The Quizbowl Resource Center

a bird

Is it true that this tournament had less than 1/1 Philosophy? What was the rationale behind that decision? Why was it not announced? (In fact, why was 1/1 Philosophy explicitly announced then?) As to the former two - because we wanted to make room for more Other Ac / Misc questions. We felt philoso...

a bird

20. This quantity is equal to the negative average of the ionization energy and electron affinity. The Ehrenfest classification is based on the derivatives of this quantity with respect to temperature and pressure. For a real gas, this quantity is equal to its standard state variety plus RT times t...

a bird

There were a lot of positives with the science in this set, especially in terms of topic selection and fresh ideas. I think the set did a solid job of focusing on things of real world importance and rewarding engagement with science. (I will try to elaborate later on which approaches to this were mo...

a bird

Let's see the _chemical potential_ tossup from packet 15. I was confused by a few parts, but I don't remember the details.

a bird

In the logic bonus, I didn't appreciate the instruction to the moderator to ask whether the question should be repeated in the second part. This was just confusing. If you wanted to afford the players the opportunity to here the logic riddle again, then simply tell the moderator to repeat it rather...

a bird

Here are some general thoughts about the science in this set. Before I begin, I'll agree with Aseem that the visual arts at this tournament didn't light my world on fire and with Jacob that there was more military history than expected. (On the other hand, I think these questions did a reasonable jo...

a bird

for now I want to say a few positive things about specific questions. I forgot to add the clue on analog Hawking radiation in superfluids to the above list. There were a few interesting bonuses in this set that tried to make you apply a concept (e.g. the logic bonus in round 8, the angular momentum...

a bird

I will post some general thoughts about the science distribution once I gather my thoughts, but for now I want to say a few positive things about specific questions. I enjoyed hearing clues about entanglement witnesses and the Boltzmann brain (Boltzmann TU was read to us as a replacement) as well as...

a bird

To summarize, I know the number of teams limits your logistical options, but I think last year's format (with 36 teams) was significantly better. This is why I think directors should take format into account more when determining field caps. I know you want to let as many people as possible play th...

a bird

I agree with what Jacob and Weijia posted above and want to thank Margaret and Penn for their logistical efforts. I have a few comments about the format: The prelim felt too long. Jacob and Weijia pointed out issues with having long prelim (and a late lunch). Here is another point. I think it would ...

a bird

Here are a few specific things I found confusing: The _scultpture_ TU was hard to buzz on because _scultupure_ is so such a large category. I imagine lots of players were trying to find more specific answers after recognizing some of the clues. The _post-painterly abstraction_ bonus part clued Helen...

a bird

I made a list of teams and people who BPA indicates are very good at various categories (players with single category BPA above 25, teams with single category BPA above 30) (apologies for the formatting; this is copy-pasted from Excel). Brad McLain (Illinois A) Illinois A 32.955 Beliefs Kai Smith (...

a bird

Yes, the site restricts answers to things that have Wikipedia page titles and have been asked about three times. So if you can select it as an answer, it's totally fine! (We may have more data than the DBs you're using ... we also have lower standards.) Maybe I'm missing something, but I still thin...

a bird

Only things that have Wikipedia pages can be answers. I think some people (myself included) interpreted this to mean "if X is a Wikipedia page then X can be an answerline," not "the set of submittable answerlines is a subset of Wikipedia article titles." Based on the below post ...

a bird

I've also added a link to a folder with graphs like the one below for each tossup. Thanks for making these! They seem like a really useful tool for seeing which questions generated lots of negs, which were powered very often, etc. Hopefully this will help writers and editors better anticipate how q...

a bird

Is there a length guideline for submitted questions?

a bird

The Hessian matrix clue in the derivatives tossup probably caused a few negs with "second derivatives."

a bird

Several thoughts: 1) The art distribution seemed very very 15th-17th century-heavy, with modern art suffering as a result I think this is an interesting point, and I agree that the painting tossups skewed towards pre 19th century art (with the exception of Russian constructivism and abstract expres...

