Search found 37 matches
- Wed Jan 06, 2010 5:11 am
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Centennial It's Academic Tournament (12/13)
- Replies: 104
- Views: 36942
Re: Centennial It's Academic Tournament (12/13)
My older brother played Quiz Bowl at MIT (at least up until he graduated I think), and even though I didn't play in college, I've been around for a while between my own high school experience and my brothers'. For various reasons, in my case mostly related to time, we were negligibly involved with ...
- Tue May 06, 2008 10:17 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: VCU summer practices open to all
- Replies: 19
- Views: 4497
Re: VCU summer practices open to all
I won't be around, but I think Harvard will have summer practices, likely in conjunction with MIT as was the case last summer. Anyone in Boston is welcome. Send me info; I think Brown's practices will halt as most of our team will be away. But I'll probably have a car and can take what few are left...
- Thu May 01, 2008 9:16 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: ACF nationals discussion
- Replies: 89
- Views: 18454
Re: ACF nationals discussion
I think Reissner-Nordstrom is one of those things that comes up often enough as a clue (to black holes, mostly) I can attest to at least anecdotal evidence of this--after reading this post this morning, we read Illinois Open '06 at practice today, and Reissner-Nordstrom opened a black hole toss-up,...
- Tue Apr 29, 2008 7:49 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
- Replies: 84
- Views: 20188
Re: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
I would also expect that the bottom bracket would have a higher percentage of dead tossups, but the overall conversion percentage for rounds 1-7 was 82% while it was 83% for rounds 8-14. The stratification of teams by ability did not appear to have a net effect on tossup conversion. I don't see why...
- Tue Apr 29, 2008 7:15 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Problems with Packets
- Replies: 32
- Views: 5980
Re: Problems with Packets
Tsukuyomi has shown up at least once as a tossup answer in the past three years with the Uke Mochi clue as a lead-in. I don't know what if anything this proves, but I thought I'd point it out. 12. He angered his sister when he killed Uke Mochi, the goddess of food, after the former sent him to repr...
- Tue Apr 29, 2008 7:08 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
- Replies: 84
- Views: 20188
Re: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
I admit that I gave a mistaken impression of how the ACF quota works, but I don't feel that the essence of the point was wrong: People submit 1/1 mythology for the round, but, on average 83% of the 18 (for instance) rounds will have a mythology questions and 83% will have a mythology bonus. How is ...
- Tue Apr 29, 2008 6:59 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
- Replies: 84
- Views: 20188
Re: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
Well, I'd be careful about using conversion percentage; Maryland negged the Bragi tossup, so it went unanswered, but we would have answered it had we not negged; presumably, that happened in some other rooms as well. Additionally, although I am not very good at mythology (and it's in my self-intere...
- Tue Apr 29, 2008 5:50 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
- Replies: 84
- Views: 20188
Re: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
Can you e-mail NAQT the specifics of this at errata@naqt.com? If I have the year correct, this error has never been reported and fixed in our packets. Needless to say, I didn't feel particularly enthused to pay money for those packets (so this also means I didn't read it and the moderator could hav...
- Tue Apr 29, 2008 5:39 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Problems with Packets
- Replies: 32
- Views: 5980
Re: Problems with Packets
The main problem with this question was it forced me to parse out what exactly they were asking for in the first line. I'm fine with lateral thinking on middle clues, but the first clue should always be about the person or thing being asked directly rather than a second-order clue. There's scores o...
- Tue Apr 29, 2008 1:40 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Problems with Packets
- Replies: 32
- Views: 5980
Re: Problems with Packets
There were also some issues with the myth; again, given the much-less-than-ideal conditions of the editing process, I don't think this year's set necessarily reflects on Matt or anyone else that worked on the myth. It's a little hard to remember things without the set, but I know the tossups on Iza...
- Tue Apr 29, 2008 12:56 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
- Replies: 84
- Views: 20188
Re: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
I guess you can put me down for genuinely believing that categories that can vary across packets is a useful way to define distributions because it allows you to work in increments other than 18/18 (if you have an 18-packet set). NAQT thinks there should be questions about foreign language in its s...
- Tue Apr 29, 2008 12:31 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: ACF nationals discussion
- Replies: 89
- Views: 18454
Re: ACF nationals discussion
The tournament did go kind of long, but I was actually quite surprised by the fact that it didn’t become a drag (at least for me and many of my teammates) by the end. We all had quite a lot of fun, and I’m not sure we were expecting that. Having not actually met almost any of the teams here before (...
