The Quizbowl Resource Center

cvdwightw

Your use of "overvalue" leads the reader to understand that you do not want bonus conversion to drive wins, which according to your data means that bonus conversions should be relatively high. Amirite? You were right. Somewhat paradoxically, a further analysis has me justifying that concl...

cvdwightw

Discounting negs and powers, and things like "five points per answer" bonus parts, every tossup earned is worth 10+Y points, where Y is a random variable that can take values of 0, 10, 20, or 30 points. (More precisely, it's 10+Y1+Y2+Y3, where Y1, Y2, and Y3 are random variables that take ...

cvdwightw

Just curious...given their stature in college quizbowl, has Brown tried any outreach with the Providence area? Around the time of the whole Trygve fiasco, Guy and Ian did a giant snail mail campaign for a Fall Novice Tournament mirror that may or may not have ever occurred. I have brought this up b...

cvdwightw

As I was in PACE, I remember one of the major reasons the format was changed was that the sets were far more difficult to write , not because the format was itself convoluted. I'm obviously biased here, but this very clearly applies to NHBB too. The NHBB sets are difficult to write because most com...

cvdwightw

As noted over here , the neg prize is slowly dying off, terribly in-jokey, susceptible to "gaming the system" from players doing stupid things, and potentially harmful to players that have buzzer aggression but not the knowledge to back it up. No one's mentioned it, but it also has the pot...

cvdwightw

I feel like it is a bit too common for the giveaway of tossups to have a "curved yellow fruit" feel, Just to clarify, the "curved yellow fruit" giveaway in the strictest and most correct sense of the term is one in which all preceding clues are nigh-impossible to buzz on, making...

cvdwightw

Tommy, I'd be interested in you looking at the 2008 and 2009 All Movies Tournaments and citing some clues (or even whole questions) that illustrate the points you're trying to make, and perhaps some answer lines from those tournaments that indicate the direction you think canon expansion in more &qu...

cvdwightw

I might have some more analysis later, but I'll just note that this sounds like exactly the kind of thing that FRIAR was built for.

cvdwightw

This might've ended a little less farcically if you'd, say, informed anyone that the packets would not be available immediately afterwards, as is standard, before the tournament was run. But as Matt Bollinger noted, that would have been farcical also. Yes; you merely caused a whole bunch of teams t...

cvdwightw

Is that little green notch up top TJ 2005? Yep. The NAQT website's stats for that year include points but not tossups heard/answered during the playoff rounds, so the listed conversion stats are all wrong for playoff teams, but I calculated TJ's prelim PPB to be 23.66. The only other team to get ov...

cvdwightw

Dwight - I love the work. Did you run any tests on negs? I ask because among the many possible reasons for increased power rate, a decreased neg rate is one of the few that can be meaningfully tested. I did not run any tests on neg rate but I do not understand why a decreased neg rate would positiv...

cvdwightw

Inspired by Jerry's recent posts about how the 2003 ICT field was so weak compared to modern quizbowl, I looked at the HSNCT stats for the first two years of power-matching (2002 and 2003) and the most recent two years (2010 and 2011). I found some quite interesting results. First, bonus conversion:...

cvdwightw

PROBABLY UNACCEPTABLE Toss-Ups on the Same Answer in the Same Category: You could do fine tossups on George Washington's military career and his presidency, I guess, and they wouldn't overlap, but two history tossups on George Washington in the same tournament is probably pushing it. Tossups on cou...

cvdwightw

I am looking for one more tournament to do with my middle school quiz bowlers (aside from the state tournament, which we do every year). I was wondering if anyone knows about a tournament within a reasonable drive from Savannah, Ga. A reasonable trip would be 6-7 hours or less. Thanks for the help!...

cvdwightw

One objective quantification of difficulty across SCTs is the median D-value; that is, how many points would the median team in the field put up if it were playing a hypothetical average team? DI 2010: 162.770 2011: 164.566 2012: 213.191 DII (not including CCCT teams) 2010: 177.813 2011: 157.147 201...

cvdwightw

Obviously the solution is to have an open bar at tournaments. Paging Brendan Byrne, paging... what was it, Iowa State? I believe you want this thread . Also, Charles Meigs has told me many times the way to make quizbowl more social is not to make quizbowl practice more social, but to make quizbowl ...

