The Quizbowl Resource Center

Speaking for myself only, I get pretty bummed when I can't hear a math/CS/applied tossup because its place has been taken up by ES/astro, despite those two subjects having fewer college majors than the rest of the other science, and I imagine many other players feel the same way. I agree that it's ...

I think the main problem is that 1/1 other science is not large enough to ask all of the categories that get put in it. Statistics has to compete for space with pure math, astronomy, computer science, and the Earth sciences. As a writer, I've found 1.5/1.5 sufficient for lower levels, but that has ...

This whole thing reads out to me like a bad April Fools joke. Someone was suspicious that there were cheaters in the tournament but decided to tell people who had no association with the tournament at all rather than the TD or any of the tournament staff (who would have almost certainly relayed the ...

Many people who have stopped playing nationals, or even quiz bowl, are still involved in quiz bowl. They lead clubs, grow circuits, and write questions. They are creating a new generation of quiz bowl that is not restricted to elite academics. Young players are not going to accept the dogma that qu...

Incidentally, I also wrote the machine learning tossup. I was careful to choose clues that pointed specifically to the phrase "machine learning" (including a lead-in saying it was a two-word phrase and describing its context of coinage), but it seems those were changed in editing. I'm sad...

I read through the science in this set and have thoughts on two questions: tossup on "three" in math: the object clued in the Hopf fibration and Poincare conjecture clues is a 3-sphere topologically, but it's considered a 4-sphere geometrically (as it is a hypersphere embedded in 4D euclid...

I wasn't thrilled about the answerline choice of contrast in MRI, especially since it seemed to be categorized as the chemistry tossup for the packet. I'd like to see that tossup, please. In addition, the lead-in to the speciation question was the subject of a protest that wasn't adjudicated, so I'...

I'll also add that an answer of black hole merger doesn't really make any sense, since there's no way that such an event could generate gamma rays or any form of EM radiation. The Aug 2017 detection was unique in that it was the first such example of both light and gravitational waves being detected...

Thanks to everyone who helped write this set, it was a blast to play! I enjoyed hearing novel answerlines and learning about new things, especially in science. After re-reading through the first 8 packets, here are my comments regarding specific questions: In the NAND gate tossup, the clue "Jus...

I wrote the TU on the sinc function in the hope that it would be a breath of fresh air to engineers or scientists that aren't familiar with hard theoretical math concepts. Only the first two sentences refer to concepts in signals theory; the third sentence is something about the limit of the sinc fu...

Hi, I wanted to point out an issue I had with a mythology tossup on rain: the third sentence basically asks "Zeus visited Danae in the form of what substance?" but treats the "golden shower" as gold-colored rainwater instead of actual gold, making the answer of "gold" i...

Did the question about artists named Jeff accept any of the last names of the artists? It seems silly for someone to know Koons, not know his first name, and be robbed of points. How is it being robbed of points when you're playing a tossup that repeatedly says "this first name" and you b...

Did the question about artists named Jeff accept any of the last names of the artists? It seems silly for someone to know Koons, not know his first name, and be robbed of points.

For the chair conformation question, I was prompted multiple times and was surprised that the answerline was that specific. I believe the Hilbert's problems question mentioned the Riemann hypothesis before it was clear the question wasn't looking for the Millennium Prize problems. I negged on the se...