a bird

I'm not sure exactly what the _bandwidth_ part in the laser bonus from packet 1 was talking about, but it seemed like the same thing as linewidth (see https://www.rp-photonics.com/bandwidth.html).

a bird

I get why you’d want to write a question on _carbon and carbon_, but saying that you want “these two elements” seems objectively misleading. It seems to me that you could pull off the same thing by changing the pronouns and making the answerline _carbon-carbon bonds_ or _making carbon-carbon bonds_...

a bird

UlyssesInvictus wrote: ↑Sat Sep 22, 2018 12:08 am You know, now that this is being brought up, does anyone know why physical tournaments usually happen on Saturdays?

A large factor must be travel time. Driving 2-4+ hours after a tournament is easier on Saturday than Sunday, when people have class, work, etc. on Monday.

a bird

The packet submission requirement this thread is: Packet submission Any team with at least two people on it who played a regular, collegiate, academic quizbowl tournament prior to September 1, 2017 is required to submit a half-packet, unless it is a high school team attending a high school-only mirr...

a bird

I want to clarify a few things from my earlier post. I'm not advocating anyone break their university's rules, but if you have the option, external accounts are useful. While I previously focussed on what clubs can do, clearly tournament organizers can also help speed the process along. As editors f...

a bird

I find your outrage rather incomprehensible. UofL Quizbowl is a part of the University of Louisville, and as such, as absolutely no ability whatsoever to simply mail out checks to people. I'm not commenting directly on Harris's outrage, but I want to point out that the above is an oversimplificatio...

a bird

I think this topic deserves more discussion. While I think it's important to recognize and reward less experienced players and teams at ACF events, the current setup can be quite confusing for the reasons Naveed pointed out. Beyond this confusion, it might worth discussing the purpose of D2 at ACF N...

a bird

At the risk of sounding like Naveed, I'm quoting Sam from the SMT@Harvard announcement thread: hosts need to be using SQBS to generate statistics, because the hsqb database only accepts SQBS reports. For a variety of reasons* hosts must put statistics on the hsqb database; this is why any time you p...

a bird

As for the rest, interested to hear discussion. Since Will and I mostly agree about the top 10, I'm going to list some thoughts about the rest of the top 25. I would break the remaining ranked teams into the following three categories. Teams that "proved themselves" or exceeded expectatio...

a bird

This is a relatively minor point, but there were several times when issues with incomplete answer lines (and in one case an inconsistent question) could have decided our matches. The three biggest issues were: channelrhodopsin not being acceptable for the rhodopsin (One of the clues in the bonus re...

a bird

8. Minnesota (willing to discount the poor ICT performance, they had a great top bracket performance at ACF) 9. Michigan (despite above, I rate NAQT and ACF formats equally - this probably isn't true for everyone) 10. Berkeley B (top bracket at both Nationals, and ahead of Maryland and Chicago B, w...

a bird

This is a relatively minor point, but there were several times when issues with incomplete answer lines (and in one case an inconsistent question) could have decided our matches. The three biggest issues were: channelrhodopsin not being acceptable for the rhodopsin (One of the clues in the bonus ref...

a bird

Physics was, by far, the hardest category for me to write. When I signed on to edit this tournament, I told Andrew H. that I would place question craftsmanship first and excitement second if at all, especially in this category. I knew I didn’t have the depth of knowledge to be especially innovative...

a bird

The purpose of this post is two fold. The first is to draw your attention to Weijia Cheng and Graham Reid. Weijia is an excellent player who deserves a spot on your ballot. His skills are best showcased on difficult content. He's on when it counts the most. This year he got to showcase that in a po...

a bird

I really enjoyed the physics and physics-y astro in the DI set. It did a great job touching on important topics from classes and things people might know from general interest. Here are some brief comments/observations. It seemed like there wasn't as much quantum mechanics as I might have expected....

a bird

I really enjoyed the physics and physics-y astro in the DI set. It did a great job touching on important topics from classes and things people might know from general interest. Here are some brief comments/observations. It seemed like there wasn't as much quantum mechanics as I might have expected. ...

