2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

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2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Important Bird Area »

OK, this is the real 2011 ICT discussion.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Auroni »

Comment on my questions!

D1:

Tossups: Blood and Iron Speech
Bonuses: continuity equation/momentum/Laplacian
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Unicolored Jay »

That pencil-and-paper bonus in one of the DII packets (11?) came out of nowhere. I didn't expect to see it.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Not That Kind of Christian!! »

The very first bonus in the DII finals packet was also a not-so-awesome throwback.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Mike Bentley »

Not That Kind of Christian!! wrote:The very first bonus in the DII finals packet was also a not-so-awesome throwback.
This bonus was written 7 years ago. I don't understand why questions from 7 years ago are making their way into the set.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Papa's in the House »

People in my car played the 2009 ICT D1 set on the way up to Chicago on Friday night to practice. When I played this year's D2 set, I noticed a couple of word for word repeated bonuses (with changed third parts): the Ishtar/Anu/Ea bonus (Antu was the original third part and it was word for word repeated in the D1 set, I heard) and the bonus on Transnistria. My team didn't control either of these bonuses when we heard them, but I was surprised to hear them come up. I don't know if there were other repeats.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by setht »

Papa's in the House wrote:People in my car played the 2009 ICT D1 set on the way up to Chicago on Friday night to practice. When I played this year's D2 set, I noticed a couple of word for word repeated bonuses (with changed third parts): the Ishtar/Anu/Ea bonus (Antu was the original third part and it was word for word repeated in the D1 set, I heard) and the bonus on Transnistria. My team didn't control either of these bonuses when we heard them, but I was surprised to hear them come up. I don't know if there were other repeats.
The DI version of the Mesopotamian bonus in this year's set was Ishtar/Anu/Antu. On looking things up, it appears that the two questions were submitted by the same writer in 2003 and 2005. I don't think there's any way to tell if the writer wrote almost exactly the same bonus two years apart (presumably by accident), or if one of the two was overwritten by a subject or set editor, or edited in a way that made it closer to the other. I edited the question that was in this year's set slightly, but not being aware of the question in the 2009 set I treated it as a good-looking myth question that needed very little work, rather than a near-exact repeat that needed to be replaced wholesale.

I don't know if there's any good way to get Ginseng to identify and root out nearly-exact repeats submitted years apart, but I will ask R. about this.

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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

FWIW, there was a bonus that went Taurus/Anatolia/Cilician Gates this year (wasn't directed to my team, so I might have the answers wrong). I remember answering a question in last year's final that went Turkey/Taurus/Cilician Gates.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by setht »

Tees-Exe Line wrote:FWIW, there was a bonus that went Taurus/Anatolia/Cilician Gates this year (wasn't directed to my team, so I might have the answers wrong). I remember answering a question in last year's final that went Turkey/Taurus/Cilician Gates.
Here are the two questions:
2010 ICT wrote:The Nur Mountains run parallel to the {Gulf of Iskenderun} in this nation's Hatay Province. For 10 points each--

A. Name this nation.

answer: Republic of _Turkey_

B. The Nur Mountains are an offshoot of this range running from Lake Egridir in the west to the headwaters of the Euphrates in the east.

answer: _Taurus_ Mountains

C. This main pass through the Taurus Mountains, used by Alexander the Great prior to the Battle of Issus, is also known as G\"ulek Pass.

answer: _Cilician Gates_ [si-LISH-uhn]
and
2011 ICT wrote:Demirkazik is the highest peak in this mountain range that parallels the Mediterranean coast. For 10 points each--

A. Name this Turkish range, the source of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

answer: _Taurus_ Mountains

B. Lying to the north of the Taurus Mountains is this plateau, site of Cappadocia.

answer: (Central) _Anatolian_ Plateau (accept _Anatolia_)

C. Alexander the Great took his army through this corridor in the Taurus Mountains that is also known as G\"ulek Pass.

answer: _Cilician Gates_
These were written by the same person one year apart (shortly before ICT in both cases). I don't know if they didn't realize/forgot they'd written a very similar question last year or if they thought this one was sufficiently different or what happened. Regardless, this seems.. non-ideal.

