The Quizbowl Resource Center

heterodyne

This tournament was fun and well-run. Thanks, UIUC! One note: one of my club-mates who played for a different team said that they were deprived of a game because Chicago D left before the last round, apparently to catch a train. This is, uh, not great of them. The tournament didn't really go abnorm...

heterodyne

The original philosophy editor for this year's NSC ended up doing the philosophy for this year's Chicago Open (quite well, I might add). I guess editing 1/1 isn't really that "major" from my perspective, but for others I'm sure it's a big deal. Just want to clarify some things, since (spoilers!) th...

heterodyne

I'd also like to push back on the idea that "only 14 out of 34 questions on analytic content wouldn't be sufficient" or that 3/2 contemporary analytic content isn't enough, or the general trend of asking a lot of analytic philosophy at many hard tournaments. If we think about the ways that people i...

heterodyne

This set's difficulty was mostly fine. By and large I thought it "got things right" outside of having a bit much bonus variation in the too-hard tail direction and social science / philosophy being a bit more daunting than the other areas - your mileage may vary, but I don't think our team powered ...

heterodyne

I edited the philosophy for this tournament, and am very happy to have received largely positive feedback on it (although I would certainly like to hear from anyone who didn't like it, since it was far from perfect.) This was my first outing editing submitted packets, as well as my first attempt at ...

heterodyne

In addition to the great points other have made above, one reason you might want to use flashcards is if you have trouble regulating your studying. A given number of flashcards is an easily measurable daily benchmark, and will keep you from having to think about study time and efficiency in the same...

heterodyne

Also, from a pragmatic point of view, air travel is going to have to become drastically less common in the near future or we're all screwed -- might as well start adapting to it.

heterodyne

I endorse these posts.

heterodyne

Jakob admitted in his post that this was not proof, nor has he talked to the tournament director. Your commitment to intransigence is really stunning. Have you, perhaps, considered that things might be slightly more complex than "is it conclusive proof or is it not?" Recognizing that the cases are ...

heterodyne

Suggesting that the stats Rama put up are in the same neighborhood of implausiblity as those Jakob cited is idiocy at best and intellectual dishonesty at worst. Yes, I agree that saying Rama cheated would be absurd, but nonetheless people did say he cheated, so I was using it as an example of why a...

heterodyne

Yeah, I think winning ICT versus not even making top bracket at states is dramatically different. Also, did the Andy Watkins story emerge because people looked at the stats again, or did it emerge because NAQT found actual evidence that was a smoking gun? Once again, the stats provided are far more...

heterodyne

More recently, some of the same people that Jakob has cited in his exposé of Shubham have told me and other people that they believed that Ramapriya cheated at the online mirror of Stanford Housewrite. While he did indeed have some potentially suspicious buzzes, and (so I've been told) he's had a "...

heterodyne

I am quite excited for this tournament's existence, and would be happy to either contribute to its completion or play it.

heterodyne

Here are some facts about my teammates that will hopefully make you rank them higher. John Lawrence deals with some of the most overlap of any top scorer in the field. Matthew and I are buzzing on lit, I am buzzing on philosophy, Kai is buzzing on music and art, all of us doing so pretty well (but s...

heterodyne

Essentially, this is the classic "pick 2 out of 3" situation: * Large ACF Nationals, with more than 40 teams * Championship bracket with 10+ teams playing a full round-robin * Tournament of a length that writers and editors can produce at a high quality; that moderators can read without losing thei...

heterodyne

I will be starting an two-year MA program at UChicago's Divinity School. I intend to continue to play.

heterodyne

Does this tournament have a head editor? If not, how do you plan on handling the well-documented issues that arise in the absence of one?

heterodyne

Edit: I've asked a few non-involved science people about this (withholding names) and they unanimously agreed that it was not my place to jump in; obviously, this is a different community with a very defined set of justified beefs. I agree with this; the fact that he cheated at quizbowl is a matter...

heterodyne

OK, but if someone has a friend group who you see only in an extremely limited window of time, one would think that friend group would make a point of socializing after the event that has attracted them. I've said this before, but I think it's bizarre, to say the least, that quizbowl regularly conv...

heterodyne

Why is it like pulling teeth for me to show up to ICT and convince people to leave the tournament at the end of the day and go eat a good dinner and then go out to enjoy a little nightlife in one of the largest cities in America? Isn't that what friends do? I enjoy the Chicago dining and nightlife ...

heterodyne

My point is something like this: it's clearly possible to have equally hard tossups on answerlines that, in themselves, have rather different "familiarity rates." If, as Jacob says, the questions are written with an eye to keeping difficulty consistent and then, after the fact, you decide to move so...

heterodyne

I'm against making the questions harder in the finals, but I'm perfectly fine with shifting some of the harder answerlines in the set to later packets, and we should make sure we're distinguishing between the two when we talk about it.

heterodyne

I think MJ/Jacob's assessment of this set as "nats with generally more accessible answerlines" (apologies if this is too much of a caricature) pretty accurately characterizes my experience playing it. I certainly do not think it qualifies as nats+, at least in those categories where I know enough to...

heterodyne

Why is the history side event being run in the evening if there are no planned side events for Sunday*? I imagine we will all be rather tired after a long day of quizbowl, and running it in the morning seems somewhat better for everyone involved, unless there are extenuating circumstances that I'm u...

heterodyne

In my experience, many (in fact, likely the majority) of buzzes that are "on the first sentence" or "on the first clue" have a buzzpoint somewhere in the second sentence or later, because of parsing time/cautiousness/etc. In addition to the many arguments given elsewhere on these forums for the cont...

