Search found 103 matches

by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Mon Dec 03, 2007 2:29 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TTGT 11 Discussion
Replies: 87
Views: 28744

Re: TTGT 11 Discussion

I defy someone to write a poker theme packet that I wouldn't put up 500+ points on, for example. There's chance of it happening for TRASHionals. (If it happens, I plan on giving away the worst poker-related book I ever had the misfortune to buy as a "prize".) Actually, I was thinking of s...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Fri May 25, 2007 7:50 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: New teams & ACF Fall
Replies: 101
Views: 45377

Tossups are under six lines I just wanted to point out that when people talk about question length in terms of line, they don't often specify font, font size, and margins. For example, taking the first packet, dumping it into Wordperfect, and having 10-point Times New Roman with 1-inch margins gets...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Wed May 23, 2007 2:26 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Google Docs as an editing tool
Replies: 5
Views: 4161

Thanks for the heads-up. Is there any way to password-protect it or restrict access in anyway? Yes, you can restrict people to a read-only access or permission to edit. All you need is a Google account, which I have discovered not everyone has. You can also draft documents and publish to a blog or ...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Mon May 21, 2007 3:21 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: New teams & ACF Fall
Replies: 101
Views: 45377

This is probably going to Matt Weiner curse, but I just may eke out another quizbowl theory post at some point over this. For now, let me just say that tossup difficulty (or the perception of difficulty) isn't just about the ease of the last clues. Not knowing exactly how NAQT chooses their power ma...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Fri May 18, 2007 2:52 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: The distribution of tossup difficulty in a round
Replies: 8
Views: 5605

Re: The distribution of tossup difficulty in a round

In other words: If you want to have 81.5% of tossups answered, then you can probably just keep doing what NAQT and ACF do already, instead of trying to conform to Anthony's proposed distribution in any conscious way. My intent was to be descriptive of the shape of how tossup difficulty tends to be ...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Thu May 17, 2007 6:31 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: The distribution of tossup difficulty in a round
Replies: 8
Views: 5605

What's wrong with 90%+ (ie: close to 100%) tossup conversion? Why should some tossups be written with the goal of only being rarely answered? Isn't the whole point of the pyramid style to have stronger players buzz in sooner - so those strong players wouldn't get to a giveaway clue that most people...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Wed May 16, 2007 8:07 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: The distribution of tossup difficulty in a round
Replies: 8
Views: 5605

The distribution of tossup difficulty in a round

Over the years, I've looked at stats from both academic and non-academic tournaments. I can generally say that for an untimed tournament, the comfort zone for people not complaining about overall tossup difficulty is when more than 80% of tossups (or at least 16 out of 20) are answered by the field....
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Sat May 12, 2007 5:28 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASHionals Discussion
Replies: 111
Views: 49452

With the usual caveat that scoresheets are never 100 percent accurate and sometimes questions get read out of order or marked on the wrong line. Also, I'm not going to open the door to a ton of requests for how many people answered which question. There were 19 rooms on Saturday and 18 on Sunday. I ...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Fri May 04, 2007 6:21 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASHionals Stats Online
Replies: 12
Views: 6742

Anthony, If you need a place to host sqbs stats, e-mail me. Thanks for the offer, but I've already emailed the files to John Kilby, who will put them onto the TRASH website. I am considering redoing the playoff stats. I probably won't redo the prelims. I appear to have all but one scoresheet (last ...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Fri May 04, 2007 1:35 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASHionals Stats Online
Replies: 12
Views: 6742

Some of the scoresheets are in pretty bad and nearly illegible shape. The day two scoresheets are in worse shape than day one. So, I don't blame the staff for having errors.
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Thu May 03, 2007 11:30 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASHionals Stats Online
Replies: 12
Views: 6742

Heh, I just noticed some teams were over 35 P/B.
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Thu May 03, 2007 9:22 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASHionals Stats Online
Replies: 12
Views: 6742

TRASHionals Stats Online

I've put up the team and individual stats on the TRASH blog . Just to head off questions, I don't have access to the official TRASH website, so I haven't personally posted the full QSBS array of stats there. There is a caveat that there are known problems with some of the stats. If you were at the t...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Thu May 03, 2007 8:22 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASHionals Results
Replies: 10
Views: 6071

