The Quizbowl Resource Center

Cody

VCU is hosting a mirror of Florida Spring Tournament on March 23 (college) and a mirror of NAQT IS-177 on April 27.

Cody

With those packet and round constraints, a crossover of the top 3 teams in each bracket, a crossover of the middle 3 teams in each bracket, and a 4-team round robin of the bottom 2 teams in each bracket is round-equivalent to the format used, but keeps more teams in contention. (And is the format I ...

Cody

Cody, just for future reference, what would you have changed about the format? Would you have played crossovers in the playoffs with 8/8 and games carrying over, instead of 2/2/2/2? Barring a compelling reason to replay games and keep the playoff brackets narrow, yeah, I would've used a crossover. ...

Cody

It sounds like there were a few mistakes made, but the critical failure, imo, was in using a format that was not robust to seeding errors.

Cody

In short, whoever made this decision shouldn’t be running a meaningful tournament for a while, if ever. This is a severe over-reaction, and wrong. In fact, I'm pretty steamed you said this! Mistakes were made, yes, but they are pretty transparently rookie mistakes. They are mistakes that are easy t...

Cody

With ACF Regionals around the corner, I've seen several questions about formats for even-numbered fields or brackets that have byes so that submitted packets can be used. This format works very well, and so I'm bumping this topic. If you have any questions or need help generating a schedule, please ...

Cody

The clue referenced the fact that "cantrip" is a term spanning many card games, and in games like Magic: the Gathering, where there is no concept of "actions", a cantrip is just anything that says "draw a card". I figured that the clue was technically accurate and that...

Cody

It appears to me that "cubic" was meant to be the easy part of this bonus, although in general it does have a easy/easy/middle structure You forget how hard it is to visualize and count in real time. Despite me knowing what bcc looks like I fucked up and said 6. That said, it is still mor...

Cody

This was in fact a bonus part. This word is in the name of a series of namesake lattices, whose simple variety has a packing density of pi over 6. For 10 points each: [10] Name this word which describes a "body centered" structure which has two atoms per unit cell. ANSWER: cubic [accept b...

Cody

Was there a pronunciation guide for cyclohexyne?

Cody

What teams does NAQT expect to go to Northwestern that aren't served by Minnesota, Missouri, or Michigan?

Cody

I think there is room for Bollywood in the trash film category in college qb, as Bollywood is important. But it's pretty obvious why Bollywood does not come up much at any level: it is quite difficult. If you were to toss up the most popular Bollywood film ever, it would have much lower conversion r...

Cody

Perhaps it is because I'm on mobile and the site does not work very well, but how much does this cost? The only information in could find was about a year's membership but didn't state a price.

Cody

Then it should've been phrased differently to avoid indicating an exhaustive list.

The responses seem, to me, to refute the core of Conner's argument rather than be taking personal offense.

Cody

Sorry to hear you didn't like the set! We've had a sort of unofficial subdistribution of topics from previous HFTs which includes organic chemistry/advanced techniques, and we admittedly have not adjusted that subdistribution while trying to scale down the difficulty this year (I believe our set is...

Cody

Michael, that's much better than previously. I would also suggest dropping some of the composers with their works to give players more to latch onto (which also serves as a useful filtering mechanism for possible numbers by the best music players). If I recall correctly this is not possible for the ...

Cody

The tossup on third symphonies needs some serious rework. The answerline itself is on the upper end of difficulty for a high school set, even HFT. But, if you're going to have it as a difficulty outlier, do that. (Instead of what was done, below.) I was actually flabbergasted when I read the lead-in...

Cody

I did not like this year's iteration of the set; there were many questions in the music and chemistry, especially, that were completely out of touch with what high schoolers should be expected to know. Lines upon lines of score clues are not good, there was too much organic / college-level chemistry...

Cody

hftf wrote: ↑Fri Dec 07, 2018 11:00 am Static visualizations are now available.

Because SGI is not clear, access is restricted (username: oscar, password: espla). You must obtain access via this private forum.

amazing, Ophir. amazing.

Cody

Round 6 The tossup on “data centers” was, for lack of a better word, super jank. I get what it was going for but I know that everyone in my room was rather incredulous, and several of us were sitting on it as a result. This might just be a consequence of how out there the answerline was, but empiri...

Cody

It's disappointing that NAQT still cannot organize SCT sites in a reasonable timeframe. Whose responsibility is it to manage this process?

Cody

What are the current FFSNL standings?

Cody

Lexington has a great pool of staffers within driving distance due to its location, which is important for keeping costs down. Whether the pool is greater elsewhere is debatable, but it isn't a strong argument against Lexington because its qualified staffer pool is more than enough to run NASAT.

Cody

For what it's worth, I see no problem with rewarding zoo visits, animal shows from TV, and/or other methods of engagement in the biology distribution, all of which are legitimate. This is moreso fine at difficulties below ACF Regionals. I can't speak to the lead-in, but I thought the rest of the clu...

Cody

Is there a source that refers to her as Rhea Silva? Also, that definitely can be added, though I find it bizarre that anyone might challenge someone who pronounces it that way I understand you've made these changes, but I want to push back against this viewpoint. Moderators can only interpret answe...

Cody

No other category is held to this standard— there is no subdistribution of biology reserved for "bio for physical science majors" and there is no subdistribution of literature reserved for "lit for STEM majors." There is no standard that math is being held to, as I have simply a...

Cody

6/6 math is a perfectly appropriate amount of math for a 15 packet set; even as little as 4/4 is standard. I don't know what you mean by applied math, but a good focus on the math subjects that many non-math majors are required to take is the right move at all levels of difficulty, and especially at...

