The Quizbowl Resource Center

Mnemosyne

I like the subject polls, and I think they will be a little better/more accurate next year. The player poll would be horrible if there was no poll from the previous year to modify, and now that we have "base polls" for all the other categories, these should improve too. I look forward to a year of h...

Mnemosyne

Some comments on players I've seen this year: I don't know much about the science landscape, but the unheralded Rohan Narayan from Delaware impressed me a lot at PIANO. He had 4 science powers, a bunch of solid 10s, plenty of 30s on bonuses, all while playing next to Eric Wolfsberg, who has non-triv...

Mnemosyne

What is the planned time for the lunch break? Last year I think "lunch" was at 2:30 or 3pm? If it will be at the same time, I think it should be announced so we can pack actual meals to eat between rounds instead of just snacks.

Mnemosyne

Will there be side events (such as Guerrilla History, Eyes that Do Not See) at this tournament? I see people referencing "Guerrilla History at JHU", but I haven't seen anyone from Hopkins confirm this is happening.

Mnemosyne

Are people generally satisfied with the results of the strength of schedule formula? I was surprised that the Swarthmore site teams had a lower SoS than other top teams, considering the depth at the top of the field. I haven't paid attention to the years of discourse about these things, so maybe I d...

Mnemosyne

You might want to make sure all the spreadsheets are view-only. I think I changed (and unchanged) something while trying to ctrl + f.

Mnemosyne

I put together a rough tier list of generalists and specialists, since I find it very hard to decide between the two groups when making my ballot. In general, I tried to avoid overlap as much as possible, except where it was unavoidable or instructive to prove a point (i.e. Kai/Alston/Jaimie have a...

Mnemosyne

Did anyone record the log of the discussion? (and could send it to me) I tried to catch it on my computer during our practice but I lost connection.

Mnemosyne

I 100% endorse Alex's post above. We've gone through a similar alliance-forming process in Louisiana over the last 6 years. In 2012, there were two (legitimate) NAQT tournaments in the state. This year there were 18. When I first graduated high school, I was super ambitious and thought we could just...

Mnemosyne

Team Formation spreadsheet is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KnYTFBXfTuq84SG6nZ1-5qsCdufldIC2xgcDpTUovH4/edit#gid=0 Caleb Kendrick (and Itamar) and I need two one more player s . We'd like to write a quality packet for the first deadline on May 13th. We don't plan on doing well, so no...

Mnemosyne

I had a lot of fun playing this set. Thanks to everyone for writing it.

Mnemosyne

Here are a few issues I encountered that probably aren't a huge deal. For the volva tossup, I buzzed in with "female giant" when the clues were describing Hyndla. In the books in which I've read the story, she's just referred to as a giantess (even though I see now wikipedia just says volva). I feel...

Mnemosyne

Our team (Aaron, Rein, me) has an open spot after our fourth player dropped. Contact one of us if interested. Playing shorthanded isn't fun.

Edit: Seth Ebner has joined us.

Mnemosyne

I do a lot of these things at tournaments, even though I hate when other people do them, and I usually feel guilty afterwards when I'm not in locked-in-tournament-mode anymore. In my experience a lot of players in the "very competitive" category do this, and we should all be less obnoxious in genera...

Mnemosyne

Can we get a field update, or any sort of confirmation that this tournament is actually happening? Did anyone sign up this time?

Mnemosyne

There are currently 3 teams registered in the OP and two formed on the spreadsheet. Does that mean there are currently 5 teams planning to play this tournament? (I don't know who UMBC is) Also, Virginia is not able to play this as a full team, so I (and probably Vasa?) are looking to join an open te...

Mnemosyne

* These sentiments are those of a sophomore with limited college reg-level exposure. I thought overall the tossups of this set were more difficult than last year's. One packet that included Charles Bukowski as an answerline stuck out to me as a particular difficult round (4 tossups went dead). In t...

Mnemosyne

Will Alston made this post after EFT: Have a variety of skill levels at your playtest mirrors, and ask some teams to break up if you need to achieve this. This year we didn't have a good ability to test for things that were too hard because every team in the field was scoring above 20 PPB. Will ther...

Mnemosyne

mozzarella wrote:Hey, UVA, can you let me know the mirror date ASAP since AU club funds are weird this year

The UVA mirror is 10/14. Thread is here: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewto ... =8&t=20235

Mnemosyne

sgoebel wrote:Full results for the Tal Atkins Memorial Quiz Bowl tournament are available here. Coppell placed 1st, C.E Byrd A placed 2nd, West Monroe A placed 3rd, and Dutchtown A placed 4th.

Just to be sure, the format for this tournament was 4 games and then a single-elimination playoff?

Mnemosyne

Here is the postseason poll. It would probably be useful for people to post about who is leaving, joining, etc. 1. Michigan A 2. Maryland 3. Yale 4. Stanford 5. Chicago A 6. Columbia 7. Northwestern 8. Penn 9. Berkeley A 10. Oxford A 11. Minnesota 12. Ohio State 13. Chicago B 14. WUSTL 15. McGill 16...

Mnemosyne

I think your best option for something exciting will be a southern EFT mirror. There should be a mirror within a few hours drive, and there will probably be a mix of teams at an appropriate skill level (you won't have to worry about getting beaten down by really good college teams all day), assuming...

Mnemosyne

I wonder if there's a specialist vs. generalist element to the debate as well. I don't mind long questions on the categories I play, but it's pretty miserable to sit through 12+ really long questions that I have no intention of buzzing on. If you can buzz in almost every subject, then you might not ...

Mnemosyne

Will ties for the playoff spots be broken by PPG?