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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Kyle »

Hatay has had a pretty interesting history, since the Treaty of Lausanne gave it to Syria and then the Turks managed to get it anyway in the late 1930s. It was still disputed until the recent improvement in Turkish-Syrian relations (particularly in terms of economic development on the border) papered things over, something that has been in the news a lot lately. In addition, Cappadocia is a seriously interesting place, both culturally and geologically speaking. Consequently, there was a lot of potential here to write a bonus that was interesting, but, as is typical of NAQT geography, these bonuses are both really boring. People complain a lot that geography questions are just lists of places. Sometimes that is not true. But both of these bonuses are just lists of places. Neither tells me anything about why I should care about this part of the world. And that's a shame, but it's also--sadly--to be expected in NAQT tournaments.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Jeremy Gibbs Paradox »

Two bonuses that stuck out as particularly egregious in the D2 set:
During Round 12 (I believe) there was a bonus that was in two parts. First part, for 5 points each name these three muses of poetry. Then the second part, five parts each, name the symbols associated with them. I thought it sort of ridiculous that there was a bonus that required six answers for 30 points whereas all the others required only 3, plus the fact that this could have been reformatted rather easily.

Another one that rankled me was the bonus in round 13 on the 2009 Grammys. Not the awards for the year 2009 that aired in 2010, but the one that if you were a freshman would have aired your junior year of high school. This was a current events trash from all appearances that had a clear "sell by" date that had long since past and could have easily been redone with the 2011 information. It just looked like it was pulled from an old set or had just never been used and happened to be lying around.

There's question that stands out and it was the first tossup in either rounds 10, 12 or 14. (I want to say one of the first two but I really cannot remember.) Anyway, it was on something math related (I don't recall the answer.) but it read something like "First do this. Then do this. Then do this." There did not seem to be pyramidal clues if I was reading what I think I was reading correctly, it just seemed to be listing off random operations as if stating a recipe or something. But then again this is math, so I have no idea what I was looking at so I could very easily be wrong.

These are the specific examples that stuck out. Overall with some minor quibbles in phrasing I didn't see too much in the D2 set I had a problem with and I didn't see much wrong with the D1 final (the only round in that division I heard).
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Alejandro »

Jeremy Gibbs Paradox wrote:There's question that stands out and it was the first tossup in either rounds 10, 12 or 14. (I want to say one of the first two but I really cannot remember.) Anyway, it was on something math related (I don't recall the answer.) but it read something like "First do this. Then do this. Then do this." There did not seem to be pyramidal clues if I was reading what I think I was reading correctly, it just seemed to be listing off random operations as if stating a recipe or something. But then again this is math, so I have no idea what I was looking at so I could very easily be wrong.
I think you're describing the Dijkstra's Algorithm tossup, which started with a clue about labeling all not-source nodes with a cost of infinity.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Jeremy Gibbs Paradox »

Yes that is the one I'm thinking about.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by AKKOLADE »

Jeremy Gibbs Paradox wrote:Another one that rankled me was the bonus in round 13 on the 2009 Grammys. Not the awards for the year 2009 that aired in 2010, but the one that if you were a freshman would have aired your junior year of high school. This was a current events trash from all appearances that had a clear "sell by" date that had long since past and could have easily been redone with the 2011 information. It just looked like it was pulled from an old set or had just never been used and happened to be lying around.
I think it was an older question, but it's my opinion the question was still functional since the songs are notable, and the 2009 Grammys bit allowed for an easy way to cover a more diverse variety of songs in one shot. It's not like it was "name these songs from the 1967 Grammys" with "Eleanor Rigby", "Strangers in the Night," and "Crying Time" or something like that.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Cody »

I'll have to wait until Wed. when I have the set to make more substantial comments, but one question that really stuck out as being bad to me was the op-amp question; I have no clue where it went after the lead-in, but it started with something like "one model of them is the 741," which is the exactly the wrong way to start any op-amp question.

