name? I've run some tests on stat files, and assuming their name is at least two words, both of which are capitalized normally and only contain alphanumeric...

Wartortullian

Has ACF considered extending 2021 Nats eligibility for graduating students who qualified the previous year? I completely understand this decision, but as someone who worked very hard to build a team that could qualify for Nats, I'm quite annoyed that we won't get to play a national championship toge...

Wartortullian

Could I see the neutrino tossup and the LCAO/MO/perturbation bonus?

Wartortullian

Speaking for myself only, I get pretty bummed when I can't hear a math/CS/applied tossup because its place has been taken up by ES/astro, despite those two subjects having fewer college majors than the rest of the other science, and I imagine many other players feel the same way. I agree that it's ...

Wartortullian

I'll be starting a physics PhD at Yale this fall, and I certainly plan to continue playing!

Wartortullian

Thanks, Chris, these are all very useful perspectives. These seem to be the most-unique issues to Quizbowl out West (both at the HS and Collegiate levels), so here are some ideas: Is there a way that more Western tournaments could do 2-3 events in one weekend? It seems like this might help schools g...

Wartortullian

I could probably have been more clear about this in my original post: this wouldn't just help in the West, but all over quizbowl. We'd probably see massively expanded field sizes at low dfficulties as many regionally-focused masters universities start fielding teams, even if they would be unlikely t...

Wartortullian

...or, "The Need for Top-Down Efforts in Quizbowl Expansion" Recently, there's been a lot of discussion in the Discord on the barriers expanding college quizbowl in various regions. The goal of this post is to outline the structural factors opposing quizbowl expansion in the western US, an...

Wartortullian

Partial progress can be a motivation. Maybe the leaders aren't visible, but the second bracket is. (This is why it is important that nationals distinguish lower bracket teams as well as upper bracket teams.) But this isn't really satisfactory. A goal of second bracket is fun when it's a stepping st...

Wartortullian

For me, this makes college quizbowl a lot more like the NBA, with high school quizbowl being something akin to college basketball. The NBA is much, much more challenging, and you have players with a wider range of experience. I find this to be a feature of the college game, not a bug. It's enjoyabl...

Wartortullian

So, our club in a period of leadership transition, and due to the many non-quizbowl commitments in my life, I really don't have any time to devote to quizbowl logistics and administration anymore. This semester has been kind of a mess, and things like funding applications are already falling through...

Wartortullian

We should also think about if we can use the Ken Jennings tweet about qb, although it has the undesirable property of saying “play qb instead of learning to code,” which is not the best message we’d want to convey. I mean, as someone who learned more useful things from quizbowl than from an entire ...

Wartortullian

After spending a lot of time looking at D-values, reading arguments about DII corrections and PPB clamping, and spilling ink untold on the forums and Discord, there's something I've started to consider: Why not just use PPB? Given the massive amount of edge cases involved in deriving a D-value formu...

Wartortullian

My worst experiences with enforcing this rule are actually with younger players. At least college players are used to having to "lateral" their way through a question, and are much better at keeping multiple (ACF/NAQT) formats straight in their heads. Anecdotally, at least on a sample of ...

Wartortullian

Chiming in to say that this proposal is good. It was moot for our site this year, since BYU retained one of their DI players and would not have qualified anyway, but the same thing could very well have happened again.

Wartortullian

In general, I greatly enjoyed the science, and my problems with the set as a whole are limited to what Iain posted in the other thread. That said, I a couple questions could have done a better job of fleshing out clues/answerlines: 1. The bonus on numerically solving differential equations should ha...

Wartortullian

Edit: Also, I thought some of the quantitative questions were a bit weird. For ex., asking for a "magic angle" of 1.05 degrees, or the precise number of bandits in a Chinese gang (118? forget the exact question. but maybe that one is OK, if it's well-known.) There seemed to be a few quest...

Wartortullian

Fucitol wrote: ↑Fri Jan 17, 2020 10:19 pm I am very ready to get thoroughly embarrassed on what is supposed to be one of my better categories.

Wartortullian

Yes, this should happen!

Wartortullian

I personally think that the inclusion of literature has a lot of value, even if people aren't buzzing on works they've necessarily read. A familiarity with the breadth of the literature "canon" (if such a thing can be said to exist) is very useful in understanding both literary and histori...

Wartortullian

I'm not particularly good and just in this to have fun, but if you have a spare spot on your team, I can get a few science buzzes. There's also a very small chance I may have to cancel depending on when the tournament gets scheduled and whether some family obligations overlap with my moving out for ...

Wartortullian

I'll be collecting packets for this. Please email them to [email protected], or PM them to me via Facebook or Discord.

Wartortullian

This is probably the result of Protobowl's archive being extremely old. Quizbowl science writing has changed a lot over the past decade, so you'll be better off studying from the archive and QuizDB . If you want an interactive reader, you can try QuizBug2 , which pulls from the QuizDB database (thou...

Wartortullian

I heartily endorse everything that Conor, Mike, and Will have said. In addition, the lack of any site announcements outside the east coast is pretty damn annoying when the first mirror is in less than 2 months (though as Conor said, I wouldn't blame midwest hosts for being hesitant when the Columbia...

Wartortullian

I'm pleased to announce that for the firth year in a row, CU Boulder will host the Rocky Mountain site of NAQT's Sectional Championship Tournament. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at matthew.s.[email protected].edu Location and schedule: The tournament will be held on Saturday, Fe...

