Search found 196 matches
- Mon Feb 01, 2021 11:05 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: 2021 ACF Regionals - General Discussion & Thanks
- Replies: 8
- Views: 2011
Re: 2021 ACF Regionals - General Discussion & Thanks
This was a great set. The answer lines were all very playable. I have a terrible memory for tournaments, but I think not that long ago hearing "Description acceptable" elicited groans, as people steeled themselves for a morass of prompts and guesswork. There was virtually none of that here...
- Tue Nov 10, 2020 12:34 am
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: 2020 ACF Winter - General Discussion and Thanks
- Replies: 38
- Views: 4028
Re: 2020 ACF Winter - General Discussion and Thanks
I'm sorry about the Scotland question; although the description of Maeshowe did exclude Newgrange with other details, I probably should not have used the solstice as a clue since that is a common feature of many passage tombs in the British Isles. To be clear, I don't know if the clue was actually ...
- Mon Nov 09, 2020 5:58 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: 2020 ACF Winter - General Discussion and Thanks
- Replies: 38
- Views: 4028
Re: 2020 ACF Winter - General Discussion and Thanks
For reference, this is the tossup: The claim that this concept is the “sensorium of God” was attacked as heretical because it implied that the essence of God contains parts. Immanuel Kant claimed that this concept’s corresponding mathematical science is the [emphasize] analogue of mechanics, not ar...
- Mon Nov 09, 2020 2:06 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: 2020 ACF Winter - General Discussion and Thanks
- Replies: 38
- Views: 4028
Re: 2020 ACF Winter - General Discussion and Thanks
I agree with Will Alston about the "freshness" of the questions. (I was particularly excited to see Old Europe coming up after hearing about it on Patrick Wyman's podcast .) I think the editors made it more difficult than Fall the correct way: have a good number of questions that wouldn't ...
- Mon Apr 20, 2020 1:04 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: Punishment for cheating in online quizbowl
- Replies: 7
- Views: 2329
Re: Punishment for cheating in online quizbowl
How are you determining if someone cheated or not? This to me is the bigger problem--there are very, very few admitted cheating cases out there, but lots of "suspected" ones. What's the standard of evidence that will be used to determine if there was cheating or not? Would something akin ...
- Tue Mar 17, 2020 11:45 am
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: College Nationals and Its Problems
- Replies: 132
- Views: 16910
Re: College Nationals and Its Problems
Re: grad students playing -- Some of the concerns about unfairness seem to be that people who are more experienced tend to be better and that experience is something that can be acquired passively, just by showing up. I think the first point is undeniable: all else equal, someone who has played twe...
- Sun Mar 08, 2020 2:55 am
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: Answerline Selection Analysis
- Replies: 7
- Views: 2230
Re: Answerline Selection Analysis
I suspect a lot of people would object to this today (and in fact, plenty of people objected to it then!). It's just not relevant to why you would care about these people. To use an apt phrase Clark Smith invoked when talking about some iffy clues in WORKSHOP, these facts are "trivially true,&...
- Mon Jan 27, 2020 12:45 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: 2020 ACF Regionals: Specific Questions and Errata
- Replies: 66
- Views: 8132
Re: 2020 ACF Regionals: Specific Questions and Errata
I'm sorry. I don't think this question worked as well as I thought it would. I wanted to write a question focused on contemporary spiritualism and new religious movements. When I wrote this question initially, the leadin was entirely about Edzard Ernst, a prominent scholar and critic of alternative...
- Mon Jan 27, 2020 1:21 am
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: 2020 ACF Regionals Thanks and General Discussion
- Replies: 23
- Views: 4741
Re: 2020 ACF Regionals Thanks and General Discussion
Thanks to the editors for this tournament. I agree with Jacob Reed on the difficulty; I thought it was very well managed. There were a few instances where a healthy chunk of the question was really hard, and the difficulty was "saved" by the answer line being the type of thing that most pe...