- Fri Apr 18, 2008 4:12 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: CCs and the ICT
- Replies: 37
- Views: 6820
Re: CCs and the ICT
I am not really all too worried about the 25th best Division II team missing the ICT. Having space for CCs is a perfectly legitimate goal, and axing the 25th through 32nd best DII teams to meet that goal seems like a reasonable tradeoff. The 25th best Division II team is always going to be a fringe...
- Thu Apr 17, 2008 6:09 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Sub-distribution suggestions
- Replies: 33
- Views: 5251
Re: Sub-distribution suggestions
I hope I'm not posting this twice. Norse myth offers a lot of tossup-worthy answers relative to its size in this proposed distribution, I think. I guess I agree with Seth on treating Norse, Egyptian, Hindu, and Celtic/European mythology equally (though if there's a least among equals here, it's pro...
- Thu Apr 17, 2008 5:38 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Sub-distribution suggestions
- Replies: 33
- Views: 5251
Re: Sub-distribution suggestions
Anyway, here's a counter-proposal with a total of 15/15: 6/6 Classical 1/1 Norse 1/1 Egyptian 1/1 Indian 1/1 European (including Celtic/Arthurian, Eastern, etc.) 1/0 or 0/1 Mesopotamian 1/0 or 0/1 East Asian 1/0 or 0/1 American 3/4 or 4/3 whatever, including mixed-pantheon stuff If space is made fo...
- Thu Apr 17, 2008 3:50 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
- Replies: 84
- Views: 20188
Re: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
My personal distribution (keeping in mind that I know NAQT does want to bias more towards the most widely-known mythologies than I would normally) for 18 packets would probably be more like: 4/4 Classical 2/2 Norse 2/2 Mesopotamian 2/2 Egyptian 2/1 Celtic (the 2/1 and 1/2 are interchangable here an...
- Wed Apr 16, 2008 5:01 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
- Replies: 84
- Views: 20188
Re: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
Hmm, maybe a lot of the SCT myth this year was in the last two rounds for finals that I didn't read then. That's the other issue with the no in-packet distribution. And I know at SCT the rest of my team who were playing didn't even hear all of the 4/3 I got to read because their readers only got th...
- Wed Apr 16, 2008 4:05 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
- Replies: 84
- Views: 20188
Re: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
Yes, there's a fixed quantity of mythology. The ICT contained 9/9 myth, distributed like this: 4/5 classical 1/1 Norse 1/1 Egyptian 1/1 Mesopotamian 1/1 American 1/0 East Asian That's 1/1 myth in every two packets, with a roughly even split between classical and everything else. "Should there ...
- Wed Apr 16, 2008 3:28 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
- Replies: 84
- Views: 20188
Re: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
I would be more likely to play if RMP received its own distribution I don't understand this. Why do we care how things are categorized? I'm pretty sure religion, myth and philosophy all get fixed numbers of questions in SCT/ICT sets. Are you saying you want to see more of each? I agree with you on ...
- Tue Apr 15, 2008 9:01 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
- Replies: 84
- Views: 20188
Re: NAQT's Post-ICT Survey
-The conflation of mythology with literature. Who advocates this? Why not have a true RMP distribution? And why not have a more extensive non-western myth distribution, as most other tournaments do? Quoted for Truth. Every year on these surveys, I've selected the "Drastically Increase" (o...
- Thu Mar 06, 2008 2:52 am
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Pronunciation question
- Replies: 24
- Views: 6255
Re: Pronunciation question
Within the Altaic language family, Kazakhstan's name is pronounced Qozoqistan (or other spelling variants) in the Oghuz (Turkmen, Azeri, Turkish) and Karluk (Uzbek, etc.) groups. Therefore saying it as four syllables should be perfectly fine-as a Turkish speaker I'm inclined personally to add in th...
- Thu Mar 06, 2008 1:42 am
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Pronunciation question
- Replies: 24
- Views: 6255
Re: Pronunciation question
So I've come to accept that correct/precise pronunciation is not necessary to demonstrate "knowledge" for the purpose of quizbowl. But where do you draw the line? Is knowing the consonants + number of syllables enough to demonstrate "knowledge"? To me, this standard seems utterl...
- Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:42 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: College quizbowl 4 years from now...
- Replies: 17
- Views: 4266
Re: College quizbowl 4 years from now...
Neither of these approaches is necessarily a bad system. What you could do is a have a "packet plus" approach, where everyone writes a single packet and then edits one area of their specialty. This can also iron out any biases in the packets that might be present. For example, for EFT, De...
- Thu Feb 28, 2008 4:33 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: College quizbowl 4 years from now...
- Replies: 17
- Views: 4266
Re: College quizbowl 4 years from now...