We never got complete stats from last year's TRASHIONALS (I think all we got last year was a listing of the top 8 teams and a long list of people's average score and that was it) so I never expected any stats this year. I don't understand how some tournaments can give live scoring while TRASH can n...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Tue May 01, 2007 8:36 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASHionals Discussion
Replies: 111
Views: 49452

blah blah blah. It is entirely about quality. Good comedy Central programming should, and often does, come up. Mind of Mencia is NASCAR comedy and should come up about as often as racing comes up at a real trash tournament (read: never.) There is near limitless space for the good programs on tv. Th...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Fri Apr 27, 2007 7:24 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASHionals Discussion
Replies: 111
Views: 49452

The suggestion that college students are less likely to have HBO/Showtime/etc is a sentiment that had some bearing on the answer selection. I don't think it really should. Most people I know own at least one season of an HBO/Showtime TV program and as one poster put it, "to a lesser extent, Bi...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Thu Apr 26, 2007 1:57 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASHionals Discussion
Replies: 111
Views: 49452

Random hits on various stuff which may or may not have been answered by others, but I'm not addressing every single little comment: -Audio questions. There was 1/1 per round. Of these, half were music and half were non-music. There were some attempts to create multi-clue audio tossups as an experime...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Thu Jan 18, 2007 8:03 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: exit, voice and loyalty
Replies: 85
Views: 39309

Good teams need to take one for the circuit and attend more bad tournaments. They don't need to send their best players, but they should send some representation. I'm too lazy to look through tournament results right now to see how much of a problem this really is, but I think it does happen now an...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Thu Jan 18, 2007 3:31 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: exit, voice and loyalty
Replies: 85
Views: 39309

So, assuming that this guy whose book Paul Litvak read is right, what we need to do is either (a) make players feel they have a voice in quizbowl; or (b) make players feel like they are part of the quizbowl community. Can we think up any other ways to do this that wouldn't require editors to sacrif...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Wed Jan 17, 2007 1:38 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: exit, voice and loyalty
Replies: 85
Views: 39309

This may be a whole other discussion, but I've always felt that a 20 tossup game was kind of short. I've always been one for testing breadth of knowledge rather than depth of knowledge. My ideal ACF form would be 24/24, with the extra 4/4 coming from current events and other academic questions outs...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Tue Jan 16, 2007 5:02 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: exit, voice and loyalty
Replies: 85
Views: 39309

From talking to some people, it's not that their entire packets are going unused, it's that specifically their favorite questions written on their niche topics get edited out. (I never really had that much of a problem because it seemed like my packets always were lightly touched, or not at all, eve...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Wed Jan 03, 2007 11:06 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Hypothetical George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush questions
Replies: 3
Views: 2960

Hypothetical George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush questions

I'm not planning on writing a tossup or bonus anytime soon with either of these people as the answer and I want to completely sidestep the question on whether or not someone should write a Bush tossup. If you had a question on either Bush, how would you write the answer line? What would you make the...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Fri Dec 29, 2006 2:20 pm
Forum: Best of the Best
Topic: The Birth of the ACF Player
Replies: 23
Views: 33898

I'm not talking about some plucky band of newbies upsetting the best team in the country at ACF Nationals. I'm talking about a decent team going from maybe a 1-in-30 chance to a 1-in-10 or 1-in-8 chance of beating the 8th or 9th best team in the country on some reasonably acceptable questions below ...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Fri Dec 29, 2006 12:51 pm
Forum: Best of the Best
Topic: The Birth of the ACF Player
Replies: 23
Views: 33898

Experienced players know that you get literature tossups by reading masterplots, not by reading books, because they know that being able to get most tossups on the 2nd or 3rd to last clue (even on the giveaway) is more valuable than being able to get a few of them off the leadin. This depends on wh...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Thu Dec 28, 2006 10:25 pm
Forum: Best of the Best
Topic: The Birth of the ACF Player
Replies: 23
Views: 33898

I am reminded of what I did as a player. I sorted manually several tournaments into categories. I didn't even learn perl. I did it all manually. I had to come up with my own classification system for knowledge to sort questions, influenced by how I view the shape of knowledge. After about a dozen to...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Wed Dec 27, 2006 3:12 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Eaten By Wolves
Replies: 0
Views: 1580

Eaten By Wolves

by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Tue Dec 26, 2006 5:00 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Spelling
Replies: 4
Views: 3425