- Mon Jan 27, 2020 12:35 am
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: 2020 ACF Regionals: Specific Questions and Errata
- Replies: 66
- Views: 8132
Re: 2020 ACF Regionals: Specific Questions and Errata
I would very much like to second this request. I think one of the earlier clues mentioned 1 Corinthians 12, but the chapter is known for discussing a bunch of spiritual gifts. Trying to figure out which one is nigh impossible. Sort of related to this: many of the religion questions directly tied to...
- Thu Aug 08, 2019 1:48 am
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: CO 2019 Discussion
- Replies: 48
- Views: 17321
Re: CO 2019 Discussion
Thanks to the editors and staff for a great tournament! Between this, Age of Empires, and Scattergories, it was impressive how consistently good everything was, from the proofreading (at least from the player's point of view) to the content of the questions, to the skill of the teams, to the logisti...
- Sun Apr 21, 2019 12:23 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: Player Poll 2019
- Replies: 92
- Views: 40075
Re: Player Poll 2019
Science Man here giving my thoughts on Science People: Geoff is #1, and it's not close. Look at his PIANO and ICT stats if you don't believe me--dude is a monster with high potential to become the GOAT in undergrad. I never see people play enough to have something smart to say in these threads but ...
- Sat Apr 20, 2019 5:43 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: ACF Nationals 2019 discussion: Question Content
- Replies: 90
- Views: 35920
Re: ACF Nationals 2019 discussion: Question Content
I was intending to post here the same time I did in the logistics thread and for some reason never got around to it. Mostly I just wanted to thank the editors for an excellent tournament. I was especially impressed that so many people on the editing team were relative newcomers, at least in terms of...
- Wed Apr 17, 2019 8:02 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: ACF Nationals 2019 discussion: Logistics/format
- Replies: 37
- Views: 18206
Re: ACF Nationals 2019 discussion: Logistics/format
]Rule F.2*, as presented in its entirety at the staff meeting, requires that there be no unnatural pauses in amending an answer, so the situation as written-up would not allow the player to gain any advantage. If the player answers and the moderator pauses to rule on the answer, then the player has...
- Tue Apr 16, 2019 11:09 am
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: ACF Nationals 2019 discussion: Logistics/format
- Replies: 37
- Views: 18206
Re: ACF Nationals 2019 discussion: Logistics/format
I don't know enough about tournament direction or production to say anything about the format, but I was really impressed with the overall logistics of the tournament. Conor already said most of this, but the general tournament infrastructure (working buzzers set up on time, schedules printed in rea...
- Tue Apr 16, 2019 12:29 am
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: Where are you going next year? (Collegiate 2019)
- Replies: 37
- Views: 21817
Re: Where are you going next year? (Collegiate 2019)
It may be simpler to just start a "Post here if you are not going to Illinois for school next year (Collegiate 2019)" thread.
- Fri Mar 15, 2019 7:32 pm
- Forum: Community Discussion
- Topic: How We Treat Each Other: 2019
- Replies: 32
- Views: 19349
Re: How We Treat Each Other: 2019
This is a good observation. I'll add that, in the context of tournament discussions, people choosing to vent in private has the unfortunate effect of removing discussion from the public sphere so that the editors of the tournament, or other editors and writers who are interested in people's feedbac...
- Mon Jan 28, 2019 8:45 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: 2019 ACF Regionals Thanks and General Discussion
- Replies: 43
- Views: 15818
Re: 2019 ACF Regionals Thanks and General Discussion
There was something odd going on with the Uranus tossup. Rob Carson took down a note so maybe it's been fixed already. I think "beliefs," "jobs," and more than any question I can remember in recent memory, whatever that nonsense about making mistakes when you speak and saying the...
- Wed Aug 08, 2018 10:25 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Open NASAT Mirror @ UMN, 8/18
- Replies: 8
- Views: 5331
Re: Open NASAT Mirror @ UMN, 8/18
Would there be any interest in Mike's film tournament, maybe right after NASAT? I don't know how many will have seen it at Illinois already.
