Search found 18 matches

by gustavus.adolphus
Wed Jun 18, 2014 12:10 am
Forum: Best of the Best
Topic: Making Interesting Geography Questions
Replies: 17
Views: 19343

Re: Making Interesting Geography Questions

I preface my comment here with the caveat that I'm not a geo player, and therefore my ideas on this aren't exactly the most well-formed. - conspicuous landmarks (sculptures, buildings, parks, monuments, cosmodromes, etc. -- making sure not to step on the visual art distribution too hard) - travel / ...
by gustavus.adolphus
Wed Jun 18, 2014 12:10 am
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Making Interesting Geography Questions
Replies: 17
Views: 14539

Re: Making Interesting Geography Questions

I preface my comment here with the caveat that I'm not a geo player, and therefore my ideas on this aren't exactly the most well-formed. - conspicuous landmarks (sculptures, buildings, parks, monuments, cosmodromes, etc. -- making sure not to step on the visual art distribution too hard) - travel / ...
by gustavus.adolphus
Sun Jun 08, 2014 2:33 pm
Forum: New High School Teams
Topic: Over-Buzzing Problem
Replies: 13
Views: 14662

Re: Over-Buzzing Problem

What my team does in practice (we had a pretty big problem with this too) is anyone who negged in practice would go to the neg jail. They would stay there for 2 or 3 tossups, and couldn't participate in the following questions. Not only does this disincentive them from negging because they get bore...
by gustavus.adolphus
Mon Jun 02, 2014 9:30 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Power Matching
Replies: 17
Views: 6119

Re: Power Matching

The teams are seeded so that the elite teams don't play each other in the morning, but the seeds are purposely hidden so that no team is labelled as the 272nd best team in the tournament before it begins. How do you think that philosophy differs/is superior to NHBB's releasing all the seedings befo...
by gustavus.adolphus
Tue May 27, 2014 3:06 pm
Forum: College area archives
Topic: HSNCT Saturday Night Sideshow: Modern World Tournament
Replies: 25
Views: 11417

Re: HSNCT Saturday Night Sideshow: Modern World Tournament

Go on....
A lot of the criticism of this set is on the Post-NSC Mirror thread, particularly the 2nd and 3rd pages.

http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewto ... =8&t=15550
by gustavus.adolphus
Wed Apr 30, 2014 8:09 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: NHBB & USGO Nationals Set Thread
Replies: 33
Views: 12552

Re: NHBB & USGO Nationals Set Thread

OK, In my opinion they are not. I think the line between not being important, and being important is actually pretty slim, and really in the eye of the beholder. In the set, there was a ton of questions about so-called "real" history, that probably has less modern-world impact than the ac...
by gustavus.adolphus
Wed Apr 30, 2014 12:21 am
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: NHBB & USGO Nationals Set Thread
Replies: 33
Views: 12552

Re: NHBB & USGO Nationals Set Thread

Yeah, the only (very pedantic and minor flaw) that I noticed in the packet was Question #20 in Bee Round #6). It read, A person involved in this effort was also responsible for introducing myxoma virus to curb the Australian rabbit population and was Frank Fenner. The unit in charge of this goal was...
by gustavus.adolphus
Mon Apr 28, 2014 11:28 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: NHBB Nationals thread
Replies: 28
Views: 14702

Re: NHBB Nationals thread

Despite not having attended a national-level Quizbowl tournament before, I thought this year's NHBB was really well run. The questions seemed almost perfect, save for a tossup with the answer being "elimination of smallpox", not having totally unique clues, "rinderpest". The timi...
by gustavus.adolphus
Sun Apr 20, 2014 1:01 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: How to Study American History
Replies: 21
Views: 9654

Re: How to Study American History

Whatever you think about the ideological merits of Zinn's take on history, it is unorthodox, and therefore I believe needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Particularly considering the book is 800 pages long, it doesn't really work as a crash-course in American history, as the first post asked for.
by gustavus.adolphus
Sun Apr 20, 2014 12:54 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: How to Study American History
Replies: 21
Views: 9654

Re: How to Study American History

A People's History, by Howard Zinn, covers plenty.]
Yeah, I don't think such an ideologically-obsessed book is really a good way of learning about American history.
by gustavus.adolphus
Sat Apr 19, 2014 2:08 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: How to Study American History
Replies: 21
Views: 9654

Re: How to Study American History

Something that I've been doing (no idea how effective it is) is to go through my older sibling's APUSH prep boook. It's by no means the best way of doing it, but it at least gives me some familiarity with the names.
by gustavus.adolphus
Fri Apr 18, 2014 3:32 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: quizbowl and technology: a proposal
Replies: 43
Views: 114876

Re: quizbowl and technology: a proposal

Yeah, conversion between document formats seems to be mostly a solved problem. The program just needs to convert it to RTF or some other format, and then http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ or something like it, can deal with it.
by gustavus.adolphus
Thu Apr 17, 2014 6:01 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Field Set for 2014 National History Bowl / Updated Seeds
Replies: 19
Views: 6751

Re: Field Set for 2014 National History Bowl / Updated Seeds

Yeah, from my (very limited) experience, it seems that first crack on the lightning rounds doesn't provide a big advantage. I think that's because the difficulty of a given set of questions can vary so much based on what's actually in the questions, not just the field.
by gustavus.adolphus
Wed Apr 16, 2014 11:23 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: quizbowl and technology: a proposal
Replies: 43
Views: 114876

Re: quizbowl and technology: a proposal

All of the work that Jeffery and others have put into thinking about this seems really great, and I'd love to help wherever I can. However, I think I should mention the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect , as that seems (to me at least) to be a potential problem with the project. Of c...
by gustavus.adolphus
Wed Apr 16, 2014 9:50 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: quizbowl and technology: a proposal
Replies: 43
Views: 114876

Re: quizbowl and technology: a proposal

Going with NoSQL just because its native data model is JSON seems presumptuous to me, particularly when one could just traverse the database (Postgres or whatever) to create the JSON on the fly.
by gustavus.adolphus
Wed Apr 09, 2014 3:05 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: How much do you study?
Replies: 10
Views: 3839

Re: How much do you study?

During the QB season, I go over packets and read books for the explicit reason of Quizbowl, for 3-4 hours weekly. Most of that though, is just reading (or reading Masterplots) of books for lit questions. Over the last few weeks I've been studying much, much more for NHBB. At least 6 hours per week, ...
by gustavus.adolphus
Mon Mar 31, 2014 11:29 am
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Madden Rankings Updated for NHBB Nationals (3/30)
Replies: 4
Views: 2310

Re: Madden Rankings Updated for NHBB Nationals (3/30)

How is the Madden Score calculated? Just by PPG, or is there weighting for a easier field or what?
by gustavus.adolphus
Mon Mar 10, 2014 7:50 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: What's the matter with Kansas?
Replies: 65
Views: 48471

Re: What's the matter with Kansas?

Sorry for resurrecting this.

Yeah, I'm a freshman at Collegiate in Wichita, and we're definitely up for attending new and interesting QB tournaments in the area, assuming that it complies with KSHAA rules.

Also, I want to say thanks to NHBB as my first real pyramidal tournament.