The Quizbowl Resource Center

Muriel Axon

I'll note that Tamara Vardomskaya should be on everyone's ballots because she led the Chicago C team with 23 PPG and 7 powers at the stacked main site of "stanford housewrite" and put up 21 PPG as part of the Chicago C team that finished 20th at ACF Nationals. am Minnesota player, can con...

Muriel Axon

Friendly reminder: I'm a Canadian citizen.

Muriel Axon

women, fire and dangerous things wrote:Criterion Blu-Rays (of Yi Yi...).

This alone is enough to make me regret not coming to CO. (You know, not that I would be a top scorer anyway. And, I guess I could just buy a copy, but that's lame.)

Muriel Axon

Sam Bailey is #1 at witty repartee.

Jason Asher is probably okay at making bread.

Muriel Axon

Dr. Mike Cheyne wrote:shan needs to be fatter

working on it!

Muriel Axon

Ironically, my love of Radiohead faded long before they released a studio version of "True Love Waits." (I like the new album a lot, but not as much as college freshman me probably would have.)

Muriel Axon

I'll start with the Northeast, tossing in around a couple names that aren't above for good measure but might be worth considering (I won't discuss myself or who I plan on voting for) for Top 25 material: I'm a bit confused here, since at least three of the listed players were on the top 25 last yea...

Muriel Axon

A few quibbles around some of the biology which occured to me whilst I was reading at the UK site: The second clue in the Adipose Tissue tossup read, "The resident macrophages of this tissue may release pro-inflammatory cytokines like IL-6 and TNF-alpha". They may do, but so do the tissue...

Muriel Axon

CaseyB wrote:I will be attending Michigan Tech in the fall to start an MS in Mathematical Sciences. I do wish to remain involved in quiz bowl while at MTU.

YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED to next year's Twin Cities-area tournaments.

Muriel Axon

With the qualifier that I know nothing about this clue, I assume that Auroni's comment on the threonine clue is that if you don't know the preceding clue, you don't know which of the functions of threonine's H-bonding ability the question is looking for. (I would also have buzzed on the wood frogs c...

Muriel Axon

There seem to be a few distinct arguments here regarding the biology: (1) That there's too much ecology/evolution in the set; (2) that there's not enough molecular biology/biochemistry in the set; (3) that the biology in the set is not core/curricular enough. Andrew H and I already copped to (2) lon...

Muriel Axon

Jennie/Kai: Thanks for the feedback on the auditory arts! I'm glad to know someone got some mileage out of those clues. 5. Computing the expected value of this operation, when it defines a stochastic process, can be done by solving a partial differential equation, as in the Feynman-Kac formula for B...

Muriel Axon

Ike: We already agreed upstream (and I guess more explicitly, in a private conversation between me and Eric) that there was a lack of molecular bio/biochem and apologized, so I figured that was that and was kind of annoyed to see even more people piling on with the same complaint. That said, with re...

Muriel Axon

I would agree with you that it's wrong to say that the biology in this tournament biased too far in favor of any particular topic. However, the biology distribution was extremely problematic because it was heavily biased AGAINST molecular biology / biochemistry. In the first 12 packets (the packets...

Muriel Axon

I don't know if this map is intended to be just for the listed tournaments in 2015-2016, but (as Paul hinted), this is missing MN teams like Carleton College, St. Olaf, and St. Thomas, as well as Augustana in South Dakota -- which, together with University of Sioux Falls, is starting to make inroads...

Muriel Axon

This list is missing Joe Nutter, and in particular the time he helped us beat Ohio State at 2014 Nats by pulling a clutch 10 on a Tacitus bonus.

Muriel Axon

After two last-minute drops from St. Thomas and St. Olaf (FOR SHAME), we ran a double round-robin with the six remaining teams. Minnesota A (Jason Asher and friends) cleared the field. Carleton came second. Thanks for coming!

stats

Muriel Axon

Not to beat a dead horse, but Thomas Bradwardine is great, and contemporary logicians like Greg Restall and Catarina Dutilh Novaes still look to him as a source of fresh ideas for solving philosophical problems. This brings me to a more serious point, which is that in philosophy, old ideas are alway...

Muriel Axon

The lovely TU on Kieslowski mentions in the first line a scene in Bleu where Juliette Binoche's character watches a man play the recorder while stirring sugar into her coffee. A truly lovely scene and an excellent choice for a lead-in. However, she stirs coffee into a bowl of vanilla ice cream duri...

Muriel Axon

My "Personal Knowledge" question which got (wisely) turned into a Michael Polanyi question, still retained some of the original pronounage, i.e. the original clues referred to Polanyi as "this book" while the new clues used "this man." Yeah, there was one "this bo...

Muriel Axon

One issue that could bear on the issue of subdistributions is that we were instructed to use as many player submissions as we could in the submitted packets. That principle made sense, since people who submitted packets were doing us a favor, and because submissions came quite soon before the tourna...

Muriel Axon

It seems like this has resolved itself, but I largely agree with Will's reasoning. The fact that even the Classical period use of the Mannheim rocket was split among multiple countries (present-day Germany, Austria, etc.) shows that you can't really name a country off of "Mannheim rocket" ...

Muriel Axon

Any schools that wanted to come to this site but can't are welcome to Minnesota on April 23.

Muriel Axon

Was it just me or was the bio in this tournament really heavily skewed towards ecology and evolutionary bio? "Really heavily skewed" is an exaggeration, unless I suppose those questions were front-loaded in the packets. I count maybe two-and-a-half ecology/evolution tossups (decomposition...