- Fri Jul 27, 2018 8:09 pm
- Forum: 2018 CO Trash discussion
- Topic: Thanks and general discussion
- Replies: 11
- Views: 9793
Re: Thanks and general discussion
A quick survey reveals nearly all Americans currently reside in Minnesota, so this makes sense.Cheynem wrote:There seemed to be a fair amount of Minnesota content in the set as well (but perhaps I'm exaggerating).
- Wed Jul 25, 2018 9:58 am
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: Chicago Open 2018 Thanks and Discussion
- Replies: 37
- Views: 14330
Re: Chicago Open 2018 Thanks and Discussion
This was a great tournament. It was also quite long. I'm not sure if questions were longer or maybe just more were answered near the end, but the recent CO goal of finishing before 9 seems a worthwhile one. Logistically, everything ran pretty smoothly. Thank you to everyone who staffed, especially t...
- Thu May 03, 2018 11:12 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: Smoothing Out Your Set
- Replies: 18
- Views: 9222
Re: Smoothing Out Your Set
Also, I reversed your grievous error from 2013 of throwing out a David Harvey tossup in favor of a dry geography tossup on Tanzania by keeping a Harvey submission and writing zero dry tossups on African countries. A tossup which was, at least in our room, answered much earlier than the Tanzania tos...
- Tue May 01, 2018 9:48 am
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: Smoothing Out Your Set
- Replies: 18
- Views: 9222
Re: Smoothing Out Your Set
Could you explain a little more why this is a problem? Intuitively it seems true that there shouldn't be any sudden jumps in the tournament, but as long as everyone hears the same questions I'm not sure I can articulate why. Sorry, to be clear, are you asking why I think the "two tournament&qu...
- Mon Apr 30, 2018 10:34 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: Smoothing Out Your Set
- Replies: 18
- Views: 9222
Re: Smoothing Out Your Set
Where it becomes a problem is only if one half of the tournament seems to systematically reward one skill / knowledge base, while the other half rewards another. This is especially true of any format in which some of the games played in the first half are carried over (and this is almost every curr...
- Wed Apr 25, 2018 7:05 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: Player Poll 2018: Delightfully Devilish
- Replies: 76
- Views: 32273
Re: Player Poll 2018: Delightfully Devilish
Given quiz bowl's newfound love of cooperative game theory, something that may be close to you what Andrew is describing is the Shapley value. (No link because I'm on a phone, but it's on Wikipedia.) The idea is to consider all the possible coalitions that can be formed without a given player, seein...
- Tue Apr 24, 2018 4:06 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: ACF Nationals logistics and seeding discussion
- Replies: 23
- Views: 9119
Re: ACF Nationals discussion
In general, I thought the Saturday logistics were a real problem—being told that we were eating lunch so incredibly late to avoid waiting half an hour, and then waiting something like an hour and a half for tiebreakers wasn't my favorite thing in the world. (I am aware that I had a personal stake i...
- Mon Apr 23, 2018 11:18 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: ACF Nationals discussion
- Replies: 121
- Views: 50160
Re: ACF Nationals discussion
I typically tend to be very activist in my editing, and I was in this tournament as well, but having not previously edited a tournament that had so many editor packets, I don't think I accounted for just how much idea selection plays a role in a tournament's feel. If we had another month to edit th...
- Sat Apr 07, 2018 11:56 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: How to make college quizbowl less insular
- Replies: 22
- Views: 10674
Re: How to make college quizbowl less insular
Generally, I don't think "make everyone else's friend" is really being proposed. But like Bruce said, a good way to break insularity is to just talk to people. Doesn't have to be much. I'll never forget when I was an undergrad and our team got beaten badly by one of the great early 2000s ...
- Sat Apr 07, 2018 2:33 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: How to make college quizbowl less insular
- Replies: 22
- Views: 10674
Re: How to make college quizbowl less insular
When the original poll was posted, I voted "Too insular" and "Lack of professionalism." With this post I'd like to offer my opinion on why I think college quizbowl is too insular, as someone who hasn't really been involved in college quizbowl for that long and whose time (and, u...
