The Quizbowl Resource Center

Brad Fischer, Greg Gauthier, and I collaborated on an article for this quarter's issue of the IHSSBCA's newsletter that for the first time brings up the issue of eliminating computation tossups with the population of Illinois coaches at large. In case anyone else is interested, I have attached the article. Comments are very welcome.

Excellent arguments. I approve.

Good article. It needed to be said in a larger forum than HSQB. But don't be disapointed if it doesn't change the minds of those who don't embrace good quizbowl, though.

Add another math guy to the list of people who likes what the three of you have presented.

There are enough competitions specifically geared to math computation.

This can be accomplished in Illinois, if you keep chopping one computation question per year. I do like computational math, but replace it with meaningful questions such as you propose and I won't miss it.

Interesting that you make a point that you are all math majors and proceed to make an example of the most unmathematical statement possible: I have never seen X, so X does not exist. In your case, X= computational math question.

Dayo Dankole wrote:Interesting that you make a point that you are all math majors and proceed to make an example of the most unmathematical statement possible: I have never seen X, so X does not exist. In your case, X= computational math question.

Having computational math questions in a good quizbowl tournament not only requires the existence of good computational math questions (which we highly doubt exist, for the reasons we state in the article) but also the construction of said good computational math questions, which we have not seen. Therefore, if we can show that there is no feasible way to construct good computational math questions, our thesis of showing why the computational math distribution should be eliminated in quizbowl tossups is proved.

Dayo Dankole wrote:Interesting that you make a point that you are all math majors and proceed to make an example of the most unmathematical statement possible: I have never seen X, so X does not exist. In your case, X= computational math question.

I don't know what you're talking about here. The article does not make the statement "I have never seen a computational math question, so computational math questions do not exist", which is what we find by substituting your value of X. Both the antecedent and conclusion of the statement you are discussing are false.

If you mean that we say "I have never seen a good computational tossup, so good computational tossups cannot exist", we don't say that. To use mathematical terms, we start from axioms (of what constitutes a good question) and prove that a good computational tossup cannot exist. Produce a counterexample if you can.

Oops. I meant "X=GOOD computational math question".

Dayo Dankole wrote:Oops. I meant "X=GOOD computational math question".

Oh.

Those don't exist.

jonah wrote:

Dayo Dankole wrote: Both the antecedent and conclusion of the statement you are discussing are false.[/qoute]

Who says "antecedent"? Probably the same people who say "surd". Oh wait, did you write that surd question for last year's IHSA State Series?

jonah wrote:

Dayo Dankole wrote:To use mathematical terms, we start from axioms (of what constitutes a good question) and prove that a good computational tossup cannot exist. Produce a counterexample if you can.

Lack of counterexample = proof ITT.

I hope you're being obtuse on purpose because you think it's funny. If you're not, you're really, really stupid and should probably never speak again until you know anything.

MaS