cvdwightw

Kenneth, Kenneth, Kenneth! I cannot tell you how to post, but: 1. Making D2 SCT harder in order to please a small minority of community members of generally little influence, thus alienating new teams and new programs, is a surefire way for NAQT to torpedo its business strategy. 2. Allowing players ...

cvdwightw

In the D1 tossup on Madrid, the "Atocha station" clue is still within power, while in the D2 tossup on Madrid it is not. I am very confused as to how this happened.

cvdwightw

You would be proving that it's possible to have more history and video games in quizbowl. However, no one is asserting that either is being shorted in quizbowl. Math, on the other hand, has been largely marginalized after the demise of computational math. High Schoolers spend as much time, if not m...

cvdwightw

2) A common-link tossup on syphilis studies involving human subjects, which then accepted Tuskegee as an answer even though that was only one of several studies mentioned. My teammate was negged after being mystified when he was prompted on "human scientific studies" or something like tha...

cvdwightw

Just a reminder that this tournament is still available for hosting in any area that doesn't already have a host. This tournament is 95% written but we'll need a couple of weeks to do a good editing job, so unfortunately we will not be able to deliver packets before February 14. The last date that w...

cvdwightw

I would suggest two five-team brackets splitting into top 3 and bottom 2 with the top 6 teams playing 3 rounds of crossover playoffs (e.g., team A1 plays teams B3, B2, and B1 in that order) and the bottom 4 teams playing a 3-round round robin. This gives every team 7 games in 8 rounds and leaves you...

cvdwightw

Ukonvasara wrote:
cvdwightw wrote:Ray Prime
Please rename to "Metal Gear RAY" as soon as possible.

I have no idea why this is funny, but I assume that the comedic value of the thought experiment has thus been increased.

cvdwightw

THOUGHT EXPERIMENT INVOLVING ROBOTS Suppose there exist three great literature players at a tournament: Ted Prime, a robot who knows a great many clues about ANSWER A; Magin Prime, a robot that knows all but 10 clues Ted Prime knows about ANSWER A, and knows 10 clues that Ted Prime doesn't know; and...

cvdwightw

FIELD UPDATE

Rancho Bernardo x2
Arcadia x2
North Hollywood
Capistrano Valley
Tustin x2
Scripps Ranch
Edison house team(s)

Registration ends tomorrow.

cvdwightw

Right now we have 2 teams from Arcadia, 2 (tentatively) from RB and 1 from Rancho Alamitos. I think that's everyone that's signed up so far. This tournament usually gets around 20 teams so I'm assuming that teams are being really late in signing up.

cvdwightw

Looking at that thread, there were some major events that both Paul's "worst case scenario" and Matt's competing "best case scenario" couldn't have taken into account. Obviously the first of these is the rise of some truly great players and writers who were barely out of high sch...

cvdwightw

March 10 is almost certainly State Champs weekend (we'll have an announcement once Chris finalizes the location, I think).

About 1 tournament a year has historically been held on a Sunday down here, so it's not like it's unprecedented or anything.

cvdwightw

If you're the worst team in the bracket, you have a harder schedule because you don't get to play yourself . This is common sense or something. .... For individual schedule making, there can be inherent advantages to being seeded in certain parts of the "middle of the road" - you get to p...

cvdwightw

I'm having a lot of trouble understanding how "TD-derived schedules" are more fair to teams. Suppose that we have 6 teams ranked 1-6 at equal ability spacing. Let's take a "difficulty-balanced" five-round schedule: Team 1: 5-4-3-2-2 Team 2: 6-3-4-1-1 Team 3: 4-2-1-5-6 Team 4: 3-1...

cvdwightw

Baby Anteater XIII will be taking place at Edison High School in Huntington Beach on January 28.

More information at http://www.socalquizbowl.org/announceme ... ii-edison/.

cvdwightw

A quick look through the claims reveals that most people who have expressed preferences have noted science or fine arts. So history, literature, or current events would be great. That being said, we also have about eight people who have signed up for "10/10 of whatever" (and because this ...

cvdwightw

Cted I did forget to do that! Just a second... All fixed! Also, I hate to be that guy, but is there going to be CMST3 user group or is the old one being resurrected? We're just using the same CMST user group as last time - it's easier than creating a new group. It's not like there are any skeletons...

cvdwightw

I still have not heard anything from Caltech about whether or not Technophobia is happening, and I don't have the faintest idea how the rumor that it was on Dec. 3 got started. It was on the http://www.socalquizbowl.org/tournament-calendar/ scheduled for December 3rd until very recently when it dis...

