Search found 191 matches

by leapfrog314
Sun Jul 09, 2006 8:30 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Question Editing Database 1.00
Replies: 2
Views: 2538

Hm. I only took alphanumeric characters from the username cookie. I added _ to the list, and your username works now. Sorry about that, mf_2.
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
Fri Jun 30, 2006 2:50 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Pronunciation
Replies: 67
Views: 33524

Yeah, there's definitely a big problem with requiring the "correct" pronunciation of Chinese and other transliterated languages. At NAQT Nationals, there was a bonus part on "Nanjing" to which my teammate answered "Nanking" (or maybe it was the other way around). The mo...
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
Tue Jun 20, 2006 6:44 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Editing of posts is disabled
Replies: 21
Views: 10932

There may be "add-ons" that allow either edit logs or a daily saving of all posts, but the base code for PHP message boards does not cover these two things. Actually, I searched, and there's one called Edit Store that stores all edits for moderators to view. (It says it requires phpBB 2.0...
by leapfrog314
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....
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
Thu Jun 08, 2006 7:07 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Worst Powers/Early Buzzes
Replies: 47
Views: 23906

I was less ashamed than I should have been, after powering the first tossup at NAQT Nationals...about Snakes on a Plane...the only clues so far were New Line Cinema and caduceus...
by leapfrog314
Thu Jun 08, 2006 5:02 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Writing Questions for Practice
Replies: 10
Views: 5189

I know not everyone on this board would agree with me, but Wikipedia is a great place to browse for information. It's free, it's all in one place, and it's accurate enough for quiz bowl purposes.
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
Sun Jun 04, 2006 3:14 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: 2006 NAQT HSNCT
Replies: 309
Views: 144840

Dr. Chuck - Yes, double elimination. (With all the teams who were 6-4 or better on Saturday.)
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
Thu Apr 27, 2006 10:29 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Right but Wrong Answers
Replies: 16
Views: 7370

Maybe I'm biased because I don't know much about social studies, but I think there's a difference between only accepting correct answers, and being anal about it. I mean, question-writers should certainly not start accepting popular incorrect answers, but if everyone's going to answer "Promonto...
by leapfrog314
Sun Mar 05, 2006 12:31 am
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Bad moderating
Replies: 60
Views: 29074

I believe the Illinois moderator certification test is only about rules. You need 45 or more of the 50 questions correct, but it is open-rulebook. It needs to be renewed every year by taking an updated test.
by leapfrog314
Sat Feb 25, 2006 6:21 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Illinois 05-06
Replies: 742
Views: 308068

Results from today's Illinois NAQT State Qualifier at Loyola:

1. Stevenson
2. New Trier
3. Loyola
4. Bloomington

Congratulations to Stevenson for beating both Bloomington and New Trier in the afternoon to win a really big trophy.
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
Tue Feb 07, 2006 10:49 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Tournament database feedback
Replies: 6
Views: 4288

On an esoteric note, you could save about 20% of your forum bandwidth (by my reckoning) if you moved the huge internal stylesheet into an external .css file. If you also moved the internal JavaScript, that could cut another ~20%.
by leapfrog314
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,...
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
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....
by leapfrog314
Fri Dec 16, 2005 12:04 am
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Bad moderating
Replies: 60
Views: 29074

While I find nothing wrong with referring to a tossup as the "penultimate tossup," it did remind me that I dislike moderators who try to do too much more than moderate. I do not want running commentary on the questions. Read the questions and don't do things like say "Who cares about ...
by leapfrog314
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.
by leapfrog314
Sat Dec 03, 2005 7:37 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Illinois 05-06
Replies: 742
Views: 308068

Results from Richards Varsity:

(A Teams)
1 - Fremd
2 - Loyola
3 - Fenwick
4 - New Trier
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
Sat Nov 12, 2005 10:03 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Illinois 05-06
Replies: 742
Views: 308068

Because I read way too many sports articles, I think of every competition as having "storylines." Here are the ones I see for the Fifth Annual Scobol Solo: 1. Will Rob of Brookwood pull a Sara Garnett (and win the tournament coming from out-of-state)? 2. Will Loyola pull a Fremd (and put ...
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
Sun Oct 30, 2005 11:54 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Best Powers
Replies: 161
Views: 76578

At practice:

"Name the proper adjective. When preceding comma" BUZZ
Pythagorean.

"After becoming completely blind, he died in St. Petersburg" BUZZ
Euler.
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
Fri Oct 28, 2005 10:12 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Bad Negs
Replies: 826
Views: 353531

A teammate's bad neg that resulted in a 60 point swing: (We all made TONS of mistakes in that round, and ended up losing the tournament because of them. It was bad.)

Wrong: Marco Polo
Right: Niccolo Machiavelli
by leapfrog314
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...
by leapfrog314
Mon Oct 10, 2005 10:51 pm
Forum: High school area archives
Topic: Bad Negs
Replies: 826
Views: 353531

Yeah. After that one, Reinstein made sure to emphasize that when you're prompted, you don't change your answer entirely.

At a practice recently, I caught myself saying "Hindenburg uncertainty principle."
by leapfrog314
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...