Let me offer some suggestions on how this can be done. I would encourage everyone in the club to work on writing a single packet over the summer. Three months should be plenty of time for just about anyone to put together a decent packet, and then come September, you can get together with people an...
- Thu Feb 28, 2008 3:45 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: College quizbowl 4 years from now...
- Replies: 17
- Views: 4266
Re: College quizbowl 4 years from now...
Beyond that, there seem to be young teams who know lots of things and have pretty good reputations for question-writing, like MIT, Harvard, Drake, and Dartmouth, who have untapped editing potential. I think one initiative that should be undertaken is to have these teams (and more) start running hou...
- Fri Feb 22, 2008 7:14 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: POLL
- Replies: 38
- Views: 9542
Interesting curiousity; if you take out Chris' ballot, then MIT remains at 11. However, then Chicago, Maryland, and Brown are all tied at exactly 240 points. Yup, Chris's wasn't the one missing MIT though, so it isn't a surprise that we stay at 11 if you remove it. If you take out Chiego's ballot, ...
- Fri Feb 22, 2008 6:56 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: POLL
- Replies: 38
- Views: 9542
- Fri Feb 15, 2008 7:07 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: NAQT SCT Results and ICT Invitations
- Replies: 52
- Views: 10952
This can probably be split off into a new thread, but Mark, you have a good point. On one hand, it can be very disheartening for new players to play against Jason Keller and co (in fact, its disheartening for anyone); at the same time, you don't want to baby your freshman into solely playing novice...
- Fri Feb 15, 2008 1:30 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: NAQT SCT Results and ICT Invitations
- Replies: 52
- Views: 10952
- Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:47 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: NAQT SCT Results and ICT Invitations
- Replies: 52
- Views: 10952
stuff about Brandeis having experience As far as experience on Brandeis's team goes, we had one freshman, two sophomores, and myself (a senior). One of the sophomores did not play last year at SCT, while the other did (as did I), but since we did not qualify last year, it's irrelevant. We hosted SC...
- Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:27 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: NAQT SCT Results and ICT Invitations
- Replies: 52
- Views: 10952
Wow, MIT was certainly not expecting this, especially not the DII team. That's pretty amazing, but ironically, it actually could be pretty bad for some of our DII players, particularly our frosh--does being on the waitlist disqualify the whole team from DII next year? Being waitlisted does not, but...
- Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:19 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: NAQT SCT Results and ICT Invitations
- Replies: 52
- Views: 10952
Wow, MIT was certainly not expecting this, especially not the DII team. That's pretty amazing, but ironically, it actually could be pretty bad for some of our DII players, particularly our frosh--does being on the waitlist disqualify the whole team from DII next year? Being waitlisted does not, but...
- Thu Feb 14, 2008 6:59 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: NAQT SCT Results and ICT Invitations
- Replies: 52
- Views: 10952
Wow, MIT was certainly not expecting this, especially not the DII team. That's pretty amazing, but ironically, it actually could be pretty bad for some of our DII players, particularly our frosh--does being on the waitlist disqualify the whole team from DII next year? We initially had two DII teams ...
- Tue Feb 12, 2008 9:26 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Cardinal Classic Discussion
- Replies: 46
- Views: 9471
It may be taught at Maryland, but I wouldn't know since AI isn't a required course here. Anyways, relatively advanced topics from upper level courses are typically not the greatest things to introduce into the canon at non-national events. I'm all for expanding the CS canon, but I personally don't ...
- Tue Feb 12, 2008 9:05 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Cardinal Classic Discussion
- Replies: 46
- Views: 9471
(incidentally, what makes you think everyone in CS takes a machine learning course?). It's not a machine learning course--it's an Intro AI course, and a requirement to graduate for those on the CS side of EECS at MIT. If the (admittedly incorrect) assumption that it was typical was correct, then it...
- Tue Feb 12, 2008 8:37 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Cardinal Classic Discussion
- Replies: 46
- Views: 9471
Hi, Did anyone actually get the AdaBoost question? It went dead in every game situation that I've heard of so far. My own opinion is that AdaBoost is too obscure and I wish you wouldn't write tossups on it again. MaS Ironically, due to the discussion here, I think that the topic has gained addition...
- Tue Feb 12, 2008 7:30 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Cardinal Classic Discussion
- Replies: 46
- Views: 9471
For any set of weak-classifiers, this process is guaranteed to converge to a solution that classifies at least as well as the best classifier. Developed by Yoav Freund and Robert Schapire, this meta-algorithm involves repeatedly reclassifying the training data with the best of the set of original c...