Cody

It seems to me that Minnesota, more than anyone, encounters problems with (essentially) being baited-and-switched out of mirrors when players in the Midwest express resistance to traveling to UMN. I find that unfair, and I would be pretty upset if it happened to my program. This is, uh, literally w...

Cody

Minnesota has been given a mirror because they have editors there, which is a fine quizbowl norm but is at odds with the plans of the editing group as a whole. The question is who will actually play at the Minnesota mirror if there is an additional site in the Midwest? Pretty much no one, which mean...

Cody

Yeah jeez guys. There is an awfully lot amount of vitriol in this thread for someone who volunteered his time to do stats at a large open tournament and made those stats available in a way that satisfied probably 98% of use cases right away. I do not see a lot of vitriol in the thread. It seems to ...

Cody

Transferring DB entries is how you resolve who is listed as the owner. Usually, the tournament director will make the DB entry (which did not happen in this case). Then they transfer the entry to the stats person at the appropriate time so stats can be uploaded. It often makes the most sense for the...

Cody

You also do not need the SQBS files (though they are good to have to regenerate the files if needed). Simply download all the HTML files (_standings, _individuals, _games, _teamdetail, _playerdetail, _rounds) and they can be uploaded to the HSQB DB. (This is not to say I don't think this is Jonah's ...

Cody

A small note about the formats: the possible formats for 37, 38, 39, and 40 teams are all the same. There are no "good" formats for those field sizes. (All the formats only differ in that some prelim brackets have 1 fewer team (odd #) than others (even #) (i.e. the same number of rounds), ...

Cody

You can use the following pretty unique format, which I saw used at SAGACITY IX at Pitt (beware, a few games are missing from those stats): Arrange the teams in a 5x5 grid, labeled as a spreadsheet is (columns A-E, rows 1-5). Each team plays 8 prelim games: one game against each team in its row and...

Cody

Despite having only 4 prelim games and taking 5 rounds, a 5x5 prelim structure is probably the best. This leaves 6-7 packets for the playoffs (6 if you want to do a packet tiebreaker for ties into the finals, 7 if you're comfortable with a paper tiebreaker of playoffs PPG). You can then use wildcard...

Cody

I expect this set to be at least 25% complete by the end of April 2019, at least 50% complete by the end of June 2019, and entirely complete by the end of August 2019. All writers will be expected to have completed the same proportions of their committed questions by the stated times or will face f...

Cody

You can upload stats to the HSQB DB by using "add a tournament" @ http://hsquizbowl.org/db/. Once you've added a tournament, you can edit it, "manage stat reports", and upload stats.

Cody

This is the post with the draft rules last time Fantasy Quizbowl was run. Whether these draft rules will be used this go-round, I don't know. http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=14766 I believe we did a snake seed draft in 2013-14, which is probably the best bet if you don't wa...

Cody

VCU has closed through the weekend due to the weather forecast, so the tournament will not run this Saturday.

If we are able to reschedule, we'll update this post.

Cody

Eric's motivation for posting aside, I really don't see much of a difference between being given copies of a set and retaining knowledge of most of it after having played it. If you're trying to prevent contamination, having a physical copy of the set doesn't really prevent anyone from playing it f...

Cody

I did not make the final decision for the date of ACF Nationals, but April 27-28 is the date of NHBB Nationals. NHBB Nationals monopolizes a lot of staff. I supposed I'd be interested in seeing exactly how much overlap there is between the two staffer bases; I'd heard talk that it wasn't as big as ...

Cody

I did not make the final decision for the date of ACF Nationals, but April 27-28 is the date of NHBB Nationals. NHBB Nationals monopolizes a lot of staff. Unless interest in ACF Nationals inexplicably collapses, it's reasonable to plan to accommodate even more than the 47 teams from last year. That ...

Cody

If you did conventional pool play in the playoffs (instead of the equal strength pools that Jonah describes), you can simply mandate that a championship occur between the top 2 teams in the top pool at the end of the playoffs. If team A is ahead of team B by win-loss, team A wins by winning one game...

Cody

I can confirm that Osaka was great, including having Fred great me with KOBE, and so was Bella Notte.

On our way out of town in 2016, our caravan stopped at Loudon Square Buffet and greatly enjoyed the food there. I'm sure there are some other Southern-style buffets that are worth exploring as well.

Cody

While I think it is extremely important to put pressure on NAQT about removing Matt Bruce, I think we, as a community, should also recognize that this process won't be instantaneous—and that's okay. NAQT is not running any more tournaments in the near-term, and has a meeting over the summer where bi...

Cody

Final standings and prelim statistics have been uploaded.

Cody

I'm wondering how this determination was made. The pertechnetate scan is also called a Meckel's scan, and Meckel's diverticula (the "congenital ectopic tissue" this is talking about) are exclusively found in the ileum - that alone should rule a buzz of duodenum incorrect (assuming an unsy...

Cody

This seems incorrect. For one, "spherically symmetric" isn't a property of vacuum solutions according to Birkhoff's theorem, it's a feature that Birkhoff's theorem tells us entails other features. This is anecdotal, but I'm skeptical that "both teams knew exactly what the question me...

Cody

In the spirit of Alex's post and a more productive discussion, here is my problem with claiming a clue was outright wrong: it's one of the most serious charges you can level at a quizbowl question because it means that the question was fundamentally unfair at the time it was played, and the only red...

Cody

I'd've supported a post about that was simply about ambiguity or confusion ("a small mistake"), but I am being confrontational about it because you rarely get pushback when you post a cliche Mukherjee criticism of a science question (here, that would be "I was negged/didn't get it, so...

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