Mnemosyne

Do you have a rough breakdown of the number of answer lines by country of origin? I only heard 8.5 packets, so I don't want to criticize, but I can only think of 3 pure US lit tossup answer lines I heard. I was frustrated by one round that I recall having 3 100% British answer lines. I like the idea...

Mnemosyne

This is an announcement for Louisiana Tech's mirror of Terrapin on 4/8/17. More information about the set can be found here: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=18768 This is an open tournament. Any person who has not heard the set can play. This tournament will take place in a buil...

Mnemosyne

At SCT this weekend, Oklahoma lost to Rice in Round 1.

Oklahoma won out to finish 8-1. Rice lost out to finish 1-8.

Mnemosyne

CPiGuy wrote:
Ike wrote:I'll PM you with specifics. I would post the specific instances of this story here, but the set is not clear -- so I'll definitely do that once Terrapin is clear.

Ike
I *think* Terrapin is clear now?

Nope. LA/TX mirror is a work in progress

Mnemosyne

brookealicelowe wrote:I am new to forming a team in Louisiana. Is there a place where I can sign up to learn of the tournament dates?

Thanks,
Brooke Lowe
Stanley High School

A schedule of Louisiana tournament dates can be found here: http://www.louisianaquizbowl.org/schedule/

Mnemosyne

Middle school teams can compete at high school tournaments. There are high school tournaments every few weeks throughout the state. A list of high school tournaments and their dates can be found here: http://www.louisianaquizbowl.org/schedule/ There aren't really middle school tournaments (or teams)...

Mnemosyne

We played a 10 team round robin. LSU A defeated Tulane in the first game of an advantaged final. Note that LSU A defeated LSU B in a coin flip after they were both pulled over on the way to the tournament and chose to coin flip their match against each other instead of delay the tournament significa...

Mnemosyne

Louisiana Tech will be hosting a mirror of NAQT's Collegiate Novice set 158C or 161AC (the easier one) on Saturday, September 24, 2016 on our campus in Ruston, LA. The tournament will begin at 9:30 AM in Davison Hall, with registration running from 9 AM to 9:25 AM. The tournament should be concluded...

Mnemosyne

We'll ride last year's solid athletics momentum and proclaim LA Tech to be the Conference USA favorite

Mnemosyne

Any update on this?

Mnemosyne

I just ran across this YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZzHxk_TPOStgPtqRZ6KzmkUQBQ8TSWVX It's an introduction to a huge portion of the theoretical math canon. I only watched one video, but based on the one I saw, watching the whole thing looks like it would be an awesome way...

Mnemosyne

A starting point is to look at all the fundamental undergraduate math courses after calculus (linear algebra, abstract algebra, discrete math/graph theory, real analysis, point-set topology, probability/stats, and a few others), and learn (and understand) the basic definitions from each chapter in (...

Mnemosyne

The only thing I want to complain about is the "Gods of Flooding of the Nile" question. I haven't seen the full question text but I'll explain how it played out. First clue: some god of this phenomenon that I don't know... so we're probably looking for some sort of domain that someone can be a god o...

Mnemosyne

The Louisiana Tech team appears to have transitioned into a team of Nick Collins + Caleb Kendrick + Victor Prieto* + potential future teammate

*edited to add

Mnemosyne

2 things about the derivative question: At the risk of looking like an idiot, it claims the derivative of sqrt(x) is 1/sqrt(x), which is wrong. I also think that question has a huge difficulty cliff from exterior derivative to Rolle's theorem. I might have a huge gap in my knowledge, but that questi...

Mnemosyne

That's an absolutely stupid policy. Asking people in the South to travel hundreds of miles or play on Skype instead of letting somebody host a mirror can't possibly be based on anything other than complete indifference to the concerns of an entire region of the country. Why would you assess the pot...

Mnemosyne

Just noticed that there will be an NAQT State Championship in both Arkansas and Mississippi this year. Cool. (And not Louisiana as of now - not cool.)

Mnemosyne

I think the issue can be fixed simply by adding a few words to the second sentence that include the word "metric." That would stop people from saying metric (which is a better wrong answer than norm) and hopefully guide them to the right answer. Maybe something like "The Euclidean function of this k...

Mnemosyne

There was a math bonus where the answer was "distance." Should "norm" have been acceptable? The other math people there agreed with me that it should have, but I never got to reread the full question. I recall it saying "the Euclidean this ...", which is begging for someone to say norm.

Mnemosyne

Unofficial tournament results: Billy Beyer/Kevin Marshall led after 10 rounds at 9-1 ULL + Dargan Ware was at 8-2 Tulane 7-3 LA Tech 6-4 The tournament was called because it was after 7 and I think Tulane didn't want to stay any longer. Mr. Sundberg plans to force Billy and Kevin into a Skype final ...

Mnemosyne

luigibeatsmario wrote:Final Stats

These are just the lunch stats again.

Mnemosyne

I didn't notice this live, but apparently the Parmagianino bonus gives the alternate answer with St. Jerome in it (needs a "do not read" warning), then gives the title for Vision of St. Jerome in the second part, then asks for Jerome for the third part, by describing Vision of St. Jerome.

Mnemosyne

The Culhwch and Olwen bonus says both "this story" and "this man". I said Culhwch and was thankfully prompted, but that could cause trouble somewhere.

Mnemosyne

Stats: http://www.hsquizbowl.org/db/tournament ... standings/

Mnemosyne

Congratulations to Tulane A for winning Louisiana Tech's VCU Novice mirror! Tulane A went 9-1, followed by Louisiana Tech B at 7-3, clearing the field in a double round robin. Tech C's Jeb Houston was the top individual scorer with 61.0 PPG, followed by Tech A's Alex Gras with 60.50 PPG. Thanks to e...

Mnemosyne

Any update on a southern mirror?

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