Wartortullian

It has occurred to me that it's been a really long time since I've seen "The Knot". It was a 16-player buzzer system, obstinately for four teams of four, but with all 16 cables coming out of a central console. The cables naturally became tangled up in a way that seemed to defy 3-dimension...

Wartortullian

5. The integral of a “white” process that follows this distribution gives a Wiener process. The convolution of two distributions gives this distribution if and only if this distribution is the inputs according to the Cochran decomposition theorem. Interpolating with a process based on this distribu...

Wartortullian

Not sure how true this still is, but when I was in high school, regularly reading The Economist would get you a ton of early buzzes on CE.

Wartortullian

bdavery wrote: ↑Sat Nov 30, 2019 12:31 pm Use the Fact Mountain apps for American/British/Russian literature to get a really good start.

I'm sure it'll be deleted in due time, but new players: disregard this advice. Bryce Avery runs a shitty question writing company and keeps hawking his overpriced apps on this board.

Wartortullian

Before I start, I'd like to clarify that, although I'm more in the "stick with it" camp, my goal for this reply is not to convince you to keep doing quizbowl. Quizbowl isn't for everyone, and that's okay! I'd simply like to offer my perspective to help clarify some of your arguments. 1. It...

Wartortullian

I generally agree with Harris, in that the packet submission requirements of ACF Fall place too much of a burden on weak teams, especially when combined with the high registration fee. That said, I think there's some benefit to requiring packets: sometimes, freshmen sometimes need an extra push to t...

Wartortullian

I was reading some rounds since the site was short-staffed, and I felt very, very uncomfortable saying the word "coon" in the vaudeville bonus. I don't think this word should be used in questions at all, much like I wouldn't use the n-word. If I remember correctly, the Native American lit...

Wartortullian

Thanks for coming, everyone!

Congratulations to Colorado State, who beat Kansas State in the second round of an advantaged final, and to CSU's Henry Cafaro, who led the field in scoring with a full 114 PPG.

Stats are up.

Wartortullian

The Abydos Helicopter wrote: ↑Wed Oct 30, 2019 1:20 pm Is there any chance of an online mirror of this? I unfortunately cannot go to the UK site, but would love to play this tournament if possible.

Seconding this. I don't have the time or budget to fly to another tournament this semester, but I would absolutely be down to plan an online mirror.

Wartortullian

Finally got around to finishing this post; sorry for the delay! The editors did a fantastic job with this tournament, and it seemed to have no systemic issues overall. The difficulty fluctuations were relatively minor, and I generally felt like I missed things due to gaps in my knowledge rather than...

Wartortullian

I don't know to what extent these clubs get support from their university to help fund such trips, but it's not feasible for a Colorado team to drive 12 hours to Boise for a tournament. (Matt comes because he grew up here, and he can see his family and his old school.) We get school funding, but th...

Wartortullian

It is my pleasure to announce the Colorado Fall Kickoff Tournament on September 28, 2019, hosted by the University of Colorado Boulder. At this tournament, teams will be able to qualify for both HSNCT and NSC. Question set: This tournament will use NAQT IS-185A. Location and schedule: The tournament...

Wartortullian

I am pleased to announce that the Mountain West site of 2019 ACF Fall will be held at the University of Colorado Boulder on Saturday, November 2, 2019. The tournament will take place in the Duane physics building, with team check-in beginning at 8:30 AM in room G1B25 and gameplay beginning at 9:00 A...

Wartortullian

Regarding PTT, moderators should also hold down the push to talk button a little bit after they stop talking. If you release the button right away, sometimes the end of the sentence is cut off. I've had this problem a couple of times. Teams should use push-to-talk, but for moderators, I think it's ...

Wartortullian

I wonder if there are some potential reforms such as: 1. More strongly encouraging good packet submissions, with perhaps the definition of "good" being slightly relaxed for ACF Fall, by the use of discounts. Having edited packet submission tournaments, you get a sense of what packets are ...

Wartortullian

This was an immensely fun set, and I'd like to thank the writers for coming up with such creative questions.

Wartortullian

Banned Tiny Toon Adventures Episode wrote: ↑Sun Jul 07, 2019 6:35 pm I'd love to score -7.5 ppg at this

Wartortullian

Hour 1 transcript: Aaron Rosenberg: Alright everyone, welcome on behalf of PACE to the 2019 David Riley Coaches Conference, er, Players and Coaches Conference. My name's Aaron, and on behalf of PACE, thank you all for coming. We do this every year for the improvement of quizbowl and the community, ...

Wartortullian

Where is "The Judge" buzzer system in this? I feel like it's the best choice for a school hoping to make a solid, long-term investment in a buzzer system. The Judge is a great buzzer system, but everyone I know who's tried to order one in the past couple years has had a hard time getting ...

Wartortullian

Maths Wizard (Tau is King!) wrote: ↑Tue Jun 11, 2019 4:43 pm Question: if someone attended the all-star game but wanted to "come to" the discord to listen, say, just to see how other people do on the pack and because it was a good time, would that be allowed?

As a mod of the QB discord: stuff like this is totally fine!

Wartortullian

Strongly agree with Rahul and Will here. A $0 deadline would be extremely helpful.

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