Search found 191 matches
- Sun Jul 09, 2006 8:30 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Question Editing Database 1.00
- Replies: 2
- Views: 2538
- Tue Jul 04, 2006 1:46 am
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Question Editing Database 1.00
- Replies: 2
- Views: 2538
Question Editing Database 1.00
Hello, all. It is after many a great struggle that I can finally introduce QED: Question Editing Database, Version 1.00. I quickly realized that Aegis Questions (a company I'm a part of) needed a good way to organize all the questions our members were writing. Word documents just wouldn't cut it, an...
- Fri Jun 30, 2006 2:50 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Pronunciation
- Replies: 67
- Views: 33524
- Thu Jun 29, 2006 1:46 am
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Pronunciation
- Replies: 67
- Views: 33524
In case anyone was interested, it's PAH-k'l-BEL, though puh-KELL-bell might be somewhat acceptable as well. I don't think music scholars ever agree with any other pronunciations. As to rulings, just about anything with the right consonants in the right order should be acceptable, even if hearing &qu...
- Mon Jun 26, 2006 12:29 am
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: How to conduct tryouts?
- Replies: 18
- Views: 8920
At Auburn, I don't think we ever really have enough people to warrant a try-out, and we have the magnet gifted program for Rockford. I find that highly ironic. Same with New Trier, which has 4,000 students, a good number of which are smart. This year we had two juniors on the team, and only three s...
- Tue Jun 20, 2006 6:44 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Editing of posts is disabled
- Replies: 21
- Views: 10932
- Thu Jun 15, 2006 6:11 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Survey: Computer Science in Quiz Bowl
- Replies: 16
- Views: 8117
I basically agree with Dan. Questions on general CS material (sorting algorithms, Turing, etc) should definitely be among the theoretical math asked at tournaments. But the bonus at NAQT asking for Java keywords pissed me off because of the in-depth knowledge of a specific language that it required....
- Thu Jun 15, 2006 5:58 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: The 2006 Panasonic thread
- Replies: 54
- Views: 28569
For those who were wondering, Illinois didn't buzz in wrong a single time in the entire match where we scored 487 points. They said they think that's the highest score they've seen in the nineteen years of the PAC, but nobody got back to us with any confirmation. (The two dead fish and banana, incid...
- Thu Jun 08, 2006 7:21 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: high school - college retention
- Replies: 72
- Views: 31084
As a high school player (gasp! venturing onto college threads!) I agree with the comments about question difficulty: when I look at college packets, I am often clueless. On the other hand, it helps to hear people say that it gets easier with perseverance, and I can attest to a similar phenomenon bet...
- Thu Jun 08, 2006 7:09 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Writing Questions for Practice
- Replies: 10
- Views: 5189
As far as Wikipedia goes, I think its excellent for gathering topics of interest and getting some relatively deep information on them. The best part of it is the hyperlinking within documents. I can go for hours on Wikipedia just jumping from article to article by those links. If I were writing que...
- Thu Jun 08, 2006 7:07 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Worst Powers/Early Buzzes
- Replies: 47
- Views: 23906
- Thu Jun 08, 2006 5:02 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Writing Questions for Practice
- Replies: 10
- Views: 5189
- Thu Jun 08, 2006 12:13 am
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Illinois 05-06
- Replies: 742
- Views: 308068
Oak Park-River Forest will be good, and ought to go to more tournaments. They are graduating nobody, and they have some extremely good math students (Andy and John) who compete for ARML. Hence prediction #1: OPRF will continue to capitalize more than anybody else on IHSA's emphasis on math computati...
- Wed Jun 07, 2006 11:38 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: 2006 NAQT HSNCT
- Replies: 309
- Views: 144840
I, for one, despite being a pitiful Illinoisian (on Reinstein's team, in fact) think that NAQT's lead-ins are perfectly good. I think that not announcing categories is a good thing in some regards. Players don't have know the general direction of the question too early, and if the question is writte...
- Sun Jun 04, 2006 3:14 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: 2006 NAQT HSNCT
- Replies: 309
- Views: 144840
- Wed May 24, 2006 2:05 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Quizbowl tournament database, alpha version
- Replies: 10
- Views: 12018
I apologize if I missed this somewhere, but what format are the pre-parsed questions in? How do you detect which field is which, and how are you deciding any other markup? I'm thinking that I'll probably need to make separate fields for the question and answer, and have dropdown menus to select cate...
- Sun May 21, 2006 11:10 pm
- Forum: College area archives
- Topic: Quizbowl tournament database, alpha version
- Replies: 10
- Views: 12018
Grapesmoker, this is quite impressive. I myself have been trying to write a similar program in VB (see the documentation at http://www.aegisquestions.com/help.html ). The focus of my program is formatting questions and creating packets from those sets of questions. It's almost feature-complete right...
- Wed May 17, 2006 11:04 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Aegis Questions
- Replies: 20
- Views: 9872
Wow, I didn't expect this thread to suddenly become 16 posts long. Anyway, here are my two cents about the matter. My disclaimer is that these are not necessarily the same as Aegis's two cents, but are going to be darn close. All short questions are not equally bad. However, the short questions I ha...
- Thu Apr 27, 2006 10:29 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Right but Wrong Answers
- Replies: 16
- Views: 7370
- Sun Mar 05, 2006 12:31 am
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Bad moderating
- Replies: 60
- Views: 29074
- Sat Feb 25, 2006 6:21 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Illinois 05-06
- Replies: 742
- Views: 308068
- Fri Feb 24, 2006 7:00 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Aegis Questions
- Replies: 20
- Views: 9872
Aegis Questions
Announcing the creation of Aegis Questions, a new quiz bowl question-writing company! Formed to improve the quality of questions, especially in Illinois, we guarantee rich pyramidal questions rather than short buzzer-races. Aegis founding members include Matt Laird, Carlo Angiuli, Nick Matchen, Brad...