On a more positive note, I thought some of the bonuses did a good job of testing important real-world knowledge--the ALU/XOR/2's complement bonus particularly stands out to me in this regard.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Ringil »

The tossup on the Parthian empire in the finals of D2 began with the clue something like: an offshoot of this dynasty was the Arsacid dynasty. This clue makes very little sense as the Parthians were ruled by the Arsacid dynasty and seems like a very poor thing to begin a leadin with, even though it is almost certainly true that some offshoot of the Parthians were ruled by the Parthians.

Also, the tossup on the Seebeck effect not having a prompt on thermoelectric effect was annoying.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by setht »

SirT wrote:one question that really stuck out as being bad to me was the op-amp question; I have no clue where it went after the lead-in, but it started with something like "one model of them is the 741," which is the exactly the wrong way to start any op-amp question.
Here's the question.
I wrote wrote:A ubiquitous compensated model of these devices is the 741. Simple examples of these devices include comparators, in which negative feedback is absent. Ideally they have infinite slew rate and obey their two golden rules, that the input draws no current and that the output adjusts to cancel any (*) voltage difference between the inverting and non-inverting inputs. For 10 points--name these devices whose output voltage equals the difference of input voltages times a large gain.

answer: _op_erational _amp_lifiers
Can you elaborate on your objections? I'm not sure if the claim is that no one cares about particular op-amp models, or about the 741 in particular, or if the claim is that everyone knows about the 741 and so that can't be the lead-in, or if there's some other problem.

Thanks,
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

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setht wrote:
SirT wrote:one question that really stuck out as being bad to me was the op-amp question; I have no clue where it went after the lead-in, but it started with something like "one model of them is the 741," which is the exactly the wrong way to start any op-amp question.
Here's the question.
I wrote wrote:A ubiquitous compensated model of these devices is the 741. Simple examples of these devices include comparators, in which negative feedback is absent. Ideally they have infinite slew rate and obey their two golden rules, that the input draws no current and that the output adjusts to cancel any (*) voltage difference between the inverting and non-inverting inputs. For 10 points--name these devices whose output voltage equals the difference of input voltages times a large gain.

answer: _op_erational _amp_lifiers
Can you elaborate on your objections? I'm not sure if the claim is that no one cares about particular op-amp models, or about the 741 in particular, or if the claim is that everyone knows about the 741 and so that can't be the lead-in, or if there's some other problem.

Thanks,
-Seth
The 741 op-amp is used in almost every intro to circuits lab, and is often used during the lecture portion of the course as well to discuss how op-amps work, or as an introduction to dependent sources. Also, even after taking 5 classes in circuit/electronics lab, the only model of op-amp I could name is the 741 because it is so ubiquitous.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

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I'd like to see the semiconductor bonus in DII if possible. I think it was bonus 22 or 23 in Packet 14. The second part made reference to "bias" in a way that I think is incorrect, but would need to see again to be sure.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by jonah »

MicroEStudent wrote:I'd like to see the semiconductor bonus in DII if possible. I think it was bonus 22 or 23 in Packet 14. The second part made reference to "bias" in a way that I think is incorrect, but would need to see again to be sure.
I wrote:The "bipolar junction" type of this device consists of a base, collector, and emitter. For 10 points each--

A. Name these {circuit elements} often used to amplify signals.

answer: _transistor_s

B. This other type of transistor generally has a fourth terminal to control its bias, in addition to the gate, drain, and source.

answer: _field-effect_ transistor(s) or _FET_(s)

C. This type of field-effect transistor uses two {~p~-~n~ junctions} separated by layers of aluminum and silicon dioxide.

answer: _MOS_FET or _metal-oxide-semiconductor_ field-effect transistor (do not accept "MESFET")
This isn't really my area of expertise (it's all stuff we covered in my intro to electrical engineering class, but that was long ago), so I apologize if there's a problem with it and I hope it didn't stop you or anyone else from getting deserved points. If there is an issue, what is it and how might it be fixed?
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Cody »

setht wrote:Can you elaborate on your objections? I'm not sure if the claim is that no one cares about particular op-amp models, or about the 741 in particular, or if the claim is that everyone knows about the 741 and so that can't be the lead-in, or if there's some other problem.
I guess I'm a bit late responding, but, basically, what Nate said. The 741 is the only op-amp model you'd mention in lecture/use in lab and would be the most common model you'd use in the real world, to boot. It would have been much better if it was either right before or right after slew rate.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by MicroEStudent »

jonah wrote:
I wrote:The "bipolar junction" type of this device consists of a base, collector, and emitter. For 10 points each--

