The Quizbowl Resource Center

One thing I remember from the HSNCT a few years back was that the rush to get through tossups led to inconsistencies in reading quality. Is this a problem in the college game too?

I'm telling you. Record Hentzel reading the questions on tape/CD/mp3/whatever. One staffer per room to keep score, run the clock, and handle the tape/cd/mp3 player. It will be our substitute for the Quizbowl of the Future until they finish the HentzelBot 5000 with free Matt Bruce statkeeper with kung fu grip.

QuizbowlPostmodernist wrote:I'm telling you. Record Hentzel reading the questions on tape/CD/mp3/whatever. One staffer per room to keep score, run the clock, and handle the tape/cd/mp3 player. It will be our substitute for the Quizbowl of the Future until they finish the HentzelBot 5000 with free Matt Bruce statkeeper with kung fu grip.

I found the idea really interesting when you first mentioned it. I just wonder how the transition from tossups to bonuses would be handled.

Rothlover wrote:

QuizbowlPostmodernist wrote:I'm telling you. Record Hentzel reading the questions on tape/CD/mp3/whatever. One staffer per room to keep score, run the clock, and handle the tape/cd/mp3 player. It will be our substitute for the Quizbowl of the Future until they finish the HentzelBot 5000 with free Matt Bruce statkeeper with kung fu grip.

I found the idea really interesting when you first mentioned it. I just wonder how the transition from tossups to bonuses would be handled.

Two instances of Winamp, each tossup and bonus is recorded as a separate file.

Rothlover wrote:

QuizbowlPostmodernist wrote:I'm telling you. Record Hentzel reading the questions on tape/CD/mp3/whatever. One staffer per room to keep score, run the clock, and handle the tape/cd/mp3 player. It will be our substitute for the Quizbowl of the Future until they finish the HentzelBot 5000 with free Matt Bruce statkeeper with kung fu grip.

I found the idea really interesting when you first mentioned it. I just wonder how the transition from tossups to bonuses would be handled.

Admittedly, I was semi-kidding when I mentioned it, but I envision some sort of software used in conjunction with a buzzer system that plugs into a laptop. The software also records how early into a tossup a team buzzes as additional data for tiebreakers and ICT bid selection.

An individual file for each question. Software starts a tossup being read. Someone buzzes. Software immediately pauses the audio file mid-word. Moderator clicks on who buzzed and whether or not the player answered correctly. If correct, software moves on to the next bonus. If not, software restarts the tossup (maybe rewinding a second or some other time fragment) and the question is completed for the other team.

I would probably work on designing a cheap buzzer system that you can plug into any laptop before coming up with the rest.

Then do the game software. And if you have time, the screen saver with animations of Matt Weiner's head.

QuizbowlPostmodernist wrote:with free Matt Bruce statkeeper with kung fu grip.

The (stat)keeper is where it's at!

QuizbowlPostmodernist wrote:

Rothlover wrote:

QuizbowlPostmodernist wrote:I'm telling you. Record Hentzel reading the questions on tape/CD/mp3/whatever. One staffer per room to keep score, run the clock, and handle the tape/cd/mp3 player. It will be our substitute for the Quizbowl of the Future until they finish the HentzelBot 5000 with free Matt Bruce statkeeper with kung fu grip.

I found the idea really interesting when you first mentioned it. I just wonder how the transition from tossups to bonuses would be handled.

Admittedly, I was semi-kidding when I mentioned it, but I envision some sort of software used in conjunction with a buzzer system that plugs into a laptop. The software also records how early into a tossup a team buzzes as additional data for tiebreakers and ICT bid selection.

An individual file for each question. Software starts a tossup being read. Someone buzzes. Software immediately pauses the audio file mid-word. Moderator clicks on who buzzed and whether or not the player answered correctly. If correct, software moves on to the next bonus. If not, software restarts the tossup (maybe rewinding a second or some other time fragment) and the question is completed for the other team.

This sounds something like JoeQuiz, a Canadian technological innovation that we tried to use in the Trans-Canada Championship Matches in 2005 and 2006. Unfortunately, the first time, we had some network problems that prevented us from using JoeQuiz, and the second time, after we did get JoeQuiz to start up, it crashed after every tossup.

The JoeQuiz software records tossups and then plays them back at each of the two sites on local computers in a long-distance match. The buzzer is replaced by the keyboard, and JoeQuiz notes the point in the question at which the first player buzzes in, avoiding the problem of different time delays to the moderator. Answers and bonuses are still given over the telephone (which was also invented in Canada).

For an idea of what it sounds like to play with JoeQuiz (albeit not entirely successfully), listen to the first 10 minutes of "2006 Trans-Canada" on this website.

But I'm told that some people have used JoeQuiz without problems.

Also, we've been doing Trans-Canada Championship Matches over the telephone almost every year since 2000. It really uses only 19th-century technology, but as far as I know, nobody else has tried anything like this. Maybe it's too much "funn"?

Someday I'd like to see or play in a long-distance quiz bowl match via a videoconference.

If you think this idea all the way through (which probably is not a good idea)...