cvdwightw

I still have not heard anything from Caltech about whether or not Technophobia is happening, and I don't have the faintest idea how the rumor that it was on Dec. 3 got started. Has anyone from the area bid for NAQT State Champs yet? Unless any other bids came in before the deadline, Chris and I are ...

cvdwightw

Or, a hopefully rational explanation about why David Madden's argument for raising HFT entry fees is misguided and wrong. Three years ago I spearheaded a movement to rein in tournament fees in Southern California. There are a number of positive effects, the most obvious of which are: 1. More schools...

cvdwightw

Terrible Sports Analogy: Sprinting requires a short burst of very intense speed. Middle distance running requires roughly the same peak speed, but over a significantly longer course. Endurance running requires an extremely long duration of a-few-notches-below-peak speed, and it always helps to have ...

cvdwightw

Facilitator A. This job is pretty much over in December except for following up with writers. Over in December, is it? Well, I'll volunteer to do this then. Thanks Jeff. Yeah, the Facilitator's job is to pretty much get everything started, making sure that we have enough writers to complete the set...

cvdwightw

All of these writers and ZERO chiefs. Is there anyone who can take on Dwight's role from last year? Maybe Dwight can come back and post an explanation of what needs to be done. I took on about three separate roles last year, so I've split them up below. I'm really busy this November and won't have ...

cvdwightw

Any chance a CMST 3 ever gets legs? My team is playing MS-02 this weekend and will definitely play MS-03 in the spring, but I KNOW there's room for another set inasmuch as we intend to host another Barrington Invitational on St. Patrick's Day, 2012. I still get a warm feeling at the reaction at our...

cvdwightw

This is your friendly neighborhood reminder that just because something is not hard to you does not mean that it is not hard to the target audience of this tournament. Don't say "this bonus lacked a hard part" or "this clue was too early;" state why you think so and let others de...

cvdwightw

The whole Graham's Law clue in the Georgia Tech A packet refers to both the answer (diffusion) and a thing that is not the answer (effusion). From my experience, chemistry classes treat Graham's Law as a Law of Effusion. In our packet, I figured that "court case" + "import tax" +...

cvdwightw

UCSD A, ASU "B", and Claremont A finished in a three-way circle of death at 9-1. Because we were getting kicked out of the rooms while the last round was finishing, we were unable to play a finals series and UCSD A was declared the winner based on PPG. UCSD B was the Division II winner. ST...

cvdwightw

Caltech seems to have secured transportation, so our attendance is now "highly probable." Can you respond to my e-mail from this morning asking whether "highly probable" has changed to "we're definitely coming, barring extreme and extenuating circumstances" since this ...

cvdwightw

CRITICAL INFORMATION FOR REGISTERED TEAMS You should be parking in the Student Center Parking Structure off the corner of West Peltason and Pereira. There should be someone there to sell you a parking permit, which costs $10 for a full day. If you are feeling cheap, you can try to park for free in ...

cvdwightw

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't see why you're insistent on having divisions when the divisions seem to be arbitrarily defined by you (as opposed to, say, experience-dependent divisions). If you have 10 teams, you can just rank everyone by their performance in the round robin, and have...

cvdwightw

Since I hadn't thought of this situation before, but it is now more apparent it'll happen - what is a good format for a TEN-team tournament ? My thought was -2 divisions of 5 (say "A" and "B") -Prelim. round robin tournament (4 games, 5 rounds, BYE teams play a practice match) -...

cvdwightw

Another example is the protein folding tossup. I've had enough protein folding lectures to fill a 12 line tossup, but it immediately leads in with talking about how bacteria use a heptameric protein to initiate it. Not only is the GroEL-ES complex like the third thing you learn about protein foldin...

cvdwightw

The following teams have registered for ACF Fall: Rancho Bernardo HS (D2; 1 buzzer, 0 staffers, 0 laptops) UCSD x2 (Divisions unknown; 1 buzzer, assuming Claremont brings it, ? staffers, ? laptops) Claremont x3 (1 D1 undergrad, 2 D2; 1 buzzer of their own, 0 staffers, 3 laptops) North Hollywood HS x...

cvdwightw

Shouldn't this whole thing work on the principle of "player provided the correct answer with no extra incorrect information within the allotted time"? If so, the creator/creation rule doesn't need to exist as a separate entity. That's an excellent way of putting it. Fair enough. I also th...

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