A. Name these {circuit elements} often used to amplify signals.

answer: _transistor_s

B. This other type of transistor generally has a fourth terminal to control its bias, in addition to the gate, drain, and source.

answer: _field-effect_ transistor(s) or _FET_(s)

C. This type of field-effect transistor uses two {~p~-~n~ junctions} separated by layers of aluminum and silicon dioxide.

answer: _MOS_FET or _metal-oxide-semiconductor_ field-effect transistor (do not accept "MESFET")
This isn't really my area of expertise (it's all stuff we covered in my intro to electrical engineering class, but that was long ago), so I apologize if there's a problem with it and I hope it didn't stop you or anyone else from getting deserved points. If there is an issue, what is it and how might it be fixed?
I was reading, not playing, and this bonus was not read in the round (it would have been if the 24th tossup hadn't gone dead), so no worries from my room.

For the second part, the body is almost always grounded and tied to the source. The bias is adjusted on the gate, not the body, due to issues with the body effect. The body could hypothetically used as a gate, but that would not be a good idea.

For the third part, Al-oxide-Si stacks are about 15 years-old now, so that isn't a current description. Polysilicon is used a lot, although a return back to metal gates is occurring. A strict "MOS" stack is rare nowadays.

I also think that FET and MOSFET are of equal difficulty. One would not have heard of a FET without hearing about a MOSFET. Maybe a third part on Germanium (referring to the use of SiGe in channels) would have been an adequate hard part.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

The 741 really is everywhere. I'm not a fan of part numbers in questions but that's probably the one exception.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Bartleby »

Bentley Like Beckham wrote:
Not That Kind of Christian!! wrote:The very first bonus in the DII finals packet was also a not-so-awesome throwback.
This bonus was written 7 years ago. I don't understand why questions from 7 years ago are making their way into the set.
This stood out to me as well.

I'll temper this by saying that the only thing I can be considered any kind of expert on is trash, and that I'm going to re-read the set before I say anything substantive, but I do recall quite disliking the tossup on "White Collar", because it was a very confusing question. It gives one vague clue at the start that doesn't seem to identify what you're looking for as a television show, then it talks about C. Wright Mills for the rest of the question, before returning to the TV show in the last part of the last sentence. I think the tossup should have been either about C. Wright Mills or the television show "White Collar", because the trash element of the question provides little context towards deriving an answer.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by setht »

Bartleby wrote:I do recall quite disliking the tossup on "White Collar", because it was a very confusing question. It gives one vague clue at the start that doesn't seem to identify what you're looking for as a television show, then it talks about C. Wright Mills for the rest of the question, before returning to the TV show in the last part of the last sentence. I think the tossup should have been either about C. Wright Mills or the television show "White Collar", because the trash element of the question provides little context towards deriving an answer.
I wrote wrote:Villains on this show include Matthew Keller and Garrett Fowler. The book of this name lists fetishization of enterprise and bureaucracy and rationalization of corporate structure as two of "Three Trends" characterizing "The Managerial Demiurge;" it also discusses "The Morale of the Cheerful (*) Robots" and "The Great Salesroom." For 10 points--give this title of both C. Wright Mills's study of America's middle class and a show in which con man Neal Caffrey helps the FBI solve non-violent crimes.

answer: _White Collar_
I agree that there's very little trash material in this question--one brief sentence at the start, then an extra giveaway at the end. That was intentional on my part, since I wanted to focus almost entirely on the Mills work; confusing people was not my intent. Is there something wrong with the first two sentences as establishing "this is the name of a TV show and a book"?