Muriel Axon

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:Shan Kothari has...eccentric taste.

I have no clue what this refers to.

Muriel Axon

Reminder: Get those packets in!

Muriel Axon

The HIC (H-I-C) gene down•regulates the development of these structures in carbon-rich environments. Regulation of these structures in response to water potential can be iso•hydric or an•iso•hydric. The Ball-Berry-Leuning model couples carbon assimilation rates to the conductance of these structure...

Muriel Axon

Will: I can't speak to the Delacroix issue, and you certainly might have a point on that one. I did talk with Sam about the Gauss-Markov clue, and neither of us seems that inclined to change it. "Bias" doesn't seem to be a correct answer -- there are other unbiased linear estimators ( at l...

Muriel Axon

The University of Minnesota Quiz Bowl Team will be hosting a 2016 mirror of the Minnesota Undergraduate Tournament (MUT) on April 23, 2016. MUT is a below-regular difficulty tournament. Only undergraduate and high school teams are allowed to play. You can read about the set here or see the DB listin...

Muriel Axon

(The above also happened in our room.)

Could someone please post the tossup on Chinese (from poetry)? I felt hosed by it, but I want to see if my complaint is valid or not.

Muriel Axon

Probably doesn't affect much, but I think it's unlikely I'll be at CO this year and I'd be happy to kick in a decent number of editor questions (although not necessarily edit a subject). I am also in this situation. The field season will keep me out of reach for most of July, so I don't want to be ...

Muriel Axon

Really enjoyed the Anthro in this set (as an Anthro major). The mention of Appadurai (even tho I find him... prolix) in the India TU, the "salvage ethnography" bonus and the truly fantastic "documentary" TU all spring to mind as examples of quizbowl talking about things people i...

Muriel Axon

My research indicates that that study is actually quite well known. I think I first came across it in an issue of Mental Floss , the subject editor had independently heard of it, and I found plenty of other references to it. I agree that the specific study's author was necessary to uniquely identif...

Muriel Axon

I did not like the tossup on reading music. The first clue referred to a study by Ole Irving Jacobsen (who?) on the pattern of fixations and saccades while reading music. Your eyes can move in saccades when looking at nearly any scene with attention; the fixation-saccade pattern is one of the most c...

Muriel Axon

That is the current field for this tournament.

Muriel Axon

Thanks to Donald Taylor (presumably) for a Spyderco stainless steel pocket knife! I now have the urge to cut everything...

Muriel Axon

Much thanks to the mystery sender for Larisa Shepitko's Wings and Ascent ! They look awesome and you've introduced me to another Soviet female director, which I appreciate. (and introduced me to Criterion's Eclipse series which looks awwwwesome) Enjoy! (And yes, Eclipse is terrific!) By the way -- ...

Muriel Axon

MALIK: To Pimp a Butterfly -- TPAB is, yes, "important," but it's also both really fun and musically ambitious. For an album to be all of those things at once is incredible. AT.LONG.LAST.A$AP -- This was a tough one because I have no interest in either of these. I have noted with growing a...

Muriel Axon

My gift should arrive by the 23rd.

Muriel Axon

I took Stephen's suggestion and combined it with the rewording of the second sentence I'd mentioned before. Thanks for the suggestions, both of you.

Muriel Axon

Stefan HSQBRankovich wrote:my note rests

interests?

Muriel Axon

There was a math bonus where the answer was "distance." Should "norm" have been acceptable? The other math people there agreed with me that it should have, but I never got to reread the full question. I recall it saying "the Euclidean this ...", which is begging for so...

Muriel Axon

In no particular order: 1. A CD of music by a contemporary composer, preferably under 45. Doesn't have to be "classical" -- I like Vijay Iyer as much as the next guy. 2. Something that might be useful to a field scientist. For example: A weatherproof hat, wool socks, a decent pocket knife,...

Muriel Axon

There are a few games where particular teams have either anomalously low PPB, or total bonus points ending in 5. It might be good to take a second look at these.

Muriel Axon

Players at this site are welcome to discuss the protest resolution (or anything else about the set) in the MO 2015 subforum.

Muriel Axon

It would be nice if the world worked in the idealized way that Professor Kothari dreamt up in his ivory tower, safe from the hostile fortunes that afflict those of us suffering under the tyranny of the Real World, but alas, it does not. Given the state of the tenure-track job market these days, thi...

Muriel Axon

I think I went 5/8/2, not 8/8/2, in round 9 (not least because the latter results in the teams combining for 25 tossups). Thanks! As you could tell, I had some trouble deciphering handwriting. (Andrew Hart also noticed that a moderator docked you guys 100 points in round 2, which is also now fixed,...

Muriel Axon

I went 1/1/0 in the first round, not 3/6/1. Presumably Rob went 3/6/2 and the fiendish statskeeper done screwed up. Sorry, that was my fault and will be fixed shortly. On a related note, I find it questionable that we went 3/20/2 over the course of 24 questions in Round 6. This one was Peter's faul...

Muriel Axon

Stats are up. For about five rounds (until Andrew left), Andrew Hart and Rob Carson broke the Hoppes-Mikanowski limit, even after multiplying by 5/6 to correct for 24/24 per round.

Muriel Axon

The Dickson Poon School of Law cleared the field with the team. Stats coming later tonight!

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