heterodyne

Echoing what was said above, I was very excited for some of our newest players to get a chance to compete without the shadow of more experienced teammates. These are promising and motivated players, and it's very sad to see a group of true novices miss out on a tournament win to a team with a combin...

heterodyne

Milhouse wrote: ↑
Fri Feb 22, 2019 12:17 pm
but isnt that not chicago b then

Yes. Chris likely marked it as such, not realizing B would be somewhere else. This will be resolved before the tournament. In the meantime, I am sure you will survive the disarray this confusion has thrown you into.

heterodyne

Is the Chicago B registered here the same Chicago B that's playing this at Hopkins two weeks prior, did Chicago drop their second team from the Hopkins mirror and that post just hasn't been updated, is the second Chicago team at Hopkins actually Chicago C, is "Chicago B" here a questionable open te...

heterodyne

Detailed statistics are useful to any team trying to identify their weaknesses and improve, as well as any team attempting to compare their knowledge base to opponents they were not playing in a given game. Suggesting that their utility for player analysis only applies to the top 20 teams is mislead...

heterodyne

First off, it’s just veritably false that UIUC would have a smaller local staffing pool than Lexington. The population of quizbowlers around Champaign during the summer is so much higher than Lexington that I just don’t understand how the conclusion that UIUC would have less local staff could be ma...

heterodyne

The other bid was from Champaign, Illinois. It was a good bid, but it included less local staff and equivalent travel costs for teams. I also spoke with a few people from Illinois, who told me it would be easier to travel to Lexington than Champaign. Jacob has already commented on the insanity of c...

heterodyne

Since this is something I only announced in this thread, I'll also announce here that the Pop Culture National is not going to debut in 2019. I'll be looking at 2020. Won't CO Trash also be happening in 2020, as a presumably better candidate for the descriptor "open tournament intended to determine...

heterodyne

In addition, I would argue that it's incorrect to refer to Nietzsche as a "nihilist"' philosopher. If anything, he saw the central purpose of his philosophy as combating nihilism. It's important to remember that the point of a quizbowl philosophy question isn't to do philosophical work but to rewar...

heterodyne

As I also mentioned, as far as I know, I don't have privileges to put the stats anywhere else relevant, and I don't know how. If anyone can and wants to put them elsewhere, great. I am a bit confused by this. As far as I can tell, creating a tournament on the DB can be done via a single button and ...

heterodyne

An Economic Ignoramus wrote: ↑
Thu Oct 11, 2018 3:33 pm
I don't want to be the annoying stats guy, but is there any chance stats from this tournament could get posted to the DB soon?

I do mean to be the annoying stats guy, since it's been a few months now.

heterodyne

I'm sorry if I wasn't super clear - I think that *both* the inefficiency and the potential conflict of interest are concerns, the latter more than the former.

heterodyne

I don't really see how these differences make a big difference on the user end. I'm more interested in how this program improves that user experience - you say that it's an additional forum to get feedback, but I'm not sure why that's more helpful than just doing more for the PACE program. I don't t...

heterodyne

How do you see this differing from PACE's writing mentorship program? In your capacity as PACE president, why do you believe community resources are better used on this program than on PACE's?

heterodyne

For the record, I both believe what I'm quoted as saying and think this poll is a good idea and that Jack is doing a service by organizing it.

heterodyne

With regards to Neg5, I'd like to include it in my question database, but as far as I can tell there's no easy way to get a list of every tournament hosted on the site. If there were, I'd certainly be willing to include it. Inspecting the network request, it looks like this url gives you a JSON res...

heterodyne

Quizbowl players like stats. One might even say they like stats too much. This surfaces every so often in a plague of people asking for stats in the thread of a tournament immediately after - or even during - the tournament happening. Because of how annoying that kind of pestering can get, we might ...

heterodyne

While I can't really speak to stuff outside my categories, the history and non-Western content in this set was a lot of fun. In terms of representation, this set laid out a fairly clear vision of where quiz bowl needs to go in the future. Solving the puzzle of how to translate that ethos to regular...

heterodyne

The University of Chicago will be holding our customary pre-CO practice in the South Lounge of the Reynolds Club from 2-5 today. The Reynolds club is located at the southwest corner of 57th and University, 5706 south University. The room is located on the second floor. Take a right from the staircas...

heterodyne

Practice will be in the same room and timeslot, and will be there and then on Mondays and Thursdays for subsequent weeks unless otherwise noted.

heterodyne

Practice will be held today from 7-10 in room 503 in the Reg. If you need to be let in, please message me.

heterodyne

As per usual, the University of Chicago will be hosting summer practices, beginning this week. These practices will be from 7-10 in the Regenstein library, on days to be determined following of a Doodle poll I will be distributing shortly (watch this space). Practice is open to anyone in the area wh...

heterodyne

Hello everyone! You can download this year's conference at the following links. Hour one (even though it's only half an hour due to a recording error) Hour two I hope everyone enjoyed this year's conference. As always, if you have any feedback, you can post here or email me at fredmorlan@gmail.com....

heterodyne

There are two hypotheses for why Matt Bruce remains an NAQT member at the moment. The first hypothesis is that NAQT does not care or understand why these blog posts are a problem. The second hypothesis is that NAQT intends to remove Matt Bruce but can't do it at instant speed - perhaps they need to...

heterodyne

I agree with Mike's post, especially that the best option for everyone is for Matt to step down from NAQT membership. I'd like to add that several of Matt's blog posts seem to suggest his blog was read regularly by NAQT members. They were written in a different time, so I can't say for sure, but I h...

heterodyne

Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) wrote:I think it's very strange that the best Canadian quizbowl player in history is at his peak and you guys come up with rules to exclude him.

wait I thought he graduated after last year

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