- Tue Feb 07, 2006 10:49 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Tournament database feedback
- Replies: 6
- Views: 4288
- Mon Jan 23, 2006 9:56 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Variable question difficulty
- Replies: 10
- Views: 4500
The problem is mostly alleviated if questions are not too short, and are pyramidal enough. You can write hard questions if they have obvious last clues; they don't degrade into buzzer races because the player with more knowledge would have buzzed in earlier. And if it takes until the giveaway, well,...
- Sat Jan 14, 2006 11:59 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Prompts
- Replies: 14
- Views: 7024
I like the way that the NAQT rules put it: prompt on answers that indicate exact but ambiguous knowledge of the answer, so that the player gives exact and unambiguous knowledge. In fact, all of Section I (Correct Answers) in the NAQT rules are very reasoned and (IMHO) should be the way all quiz bowl...
- Mon Dec 26, 2005 2:09 am
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Hosed or not hosed...
- Replies: 51
- Views: 25650
I think any question that causes players to ring in with an answer that is most probable and gets them wrong is a hose. I disagree with this -- I think that on occasion it is perfectly fine (and even good) to write questions knowing that most people would buzz in with a particular incorrect answer....
- Fri Dec 16, 2005 12:04 am
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Bad moderating
- Replies: 60
- Views: 29074
- Sat Dec 10, 2005 4:07 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: New Trier (IL) Varsity Tournament 12/17
- Replies: 25
- Views: 12194
In fact, the 20th team is now free! Contact us at [email protected] to claim your prize.
- Sat Dec 03, 2005 7:37 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Illinois 05-06
- Replies: 742
- Views: 308068
- Sun Nov 20, 2005 5:06 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Bad Negs
- Replies: 826
- Views: 353531
The only way you could be rightfully mad about it if it came after the TU is if it came RIGHT after the end of the TU. It's not that bad if he doesn't buzz in with Bartok before you if you give him enough time. I only got mad at him because he should have known I was likely to know the answer (I th...
- Sat Nov 12, 2005 10:03 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Illinois 05-06
- Replies: 742
- Views: 308068
- Sat Nov 12, 2005 1:16 am
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Illinois 05-06
- Replies: 742
- Views: 308068
4: I don't see Trevkeeper in the schedule...that hurts their chances. Carlo could do it, but it's too strong a field to guarantee a spot. I say no, but again, no surprise here if they do it. Trevkeeper's a generalist, and he's good with lists of titles and authors and such, but I go really deep int...
- Wed Nov 09, 2005 2:38 am
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Duo tournament??
- Replies: 11
- Views: 5525
Mr. Reinstein runs Scobol Solo, which is a 1-1 all-tossups tournament (in Northern Illinois; November 12 this year), so 2-2 could definitely be pulled off. Lots of staffers needed, but Reinstein finds the manpower somehow. I think that's an interesting idea, especially because I'm a math/science/fin...
- Wed Nov 09, 2005 2:30 am
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: New Trier (IL) Varsity Tournament 12/17
- Replies: 25
- Views: 12194
Brad: We won against Bloomington at Ultima (1st against them and Stevenson) though they did indeed whup us at Earlybird. As to questions: I, Carlo, like writing long pyramidal questions as well. I just word-counted a bunch of tossups of mine, and they typically run about 60-80 words (4-5 lines in Ti...
- Fri Nov 04, 2005 1:56 am
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Illinois 05-06
- Replies: 742
- Views: 308068
If bonuses changed to 30 points maximum, that could really change things. At Earlybird, it was Auburn's ability to sweep practically all the 30-point bonuses that turned their win over New Trier into a thrashing. I'd be fine with it, but I could imagine others wanting to stay with 20. I definitely p...
- Sun Oct 30, 2005 11:54 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Best Powers
- Replies: 161
- Views: 76578
- Sun Oct 30, 2005 11:42 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Moderator speed?
- Replies: 17
- Views: 7757
Moderator speed?
In both timed and untimed formats, I mean. Personally, I like moderators to read kinda fast. I think I actually do better when they read faster, maybe because it makes me think faster or something. Of course, when I say fast, I assume that you can understand what the moderator is saying, or at least...
- Fri Oct 28, 2005 10:12 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Bad Negs
- Replies: 826
- Views: 353531
- Fri Oct 28, 2005 9:48 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Illinois 05-06
- Replies: 742
- Views: 308068
Just to add on to what Trevkeeper said, with regard to New Trier in comparison to the other teams mentioned: During Early Bird, the two matches we lost were against Bloomington and Auburn. We didn't play Loyola A there. During Ultima, we beat Bloomington, lost to Auburn (after receiving a spectacula...
- Mon Oct 10, 2005 10:51 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: Bad Negs
- Replies: 826
- Views: 353531
- Sat Oct 01, 2005 10:29 pm
- Forum: High school area archives
- Topic: University of Illinois Earlybird HS Tournament -- 10/1/2005
- Replies: 55
- Views: 77529
I second Nick. I found all the questions and moderators very good. It was a long drive there (we left at 5:30 AM) but we were able to study on the way there, and the drive was worth it. As an added bonus, I learned that eating oranges degrades moderation performance. (Kudos to ImmaculateDeception fo...