Put each team in its own room with its own neutral moderator. For each tossup, each team is allowed an interrupt answer and then, if they do interrupt the question, they would have the option at the end of giving a rebound answer that could be the same or different than their interrupt answer. The moderator would have all the answers and would give teams credit for being right or wrong or prompt as necessary.

If either answer given was correct, the team would answer the bonus question.

You could play against several teams at once. After each bonus, you would get a score update showing how you were doing against each opponent. If you had the first interrupt correct answer, you would get your ten points and the bonus. If the other team had the first interrupt wrong answer, then they would get neg 5 and your rebound answer would be used. You would have different scores against different teams based on which tossups you got at which times.

The computers could also be set up to state who got the earliest correct answer for the whole tournament on each question. If set up properly, the computer would know who buzzed in each time, and the moderator would just tell the computer whether or not the right answer was given.

Because computers were invented in America, this would more likely work in America. By America, I mean the country America. The telephone was also invented in America despite false claims made by other nations.

It probably wouldn't be fun to play an entire tournament like this, but it might be tolerable to play a round in the morning and have the results used to set divisions for the rest of the morning rounds. It could also be tried to play an internet tournament so that people wouldn't have to travel.

My apologies for being so speculative in a thread that's trying to become serious again, but I gotta ask.

Jerry (or any other science person): How far away are we from real-time communication via Holograms, like in Star Wars? Because that would make for good quizbowl.

Bruce wrote:My apologies for being so speculative in a thread that's trying to become serious again, but I gotta ask.

Jerry (or any other science person): How far away are we from real-time communication via Holograms, like in Star Wars? Because that would make for good quizbowl.

I'm not sure how this would make for good quizbowl, but I'll try to answer your question. My experience with holography amounts to avoiding doing that lab both in grad school and as an undergrad, but I have a foggy understanding of how it works.

Basically, the sort of holography you're thinking of requires scattering a beam from the object, usually a laser beam, although it can be done with other light sources. The equipment required for holography is quite cumbersome for even small objects, and would be unwieldy for the purposes of quizbowl (not to mention that it would cost a fortune). Furthermore as I understand it real time holography would require very high data transfer rates, well beyond what is available on your average campus wireless connection. I think until those two problems are overcome, it won't really be viable at all; of course, I have no idea when this might happen, but I suspect not in the next 10 years.

grapesmoker wrote:

Bruce wrote:My apologies for being so speculative in a thread that's trying to become serious again, but I gotta ask.

Jerry (or any other science person): How far away are we from real-time communication via Holograms, like in Star Wars? Because that would make for good quizbowl.

I'm not sure how this would make for good quizbowl, but I'll try to answer your question. My experience with holography amounts to avoiding doing that lab both in grad school and as an undergrad, but I have a foggy understanding of how it works.

Basically, the sort of holography you're thinking of requires scattering a beam from the object, usually a laser beam, although it can be done with other light sources. The equipment required for holography is quite cumbersome for even small objects, and would be unwieldy for the purposes of quizbowl (not to mention that it would cost a fortune). Furthermore as I understand it real time holography would require very high data transfer rates, well beyond what is available on your average campus wireless connection. I think until those two problems are overcome, it won't really be viable at all; of course, I have no idea when this might happen, but I suspect not in the next 10 years.

A fortune you say? I bet chicago can only fit three into their budget then. I wonder who they'd pick.

grapesmoker wrote:Furthermore as I understand it real time holography would require very high data transfer rates, well beyond what is available on your average campus wireless connection.

I think that the data transfer issue is secondary to the capture and display issues (which I know nothing about); if you can paramaterize the surface well and just transfer deltas (as is done with most video codecs), it shouldn't be that big of an issue. Even if it were raw voxels, I think there are "good enough" compression schemes to transport it over most university Internet connections.

(Of course, we might have a lower tolerance for 3D surfaces with compression artifacts than for 2D images.)

Rothlover wrote:A fortune you say? I bet chicago can only fit three into their budget then. I wonder who they'd pick.

I suspect even Chicago's budget on infinity dollars would be strained by the purchase of such an installation.

Seriously though, like I was saying: two instances of Winamp, with Hentzel recorded reading tossups and bonuses. What could be easier?

grapesmoker wrote:

Rothlover wrote:A fortune you say? I bet chicago can only fit three into their budget then. I wonder who they'd pick.

I suspect even Chicago's budget on infinity dollars would be strained by the purchase of such an installation.

Seriously though, like I was saying: two instances of Winamp, with Hentzel recorded reading tossups and bonuses. What could be easier?

no timers?

Rothlover wrote:

grapesmoker wrote:

Rothlover wrote:A fortune you say? I bet chicago can only fit three into their budget then. I wonder who they'd pick.

I suspect even Chicago's budget on infinity dollars would be strained by the purchase of such an installation.

Seriously though, like I was saying: two instances of Winamp, with Hentzel recorded reading tossups and bonuses. What could be easier?

no timers?

Come on, we're talking about realistic solutions here Getting NAQT to abolish the clock ranks somewhere alongside building a perpetual motion machine in terms of probability.