a bird

In the thread about the ideal schedule some people discussed utility of having a novice difficulty tournament early in the spring semester. I personally agree with Eric Wolfsberg, and think that a tournament like this should probably exist in every major circuit. I'm not sure this is actually preced...

a bird

- Fall Novice in mid November (e.g. Delta Burke) It's not really clear why a mid November novice event is an essential part of the calendar, especially given its proximity to ACF Fall. Collegiate Novice gives new players an introduction to quizbowl near the start of the fall semester, and ACF Fall ...

a bird

I'm a bit late, but I want to thank the editors for a very enjoyable set and post some thoughts about difficulty. In particular, I'm going to focus on the science. First of all, I want to commend Ryan and Aseem for producing a solid science distribution! My comments/suggestions are relatively minor ...

a bird

One might be tempted to derive conclusions about the skill of all Chicago teams from the mixed results of the A team, but I would caution against this. In particular, Matthew Lehmann is exceptionally good and only improving, but all the players on the B are highly capable of converting tossups agai...

a bird

I see an invitation for Michigan B, but I'm not sure why teams are being labeled with the D2 teams getting the A team and D1 getting B and so on. Where do you see this? This page lists Michigan A in Division I and Michigan B in Division II (which seems correct to me; we label teams in Division I fi...

a bird

Buzzpoints by team, split by player EDIT: The area under a player's curve is equal to the number of tossups answered correctly. Y axis is thus in arbitrary units of points*probability. Someone should design an interactive website with custom results and graphs but that I unfortunately don't have th...

a bird

Besides the "these organisms" wording, I buzzed on the first line with mosquitoes because I was under the impression that the invasive species proposals were just in the preliminary research stages whereas the question seemed (but my memory is iffy on the specific wording) to imply that t...

a bird

There are essentially two question about East Coast mirrors in this thread: 1) Should there be a single mirror site on the East Coast to allow for the largest/strongest possible field? 2) If there are two mirror sites on the East Coast, is it a good idea for those two sites to be Maryland and NYU? C...

a bird

Could I see the quantum computing bonus? I was glad to see both the adiabatic algorithm and quantum annealing come up, but it seemed a little hard to figure out exactly what the last part was looking for. I really like the physics on the whole, this is just a minor quibble.

a bird

Just like Naveed, I'm not speaking in an official capacity, but I have some observation and concerns about the East Coast mirror situation. When a second Midwest mirror of CMST was announced, advocates of a 'one site per region' policy argued that: the existence of this site is bad for the Spring Op...

a bird

Can I see the tossup on phonons? I wanted to see what made the first clue phonons and not superfluids. Thanks! If I remember correctly, the first line refereed to packets of phonons [these things] being exchanged, resulting in second sound (a phenomenon that can happen in some solids as well as sup...

a bird

I'm not sure I see your point here; I don't see how losing to a team of 4 high schoolers is less demoralizing than, for instance, losing to a high schooler playing solo or a B team from a high school. I'm not arguing that neither of those teams should have been allowed to play, but rather that I be...

a bird

I think Naveed's post bring up some important points. The issue of high school teams playing regular season tournaments is somewhat complicated since it has advantages (as Paul noted) and disadvantages, but I think in the case of open/chimera teams the loss of legitimacy probably outweighs the poten...

a bird

Hey, could I see the Coulomb tossup from packet 1? Maybe the science editors were aware of this already, but the vapor pressure (chem) tossup from packet 6 and the diffusion (phys) tossup for packet 10 reference Knudsen cells and Knudsen diffusion respectively. This isn't literally a repeat, but I t...

a bird

Could I see the gravitational waves toss up? There was a buzzer race on the first line when I played it; I'm curious if this happened to anyone else.

a bird

Just out of curiosity, does NAQT have a formal policy on teams from the same school addending multiple Sectionals? Or on two teams from the same school both claiming ICT bids by winning two different sites of SCT?

[discussion split from this thread --staff]

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