NAQT might view it as dilatory, depending on the circumstances. Both sets of rules tend to assume that a moderator is competent. I would guess that you are within your rights to ask the moderator to spell a word, and only the most egotistical of moderators would probably refuse such a request if rea...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Tue Dec 26, 2006 4:48 pm
Forum: Best of the Best
Topic: College quizbowl 5 years from now...
Replies: 37
Views: 47536

Paul seems to think that the new generation lacks a core of....quizbowl godfathers, I guess I could call them, who provide leadership and mentoring. Matt seems to think that so long as there is a core of hard workers who single-handedly work to produce a string of quality tournaments to fill a calen...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Sat Dec 23, 2006 2:40 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Worst Question EVER...
Replies: 92
Views: 38559

From the finals 1999 Falcon Fall Classic at Bowling Green State University in Ohio: To tell time, to check the temperature, to turn on and off a videocassette recorder, to track grades, to prepare notes, to communicate long distances and to run satellites. FTP, these are all different functions of w...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Wed Dec 06, 2006 3:07 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Quiz Bowl of the Future (split from NAQT sectionals)
Replies: 14
Views: 7610

I'm telling you. Record Hentzel reading the questions on tape/CD/mp3/whatever. One staffer per room to keep score, run the clock, and handle the tape/cd/mp3 player. It will be our substitute for the Quizbowl of the Future until they finish the HentzelBot 5000 with free Matt Bruce statkeeper with ku...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Wed Dec 06, 2006 12:27 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Quiz Bowl of the Future (split from NAQT sectionals)
Replies: 14
Views: 7610

I'm telling you. Record Hentzel reading the questions on tape/CD/mp3/whatever. One staffer per room to keep score, run the clock, and handle the tape/cd/mp3 player. It will be our substitute for the Quizbowl of the Future until they finish the HentzelBot 5000 with free Matt Bruce statkeeper with kun...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Wed Dec 06, 2006 12:11 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASH regs discussion
Replies: 77
Views: 37382

While I was not active in collegiate quiz bowl between '02 and '06, I have been active as an organizer in lower levels of tournaments and fall into the "would like to write questions" category. However, there's a definite lack of information on how to apply for a writing position in the T...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Tue Dec 05, 2006 7:02 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASH regs discussion
Replies: 77
Views: 37382

Just a couple quick thoughts: There's one aspect of this Airwolf discussion which seems to be lacking to me: The fact that the best trash teams are not usually composed of undergrads, but instead of older, veteran players. Therefore, shouldn't you write some harder questions to appeal to that clien...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Tue Dec 05, 2006 12:58 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASH regs discussion
Replies: 77
Views: 37382

Just for the record, so far as I can tell, there were no actual questions on Airwolf in the 2006 Trash Regionals set. If there were, then either there was some sort of change made after the final printable version was sent out to hosts (since that is the copy I have), or else the question is in that...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Sat Dec 02, 2006 6:18 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASH regs discussion
Replies: 77
Views: 37382

Ignoring the personal attacks for the moment (and, really, if you're going to resort to name-calling, can you at least come up with something more inventive than Wee-Jew) and getting things back to substantive matters, speaking only for myself and not for any organization..... While I agree with Wei...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Sat Dec 02, 2006 5:20 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: SEC tournament?
Replies: 33
Views: 13923

I don't think that's why tournaments in the northeast aren't well attended, though. There are several reasons not to come to New Haven for our tournament, and the two biggest are transportation issues (like Harvard and Dartmouth mentioned) and the fact that this is a packet submission tournament (i...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Sat Dec 02, 2006 3:40 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: SEC tournament?
Replies: 33
Views: 13923

I don't think that's why tournaments in the northeast aren't well attended, though. There are several reasons not to come to New Haven for our tournament, and the two biggest are transportation issues (like Harvard and Dartmouth mentioned) and the fact that this is a packet submission tournament (i...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Mon Nov 27, 2006 2:01 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASH regs discussion
Replies: 77
Views: 37382

The equally subjective sense I got from TRASH regionals was that there was a category called 1975-1990, and a category called 2003-2006, and that's what got asked. The 90s and the really old stuff (which, by the way, is equally accessible or equally inaccessible to all age groups--no reason not to ...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Fri Nov 24, 2006 8:57 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASH regs discussion
Replies: 77
Views: 37382