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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

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I didn't think the word "show" had been used, so that was part of my confusion. I mean, if you wanted to focus on the Mills work, why not just write exclusively on it? The format of NAQT lends itself to having a competent trash/CE player on your team, which in my team's case is me, but that also means that when trash/CE questions come up, they're more inclined to let me focus on the question. I don't know who C. Wright Mills is (although I fully admit that I probably should), and so someone on my team who does has to snap back into the question, and by the time the gears are in motion, everyone is a bit confused as to what is going on. I don't mind common-link tossups (which is I guess what you'd classify this as), but in this case, I think you would have been better-served to just eliminate the trash part and focus exclusively on C. Wright Mills' "White Collar".
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Ondes Martenot »

I'm pretty sure that White Collar falls under the much hated category of "Mixed Impure Academic", whose continued existence baffles many quizbowlers including myself.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by grapesmoker »

Ondes Martenot wrote:I'm pretty sure that White Collar falls under the much hated category of "Mixed Impure Academic", whose continued existence baffles many quizbowlers including myself.
Yeah, not to rag on Seth here who wrote a good question given the constraint, but the whole notion of this category is just a bad idea.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Bartleby »

grapesmoker wrote:
Ondes Martenot wrote:I'm pretty sure that White Collar falls under the much hated category of "Mixed Impure Academic", whose continued existence baffles many quizbowlers including myself.
Yeah, not to rag on Seth here who wrote a good question given the constraint, but the whole notion of this category is just a bad idea.
In that case, then I will join these posts in saying that the question is good, given that constraint (of which I was unaware, because the NAQT distributional text is a bit confusing, in terms of deciding where some questions fall), but this "Mixed Impure Academic" category should perhaps be reconsidered.

EDIT: Although to clarify, I didn't think that the tossup was "trash" per se, but when it leads off with "Two villains in this show...", I learn forward, in much the same way that I lean back when I hear "The constant proven by this law can be represented as...".
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Ondes Martenot »

A very small complaint: The tossup on ethers started along the lines "cryptands are a three dimensional version of the two dimensional version of this functional group". Not only is this clue written somewhat confusingly, it is also inaccurate since cryptands have both nitrogen and oxygen atoms so referring to them as a 3-D version of crown ethers doesn't really work.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Irreligion in Bangladesh »

I thought the D2 set was very good throughout, with very few clunker questions. My thoughts are a little disconnected right now, as is the time I have to get them down, so I'll probably pip in there at random intervals. First two thoughts:
1. The tossup on "fractals" didn't seem to start off with great math clues. IIRC, it led off with some names of fractals, then the "Coast of Britain" essay (where it got buzzed by my teammate, so I don't know where it went from there). Up until the buzz, I vaguely remember thinking it was a mythology tossup or something, which probably shouldn't be happening on science questions. Could that question get posted? I might be remembering things wrong.

2. It seemed like the last three packets of the D2 playoffs were much, much harder than the first three playoff packets, both in tossup accessibility and (to a lesser extent) bonus conversion. It might just be spotty knowledge on my part, but I wonder if the stats bear this out. Do we have round report for this?
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by setht »

Ondes Martenot wrote:A very small complaint: The tossup on ethers started along the lines "cryptands are a three dimensional version of the two dimensional version of this functional group". Not only is this clue written somewhat confusingly, it is also inaccurate since cryptands have both nitrogen and oxygen atoms so referring to them as a 3-D version of crown ethers doesn't really work.
Here's the DI version:
I wrote:Ligand polymers of these compounds form the arms of so-called octopus molecules. Cryptands are three-dimensional analogues of large rings of these compounds that can form complexes with cations. They are treated with heat and with alkyllithium compounds in the Claisen and Wittig rearrangements. They can also form (*) highly-strained three-membered rings known as {epoxides}. For 10 points--name these compounds that include crown variants and contain an oxygen atom bound to two alkyl or aryl groups.

answer: _ether_s
I wrote the question after seeing "octopus molecules" in the index of some chemistry book and thinking "I have to write a tossup on that." I believe the wording of the second sentence came from that same book. I apologize if that clue was confusing.