- Sat Mar 17, 2018 7:30 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Historature at ICT
- Replies: 33
- Views: 13068
Re: Historature at ICT
Would anyone be interested in putting together a collective food order of some sort? I would like this to begin by 8PM so that we can finish by midnight or so. There will be ten packets, with 24 tossup questions and zero bonuses per packet, and I'd like to give people a chance to play as many of tn...
- Mon Mar 12, 2018 11:02 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: The looming crisis
- Replies: 25
- Views: 10841
Re: The looming crisis
EDIT: Even messaging Vasa last year saying "hey, I could write some questions for EMT" was terrifying to me. Actively soliciting writers is the right thing to do, and even then it's scary to put yourself out there! I was actually going to post a thread about how great collegiate quiz bowl...
- Thu Mar 08, 2018 11:02 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: The Dominance of Thought
- Replies: 14
- Views: 6232
Re: The Dominance of Thought
I should note that I really like the creation of a "Thought" category. I think John makes some good points about trying to explore different topics in a more user-friendly manner. To be clear, my issue is more of the general feeling that thought-based questions tend to dominate hard tourn...
- Mon Mar 05, 2018 1:36 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: CMST: Specific question discussion
- Replies: 74
- Views: 12941
Re: CMST: Specific question discussion
How did other people feel about the epsilon-delta tossup? I knew most of the clues in the second half but was utterly thrown off by "this statement" (which I guess I took to mean "this result"). Is there any pronoun that's even more neutral? Maybe "this method" or &quo...
- Mon Mar 05, 2018 10:29 am
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: CMST: General Discussion
- Replies: 30
- Views: 7351
Re: CMST: General Discussion
[*] As Erik said, a fair number of history questions on peripheral topics like pirates, gangs, criminals etc. This is writing history like the mythology questions that give that category a bad name (basically "pop" version of an "academic" subject). [*] A "core" almost...
- Mon Mar 05, 2018 12:52 am
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: CMST: Errata
- Replies: 18
- Views: 4366
Re: CMST: Errata
The tossup on "National Security Council" calls it an "agency" throughout. That seems misleading, at best, though admittedly I'd be hard-pressed to think of a good filler word that doesn't immediately give the game away.
- Sun Mar 04, 2018 11:32 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: CMST: General Discussion
- Replies: 30
- Views: 7351
Re: CMST: General Discussion
Thanks to Berkeley and friends for writing this. I've been thinking lately about how much average collegiate quiz bowl quality has improved since I began playing in 2009, which wasn't even really the Dark Ages of good quiz bowl. It's encouraging to see house sets produced by a group of relatively ne...
- Sun Feb 11, 2018 10:00 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: Managing Tournament Staff
- Replies: 20
- Views: 8588
Re: Managing Tournament Staff
(5) The reality of time. Our experience of time may be highly subjective, but the actual duration of five seconds is not. You, as TD, may feel stupid explaining to a room of adults (or near-adults) how to count off five seconds. But your discomfort is outweighed by the distress of your players when...
- Fri Jan 26, 2018 12:20 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: 2018 ACF Regs Specific Questions and Errors
- Replies: 63
- Views: 13669
Re: Specific Questions and Errors
I may be misremembering but I think the question on "money supply" mentioned some clues on deriving the demand function for money, which is a little confusing.
- Sun Sep 17, 2017 12:44 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: New Collegiate Writers
- Replies: 9
- Views: 4448
Re: New Collegiate Writers
ments either by application or by open interest (within reason). You could do it NAQT-style where someone submits [n] questions, although I'd imagine it wouldn't matter if they were "clean" or not. As an example of the latter, see the same done in the high school section . I think ACF Fal...
- Tue Aug 08, 2017 4:22 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Michigan Side Event Weekend (August 19th-20th)
- Replies: 104
- Views: 43365
Re: Michigan Side Event Weekend (August 19th-20th)
If anyone is interested in splitting a hotel room, I booked one at the Red Roof Inn in Ann Arbor on 3505 South State Street from Friday to Sunday. It sleeps up to four.
