MUT 2011 (Non-Specific) Discussion

[Edmund]

Oh, man, it's great that we're having this discussion because nobody can do obsession with one's own country's unremarkable painters like the British. My personal favorite was the UC bonus on Ford Madox Brown. The part about it that I liked was that it came right after a bonus about mythological rainbows whose answers were Iris / Incan / Norse. There's nothing quite like asserting that "Heimdall guards Bifrost, the bridge between Midgard and Asgard, in this type of mythology" and "this pre-Raphaelite painted The Last of England" are of equivalent difficulty.

It turns out that there's an awful lot of Ford Madox Brown in the Manchester city art gallery, which may explain the obsession. So since our visit on Sunday, at least four members of the Oxford squad know all about him.

I have at least heard of Cassatt and Eakins. Seems hard but not unreasonable.

[Kyle]

Obviously it was a mistake to choose the Gas Gallery.

[at your pleasure]

Out of curiosity, when Briticising do you do stuff other than swapping out the specifically american bits of the distro for british bits?

[Tees-Exe Line]

Out of curiosity, when Briticising do you do stuff other than swapping out the specifically american bits of the distro for british bits?

Briticizing is actually an intricate process whereby you carefully identify anything tasty in the tournament, surgically remove it, and replace it with something bland.

[Edmund]

In any case, I wrote a bunch of bio, chem, painting and other art and a handful of questions in other categories for this thing, and I'd be glad to hear any feedback on those subjects.

After all of five days, I'm afraid I'm struggling to remember specific questions. But my feeling was that these subjects were handled well. At least, chemistry and painting tend to be fields of preference for me and I don't remember feeling aggrieved.

[eliza.grames]

Out of curiosity, when Briticising do you do stuff other than swapping out the specifically american bits of the distro for british bits?

How it was explained to me was essentially flopping the difficulty of the British and American questions. "Regular" (rather difficult in Britain) American questions were replaced with "regular" (rather difficult in the US) British questions, and "easy" (regular in the US) British questions were replaced with "easy" (regular in Britain) American questions. From my understanding, this primarily applied to Literature and History. I'm not sure what specific answers were changed.

[gaurav.kandlikar]

[...] I would cite "Maxwell's demon" on which I negged with "entropy" after hearing "this concept", "Shannon" and "information" in very close succession.

For anyone who still cares, here's the text of this question:

Landauer’s treatment of this concept suggested that the Shannon theorem was inadequate in explaining it. This concept was first proposed in a letter to Peter Tait by its namesake. It was first refuted by Leo Szilard and Leon Brillouin, who noted that the energy required for memory storage and to operate it would negate its purpose. Its setup includes an insulated barrier and a small door between two chambers that is operated by a being who separates particles into fast and slow moving compartments. For 10 points, identify this thought experiment of its namesake Scottish physicist that violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics by means of an impish figure.
ANSWER: Maxwell’s demon [accept equivalents]

[The King's Flight to the Scots]

[...] I would cite "Maxwell's demon" on which I negged with "entropy" after hearing "this concept", "Shannon" and "information" in very close succession.

For anyone who still cares, here's the text of this question:

Landauer’s treatment of this concept suggested that the Shannon theorem was inadequate in explaining it. This concept was first proposed in a letter to Peter Tait by its namesake. It was first refuted by Leo Szilard and Leon Brillouin, who noted that the energy required for memory storage and to operate it would negate its purpose. Its setup includes an insulated barrier and a small door between two chambers that is operated by a being who separates particles into fast and slow moving compartments. For 10 points, identify this thought experiment of its namesake Scottish physicist that violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics by means of an impish figure.
ANSWER: Maxwell’s demon [accept equivalents]

Yeah, two people at our site made that same neg.

[Edmund]

Ok, so the first problem was that I misheard "Landau" for "Landauer" which set me thinking about modern statistical mechanics. I also just hit the buzzer on "Shannon theorem" because Shannon is synonymous with entropy, and if we were talking about "information" or anything else I expected a prompt.

Would we agree that "this concept" is too nebulous as a lead-in? Possibly just the first two sentences are the wrong way round.

[eliza.grames]

Ok, so the first problem was that I misheard "Landau" for "Landauer" which set me thinking about modern statistical mechanics. I also just hit the buzzer on "Shannon theorem" because Shannon is synonymous with entropy, and if we were talking about "information" or anything else I expected a prompt.