-Seth

p.s. I think someone pointed out on Saturday that I should have put in directions to accept "crown ethers" on early buzzes. I hope this didn't cause any problems for people.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by setht »

I'd appreciate it if people could specify whether they are commenting on the DI or DII versions of questions--it'll help with pasting in the appropriate question text and with discussion in general.

Thanks,
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by ValenciaQBowl »

A minor quibble: a toss-up I read in the playoff rounds in DI on "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" noted that the protagonist, Harry, sees (or goes over, or something--I forgot to take home a question set!) the frozen carcass of a leopard in his dreamed ascent in a plane over the mountain while he's dying. In fact, the leopard is mentioned only in the epigraph of the story, but never appears in the story at all. Certainly this is nothing that would keep anyone from getting the question, but it was, uh, wrong.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by ValenciaQBowl »

I think someone pointed out on Saturday that I should have put in directions to accept "crown ethers" on early buzzes. I hope this didn't cause any problems for people.
This happened in my room; I think it may have been Aaron Cohen who said "crown ethers," actually. Though I know nothing of science, I took it simply because I saw the word "crown" later and figured it must be okay at that spot, then.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Ringil »

Also, my teammates felt that the there was a significant lack of bio tossups throughout the tournament. This could just be a selection bias due to bio tossups being near the end of the packet or something, but I thought I'd put it out there
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by women, fire and dangerous things »

I just want to say that whoever wrote the Joanna Newsom bonus is my hero.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Not That Kind of Christian!! »

ValenciaQBowl wrote:
I think someone pointed out on Saturday that I should have put in directions to accept "crown ethers" on early buzzes. I hope this didn't cause any problems for people.
This happened in my room; I think it may have been Aaron Cohen who said "crown ethers," actually. Though I know nothing of science, I took it simply because I saw the word "crown" later and figured it must be okay at that spot, then.
This happened in mine. Public apology to Gautam Kandlikar.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Matt Weiner »

"White Collar" seemed to suffer from a problem with "trash/academic have same name!" mixed impure questions, which is that by compacting the description of a show that (I found out this weekend) many quizbowlers watch into half a sentence, you cause a non-pyramidal/buzzer race situation.

The tossup on Bone was a flabbergastingly ill-conceived idea difficulty-wise.

Nothing else really stood out as a fundamentally awful question; pretty good set for the most part. If there's one systematic thing to say it's that there does still seem to be some pretty wide variance across the subject editors in terms of how hard it's supposed to be to get 30 on a bonus.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

While the field effects tossup was a great idea, its execution wasn't great. I assume it was chemistry given its first clue, so I'll look at it from that perspective. For one thing, they aren't discussed at the undergraduate level in chemistry at all. I'll take this as more or less okay as something you can do once a tournament, particularly because field effects come up in other contexts in science. But the tossup immediately after differentiates them from resonance and inductive effects, and so there's literally only one plausible answer, and either you know it or you don't. I wouldn't be surprised if this didn't create a problem because not many people were going to buzz in the first half of that tossup anyway, but it's a suboptimal way to write the question.

On the whole, I really liked the science, especially some of the physics and math (adiabatic theorem, though I didn't get to hear much of it; seven; perfect; heart attack; logistic map; memory allocation). Many thanks to the writers of those questions and of course to the rest of the tournament. (Oh, especially: the "Gerontion" tossup, as that's long been my favorite Eliot poem for whatever reason.)
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by setht »

Ringil wrote:Also, my teammates felt that the there was a significant lack of bio tossups throughout the tournament. This could just be a selection bias due to bio tossups being near the end of the packet or something, but I thought I'd put it out there
Huh. I'm not sure what happened here; the set has 19/19 bio (as it's supposed to), plus an extra 1/1 bio in the misc. science portion. It's possible that more of the bio tossups ended up late in packets than other science tossups, but I'd be surprised if it was a large effect.