- Mon Jun 05, 2017 10:53 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: Limits of the "Back to the Classroom" Movement
- Replies: 33
- Views: 10460
Re: Limits of the "Back to the Classroom" Movement
I look at the primal scream therapy in the same way. Yes, this is not something people who study psychology on a formal basis will encounter. But it's something from the "history of psychology" that an intellectually curious person might encounter (or someone whose psychological studies d...
- Sun May 21, 2017 2:50 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Chicago Open 2017 - July 22nd
- Replies: 60
- Views: 33981
Re: Chicago Open 2017 - July 22nd
To whom should packets be sent?
EDIT: I have been told through shady back channels to send it to Ike. Can you confirm your email is still the one that begins "sep..." and ends "...mail.com?"
EDIT: Never mind, I just saw the button on your forum account.
EDIT: I have been told through shady back channels to send it to Ike. Can you confirm your email is still the one that begins "sep..." and ends "...mail.com?"
EDIT: Never mind, I just saw the button on your forum account.
- Fri Apr 28, 2017 1:09 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: ACF Nationals Thanks and Discussion
- Replies: 70
- Views: 34195
Re: ACF Nationals Thanks and Discussion
The other categories, as people have pointed out, were also extremely good. I think the social science in this tournament is the type of thing that we want to see more of, but a lot of it wasn't what I've learned how to study for. This lead to a lot of the questions going pretty late to whoever fig...
- Mon Apr 24, 2017 2:38 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: ACF Nationals Thanks and Discussion
- Replies: 70
- Views: 34195
Re: ACF Nationals Thanks and Discussion
We were constrained by the number of teams that wanted to come (and the number of packets). We had a 3-stage format for 42 teams. As the field dropped to 40 teams, I drew up a 2-stage limited single-bye schedule for the tournament. (A format I will write up at some point.) Is there any thing in par...
- Mon Apr 24, 2017 2:25 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: ACF Nationals Thanks and Discussion
- Replies: 70
- Views: 34195
Re: ACF Nationals Thanks and Discussion
A final note on distribution: I told Matt and Evan that I conceived of this as a tournament with "something for everybody," and accordingly did my best to write questions spanning the full historical and generic range of literature and classical music. I thought the tournament did an exce...
- Sun Mar 05, 2017 2:16 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime General Discussion
- Replies: 53
- Views: 10147
Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime General Discussion
I don't know where the 1990's tossup went, but I buzzed on political history clues. Oh, that may be true. I remember there being something about Harrod's but I guess it was more about the owner's involvement in politics. As an aside, the question of whether some categories were more difficult than ...
- Sun Mar 05, 2017 2:03 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime General Discussion
- Replies: 53
- Views: 10147
Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime General Discussion
Some of the more "miscellaneous" questions in academic categories had the related problem of being on gettable answerlines who don't have middle clues either period (Theo Van Gogh—great, you have to guess at some point!) or within the "theme" (Mussolini—you couldn't add a single...
- Wed Mar 01, 2017 11:27 am
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime General Discussion
- Replies: 53
- Views: 10147
Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime General Discussion
I enjoyed this tournament. I agree with Jerry that some things were very difficult and some were pretty easy, given the field and stated difficulty. The writing could have benefited from another read through. There were multiple times where moderators had to guess missing words, re-order clauses, or...
- Mon Feb 27, 2017 12:07 am
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion
- Replies: 90
- Views: 12641
Re: 2017 (This) Tournament is a Crime Specific Discussion
I tried several approaches to this subject matter and the decade answer line was the best way I could incorporate all of the important details and events (I'd already done guitar for EFT, and I couldn't come up with enough material on a single individual / song / U.S. state / year / what-have-you)....
- Fri Feb 24, 2017 1:03 pm
- Forum: Collegiate Discussion
- Topic: περί μυθολογιῶν/De Mythologia
- Replies: 17
- Views: 7582
Re: περί μυθολογιῶν/De Mythologia
To provide an analogy: Suppose that a player writes a senior thesis on Proust. That probably entails far more engagement with Proust than any other person in quizbowl has experienced. Now, I suspect that Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life is not a must-read for all Proust scholars (m...