I think any group in the millions of plays or more is ripe for a tossup answer, so just because SoaD has 20 million and Rolling Stones a "mere" 5 million doesn't seem too significant to me when determining whether an answer is tossup-worthy. There's also the problem of tagging with the Ro...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Fri Nov 24, 2006 1:47 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASH regs discussion
Replies: 77
Views: 37382

Actually, I liked that question, since I got it off the people who were in the failed pilots. One man's trash is another man's treasure... Failed pilots is ok as one leadin clue, it just didn't need to be five clues leading to a hasty difficulty dropoff. I imagine you still would have gotten it had...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Fri Nov 24, 2006 1:05 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASH regs discussion
Replies: 77
Views: 37382

I think we can use last.fm and rateyourmusic as decent gauges of what people are listening to these days...at least internet savvy folk (and why should we worry about the general populace? we don't in academic quiz bowl). Last.fm fans for some of the bands mentioned: I guess I really can write a to...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Wed Nov 22, 2006 9:54 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASH regs discussion
Replies: 77
Views: 37382

Honestly, with indie rock, there are so many indie-popular acts now, like Sigur Ros, Sufjan Stevens, Iron and Wine, and more. It's funny because I know Sufjan Stevens, have vaguely heard of Sigur Ros, and don't know Iron and Wine. Recent music seems so hit-or-miss. I sometimes wonder what would hap...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Wed Nov 22, 2006 3:43 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASH regs discussion
Replies: 77
Views: 37382

At the FOGHAT mirror there were definitely some obscure bands (Guided by Voices, the BoDeans, Citizen King, Saliva, and others). Of course, that's not entirely relevant since this is the TRASH Regionals discussion. Yeah, this could probably be split off into a separate discussion on obscure/non-obs...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Tue Nov 21, 2006 12:24 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASH regs discussion
Replies: 77
Views: 37382

Well, the music was just my personal preference, not necessarily how the questions fell for TRASH. I could make the argument that more music bonuses should be cross-genre to compensate for a more fragmented musical landscape without any true mainstream anymore. But really, that's part of a whole oth...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Tue Nov 21, 2006 2:46 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: TRASH regs discussion
Replies: 77
Views: 37382

Things I was disappointed in: -no South Park or Futurama that I recall (correct me if I'm wrong; I don't remember any) -not enough current sports -not enough classic rock (this is one area where I could compete with 30-40+ year olds, but there weren't any questions except for the Yardbirds) -too mu...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Wed Nov 15, 2006 8:05 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Illinois Open discussion
Replies: 17
Views: 8524

Seth's reply brings me to ask the following question: how much do people actually care about seeing their questions get used? People care most about seeing their questions on their favorite things and don't care too much about questions written to fill out the distribution which they didn't spend m...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Wed Nov 15, 2006 7:57 am
Forum: College area archives
Topic: In the Interest of Time...
Replies: 20
Views: 10226

Using math to compute the increased length in rounds as read by a competent moderator is pointless navel-gazing. In a tournament, you can only go as fast as your slowest moderator, thus you should compute based on how much extra time is needed for the typical slowest reader at a tournament to spit o...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Mon Nov 13, 2006 9:02 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: ACF Fall Commentary
Replies: 44
Views: 18020

Re: ACF Fall Commentary

Let's put ourselves in the mind of a frosh for a moment. Many of these tossups were 8 to 9 lines long in 10 point font. That's long. Please don't get me wrong. Personally I love long questions, and I know that many ACF types feel the same way. But for a freshman to sit while 3-4 lines are read wher...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Mon Nov 13, 2006 8:34 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: Southern Virginia Tournament?
Replies: 43
Views: 18460

It may seem far-fetched, but it used to happen that new teams held new packet submission tournaments with packets written by new teams in situations exactly like this. It feels like something changed where established programs became less inclined to show up to new submission tournaments with unexp...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Wed Oct 18, 2006 9:28 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: The abilities of new players
Replies: 1
Views: 2190

The abilities of new players

Do you agree with these statements? Why or why not? The incoming knowledge base of the average novice college player (let's say one between the 25th and 75th percentile in quizbowl ability in his or her first couple of collegiate tournaments) is roughly the same as what it was five years ago or ten ...
by QuizbowlPostmodernist
Mon Oct 16, 2006 10:30 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: EFT commentary
Replies: 52
Views: 29715

There shouldn't be tossups on William Whyte or on Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart (although Bellah is a good clue for a question on "civil religion") This is a nice example which just proves my argument. A tu on civil religion is bound to be vague unless you can make reference to seve...