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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by setht »

Matt Weiner wrote:"White Collar" seemed to suffer from a problem with "trash/academic have same name!" mixed impure questions, which is that by compacting the description of a show that (I found out this weekend) many quizbowlers watch into half a sentence, you cause a non-pyramidal/buzzer race situation.
To make sure I understand: many people have deep enough "White Collar" (the show) knowledge that they buzzed on the first sentence? If so, that's entirely on me; I wasn't sure how deep to go on clues about White Collar (the show) for my lead-in, and I presumably would have made the same mistake writing that as a pure pop culture question.
Matt Weiner wrote:Nothing else really stood out as a fundamentally awful question; pretty good set for the most part. If there's one systematic thing to say it's that there does still seem to be some pretty wide variance across the subject editors in terms of how hard it's supposed to be to get 30 on a bonus.
I think this one is probably also on me, rather than the subject editors. I took on ICT set editing after Andrew had to hand it off, and after the post-SCT discussion I felt that it would be appropriate to shift the bonus difficulty downwards from much of what I saw in the set at that time--so I did stuff like replace bonus parts on Ernst Barlach and Lizardi with parts on Magdeburg (probably still too hard) and Azuela (hopefully reasonable). I don't think I managed to do this throughout the whole set, and it's very possible that some subject editors aimed for a previously-defined target difficulty without realizing I'd shifted the goalposts a bit.

I'll start a thread for discussion of the difficulty. I am very interested in hearing what people thought about the range of tossup answers and where people would like to see bonus difficulty in the future.

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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

Could the D1 bonus that started with "oligopoly" be posted? It wasn't directed at me, but I remember thinking that it was odd how the second and possibly third parts related oligopoly to kinked demand curves. Oligopoly is obviously a supply-side matter. Is the claim that in supply-chain models, oligopoly in the output market causes kinked demand in the input market?
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by AKKOLADE »

Matt Weiner wrote:The tossup on Bone was a flabbergastingly ill-conceived idea difficulty-wise.
That's my screw up. I vastly overestimated how well known the work is. Sorry.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by setht »

Crazy Andy Watkins wrote:While the field effects tossup was a great idea, its execution wasn't great. I assume it was chemistry given its first clue, so I'll look at it from that perspective. For one thing, they aren't discussed at the undergraduate level in chemistry at all. I'll take this as more or less okay as something you can do once a tournament, particularly because field effects come up in other contexts in science. But the tossup immediately after differentiates them from resonance and inductive effects, and so there's literally only one plausible answer, and either you know it or you don't. I wouldn't be surprised if this didn't create a problem because not many people were going to buzz in the first half of that tossup anyway, but it's a suboptimal way to write the question.
I wrote:In nitrogen ylides this type of effect stabilizes carbanions. This type of effect is grouped with resonance effects as an electrical effect, and differs from inductive effects in being a through-space interaction that changes distant bond polarities. This quantity's mean value is used in the (*) Hartree-Fock method, which is said to be self-consistent in this quantity. For 10 points--give this term for an effect by which gate voltage modulates channel conduction in transistors known as FETs.

answer: _field_ effect(s) (prompt on "electrical effects" before it is read)
Given that field effects in chemistry are advanced material, is there something wrong with cutting to the chase in the second sentence before going on to (I think) easier clues? My intent was not to write a whole tossup on field effects in chemistry since I figured that would be a bit too crazy.

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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by setht »

Tees-Exe Line wrote:Could the D1 bonus that started with "oligopoly" be posted? It wasn't directed at me, but I remember thinking that it was odd how the second and possibly third parts related oligopoly to kinked demand curves. Oligopoly is obviously a supply-side matter. Is the claim that in supply-chain models, oligopoly in the output market causes kinked demand in the input market?
Packet 5 wrote:For 10 points each--give the following about a certain market condition from economics:

A. This term describes a market in which prices and outputs are largely determined by only a few sellers.

answer: _oligopoly_ (accept _oligopolistic_ competition)

B. According to microeconomic theory, oligopolistic firms tend to exhibit these types of downward-sloping demand curves due to a discontinuity in their marginal revenue curves.

answer: _kinked_ demand curve

C. This oligopoly model named for a French economist results in a {Nash equilibrium} in output as firms simultaneously choose a quantity to produce, taking as given the quantity produced by their rivals.