Would we agree that "this concept" is too nebulous as a lead-in? Possibly just the first two sentences are the wrong way round.

The original lead-in was the Peter Tait clue; I think the first clue got added in the editing process to reward people who had studied the concept through research beyond just the thought experiment itself. I think that's what made it unclear, because although I'm not familiar with Landauer's treatment of it, I assume he discussed more than just Maxwell's demon.

[grapesmoker]

Based on the information provided, I can sort of see how one might think "entropy" would be the answer, but other than having Shannon's name in the opening clue, that doesn't really fit.

[theMoMA]

Based on the information provided, I can sort of see how one might think "entropy" would be the answer, but other than having Shannon's name in the opening clue, that doesn't really fit.

Yeah, seems like one of those clue choices that, in retrospect, could have been changed to avoid a question that induces a disproportionate amount of negs.

[1992 in spaceflight]

It went dead in our finals, but that's mostly because we were all high schoolers who don't care about English rulers.

I wouldn't feel too bad. I'm a history major, and I would not have gotten that tossup in this life. But maybe that's because middle ages history has never been my strong suit.

On the set, I only really had an issue on sports trash whenever as a clue, there's a lead-in on a TU of "this team drafted this player." I'm sorry, but in baseball there are many trades of minor league players that happen, and unless you saw the draft you would not know the original team that drafted him.

The only other thing I thought was odd was that the Ben Franklin Autobiography TU was pretty transparent. But maybe that's because I had to read it my junior year for American Lit.

[Cheynem]

I wrote the tossup you are referring to--the New York Mets. I agree that draft clues can be non-starters; however, the clue "the Mets drafted Steve Chilcott instead of Reggie Jackson" is less about them drafting Chilcott and more about baseball lore--the fact that the Mets didn't draft Jackson because they were worried about his "white girlfriend." If there were other sports tossups with similar clues, I can't comment, but on that one, I'll argue that the clue can be gathered by someone who didn't witness the draft itself (I obviously didn't).

[master15625]

All mirrors have concluded; packets will be archived soon. This discussion can now open up into a specific discussion of questions (or a new topic can be established for this if people prefer).

Although good feedback is nice, I'd really like to know what people did not like (e.g. bad ideas for questions, terrible clue placement, overall difficulty, certain questions that were too hard or too easy for this tournament, the easy/medium/hard bonus structure, and what we can do to make MUT 2012 a better tournament than MUT 2011). Any thoughts you have are appreciated and will be taken into account on future tournaments put out by the University of Minnesota.

Will the packets be posted up soon?

Also, I was wondering if the question on Bernoulli (I believe that was the first round), could be posted. I remember hearing something about the Bernoulli numbers I believe in the first clue, but just wanted to see it again.

Thanks

[1992 in spaceflight]

Just remembered another one- the "Secret Six" clue for the Harper's Ferry Raid. It seemed a little too early for me, but I guess that's because I've studied the Civil War in depth.

[Cheynem]

Eliza says the packets have been sent to George.

Here is the Bernoulli tossup:

One person with this last name is the namesake of the coefficients of the Taylor series for x over the quantity e to the x minus 1 centered at x = 0. Another person with this last name lends his name to a theory along with Euler that gives an equation governing the transverse deflection of a beam as a function of its flexural rigidity and the applied load. The former lends his name to a process in which the outcomes of independent experiments can only be “successes” and “failures” with fixed probability, exemplified by a coin toss. The latter lends his name to an analog of the conservation of energy that describes inviscid flow. For 10 points, identify this family of Swiss scientists, one of whom names a principle from fluid mechanics.
ANSWER: Bernoulli [Accept Jakob Bernoulli and Daniel Bernoulli]

(This is from the original iteration--this may have been edited)

As for the Secret Six clue, I think at this level, that's fine. I'm happy this tournament had 2/0 Secret Six.

[eliza.grames]

Eliza says the packets have been sent to George.

This was done about a month ago, so hopefully they should be posted soon. In the meantime, if anyone is dying to have the packets they can email me at quizbowl at umn dot edu and I'll send them to you.

[Frater Taciturnus]

http://collegiate.quizbowlpackets.com/archive/MUT2011