answer: _Cournot_ [kor-noh] competition
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

setht wrote:
Crazy Andy Watkins wrote:While the field effects tossup was a great idea, its execution wasn't great. I assume it was chemistry given its first clue, so I'll look at it from that perspective. For one thing, they aren't discussed at the undergraduate level in chemistry at all. I'll take this as more or less okay as something you can do once a tournament, particularly because field effects come up in other contexts in science. But the tossup immediately after differentiates them from resonance and inductive effects, and so there's literally only one plausible answer, and either you know it or you don't. I wouldn't be surprised if this didn't create a problem because not many people were going to buzz in the first half of that tossup anyway, but it's a suboptimal way to write the question.
I wrote:In nitrogen ylides this type of effect stabilizes carbanions. This type of effect is grouped with resonance effects as an electrical effect, and differs from inductive effects in being a through-space interaction that changes distant bond polarities. This quantity's mean value is used in the (*) Hartree-Fock method, which is said to be self-consistent in this quantity. For 10 points--give this term for an effect by which gate voltage modulates channel conduction in transistors known as FETs.

answer: _field_ effect(s) (prompt on "electrical effects" before it is read)
Given that field effects in chemistry are advanced material, is there something wrong with cutting to the chase in the second sentence before going on to (I think) easier clues? My intent was not to write a whole tossup on field effects in chemistry since I figured that would be a bit too crazy.
I guess it's not, but I think it's silly for the powermark to be after the point where, if you are aware of the mere fact that there are (basically) three types of effects, you've explicitly named and eliminated two of them. You just have to be aware that there is an item that isn't resonance or inductive in that list (like me!) to buzz. Basically, the tossup goes from impossible to incredibly easy for one group of people (perhaps that's a small group) and then back to middle clue level talking about HF. I guess I'd rather the tossup have been balanced around the pchem/physics alone, or around the organic alone (but it'd be super-super-super-hard that way). Instead it was a mishmash of difficulties, and since it involved so many different types of knowledge you might encounter in different ways, it's hard to say for how many players the difficulty curve will be strictly decreasing.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Tees-Exe Line »

I would say the second part is confusing. Firms don't have demand curves in a partial equilibrium model (a model of only one good or factor market). Firms might "face" a kinked demand curve, but I don't really get why they would as a result of oligopoly (and I've been sitting here thinking about it, not answering a question in three seconds.) It sounds like this was written too quickly (leaving out important information) based on some example in an undergraduate micro book.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by Cheynem »

For what it's worth, Fred, I liked Bone, and like you, was also surprised to find nobody else in the room knew about it.

I guess I don't have as a big problem with mixed impure questions as some do. They probably come up too much in NAQT, but I wouldn't have a problem with like lowering the overall trash distro or geography distro and putting in more of them. When done right, you can do some interesting things with them. I know nothing about the book or show White Collar, so I can't comment on that one, though.
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Re: 2011 ICT Question-specific discussion

Post by cvdwightw »

I was pretty surprised that It is So! (If You Think So) was not listed as an explicit alternate answer for Right You Are (If You Think You Are). Also, the Australopithecus question turned into a giant game of buzzer chicken; I think everyone in our room sussed out that it was an early human ancestor (certainly at least by the words "Turkana Boy") and didn't want to buzz in case it was something magically obscure. I also heard that the Wu Zetian question suffered from gender-coyness problems, but we didn't get to that one. There were a couple of weird power-mark situations (Manu should probably have been the first word after power in the flood question; Hayashi should have had the power mark somewhere before "he names a feature of the H-R diagram"), but both those tossups seemed reasonably pyramidal otherwise. Other than that, I can't remember off the top of my head any problematic questions or answer lines that haven't already been mentioned.

One thing that I did like about this set, to build on something mentioned by Andrew in the other thread, is that it did a good job of connecting things you had heard of to things that you hadn't heard of, or connecting things you had heard of in a way that you hadn't connected them before. I think that the latter type of connection is a real strong case for keeping the mixed-pure-academic distribution.
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