NAQT distributions posted

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millionwaves
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Re: NAQT distributions posted

Post by millionwaves »

bt_green_warbler wrote:One thing that seems suboptimal here is that two of the four literature tossups in this packet are at 21 and 26. I'll ask R. what kind of fixes might be available for things like this.
Another thing that seems suboptimal is that by your distribution, there should be at least nine lit questions in that packet (given that one of the 4.5 tossups and 4.5 bonuses should be rounded up.) You have (by your count) 8, but I argue that that's actually seven, because one of the lit questions is "popular genres". Earlier, you guys were claiming that trash lit is counted as trash and just happens to be edited by the lit editor, but in this case, it seems like you're counting it as lit (and failing to meet your stated distribution anyway.) I submit to you that in the NAQT packets I've seen (which include most of the ICTs, this year's and last year's SCT, and most of the recent IS sets) this problem is widespread.

EDIT: I forgot that you dudes count myth as literature. So that's 5/4, but only if you count trash lit as lit, which (I think) you claim that you don't.
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Re: NAQT distributions posted

Post by Important Bird Area »

millionwaves wrote: Another thing that seems suboptimal is that by your distribution, there should be at least nine lit questions in that packet (given that one of the 4.5 tossups and 4.5 bonuses should be rounded up.) You have (by your count) 8, but I argue that that's actually seven, because one of the lit questions is "popular genres". Earlier, you guys were claiming that trash lit is counted as trash and just happens to be edited by the lit editor, but in this case, it seems like you're counting it as lit (and failing to meet your stated distribution anyway.) I submit to you that in the NAQT packets I've seen (which include most of the ICTs, this year's and last year's SCT, and most of the recent IS sets) this problem is widespread.
Trygve, I think you might be counting the myth in there.

The amount of non-myth/non-religious literature in an HSNCT packet is slightly higher than 4/4, but these will almost always round down, so 8 is in fact the expected number.

We've registered the complaint about "popular genres" and literature/trash distributions.
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Re: NAQT distributions posted

Post by millionwaves »

bt_green_warbler wrote: We've registered the complaint about "popular genres" and literature/trash distributions.
As long as you're registering my complaints, would you include one about counting mythology as lit? I would notice a difference if you coded it as something different because I would get to hear one more lit tossup in that round, which I would enjoy, but I wouldn't have to give up a myth tossup, which I also enjoy.
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Re: NAQT distributions posted

Post by Important Bird Area »

millionwaves wrote:
bt_green_warbler wrote: We've registered the complaint about "popular genres" and literature/trash distributions.
As long as you're registering my complaints, would you include one about counting mythology as lit? I would notice a difference if you coded it as something different because I would get to hear one more lit tossup in that round, which I would enjoy, but I wouldn't have to give up a myth tossup, which I also enjoy.
Sure, noted. You'd only get to hear one more lit tossup if we cut a tossup somewhere else in the distribution; anyplace in particular you have in mind, apart from the usual suspects already registered in this thread?
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Re: NAQT distributions posted

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bt_green_warbler wrote:anyplace in particular you have in mind, apart from the usual suspects already registered in this thread?
No, except purely personally, I'd like to see sports reduced more than I'd like to see geography and other pop culture reduced.
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Re: NAQT distributions posted

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Captain Sinico wrote: Without trying to reiterate tropes, I'll say that I'm confident that you, Andrew Yaphe, would use those slots for non-trash questions (as would I.) I am equally confident that they have been and will be used as trash questions a very large fraction of the time and will probably continue to be given NAQT's distribution and stable of writers. If I'm wrong there, I hope someone will say so.
I guess my point is this: there's a lot of leeway in this distribution such that even a packet following it to the letter and cleaving to a very rigorously conventional idea of what the terms mean could contain an absolute ton of trash. I feel like that has happened in the past and will probably continue to happen as long as that leeway exists, since not every writer is Andrew Yaphe (to my chagrin.) So, one of three things should happen, then: someone should tell me I'm wrong there and how, NAQT should change its distribution to be more rigorous and academic, or NAQT should tell me "People love (at least the potentiality of) a ton of trash, so we're keeping it."
MaS
Obviously, I appreciate the plaudits. I guess I wasn't sure what the purpose of this thread was going to be (or, to put it another way, which set of NAQT discussions we were about to rehash). I think I was assuming that it was going to be along the lines of "one of the big things which is stopping me, [X], from writing for NAQT is its distribution." I was trying to head that one off by pointing out that this aspect of the distribution is actually kind of cool (in the hands of the right people), and that one might see it as an opportunity to write interesting questions cutting across academic genres in a way that can be harder to do within the traditional ACF distribution.

And actually, that's about all I have to say on the subject, so I'll leave it at that.
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Re: NAQT distributions posted

Post by vandyhawk »

I'm not so much a fan of the "mixed, impure" academic category myself (though I kind of like the mixed, pure academic ones within reason). FWIW, of the 6 mixed, impure tossups in SCT though, I count 3 that could have also fit in the mixed, pure category, meaning no PC, 1 with 1 trash clue among 5-6 academic clues, and 2 with all academic clues but perhaps GKish giveaways. I'm not going to really defend the presence of the category and would be happy to see it go (either to mixed pure academic or other stuff), but figured I would at least throw out there that it wasn't as bad as some might assume it was, at least for SCT 09.
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Re: NAQT distributions posted

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millionwaves wrote:EDIT: I forgot that you dudes count myth as literature. So that's 5/4, but only if you count trash lit as lit, which (I think) you claim that you don't.
I'd have to look at the earlier thread for the exact phrasing, but we do count "trash lit" as lit- the decision that we made back in 1997 or whenever was to count trash lit as lit *and simultaneously* increase the lit distribution, such that there was (at that time) no reduction in the actual quantity of (non-trashy) literature. What's happened since is significant expansion of the literature canon, such that many players believe that our tournaments have insufficient literature content. (Not for NAQT: I tend to agree, as I've said elsewhere.)

That being said, "trash lit" accounts for less than half of a question per packet in recent NAQT tournaments.
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VP for Communication and history subject editor, NAQT
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Re: NAQT distributions posted

Post by Important Bird Area »

bt_green_warbler wrote:One thing that seems suboptimal here is that two of the four literature tossups in this packet are at 21 and 26. I'll ask R. what kind of fixes might be available for things like this.
Talked to R. about this issue, and we've both concluded that fixing this would have some rather nasty side effects.

Specifically: the easy fix for this would be to mandate that tossups 21-26 all come from different categories. (We already mandate that questions from the same category can't be "too close" to each other within a packet, which is why this issue manifests itself as 21/26.) That fix would prevent the existing problem visible in this HSNCT packet, of two literature tossups after tossup 20 (although it's worth noting that since this is HSNCT, tossup 21 is fairly likely to be read- it's not the death sentence tossup 21 would be in an IS set with majority-untimed use). Sadly, the results would display a different and worse problem. With that fix in place, no more than 3 of the 6 post-20 tossups would come from the big three of science, literature, and history. Therefore: the result would be that the "small categories" would be disproportionately over-represented in tossups 21-26. And that's a bad idea, because lots of our customers already believe that certain "small categories" (like philosophy, fine arts, and myth) are under-represented in our sets. We certainly don't want to adopt a fix for one distribution problem that leaves us open to the charge that we are deliberately hiding certain categories in the later tossups.

Now then: if you have an elegant solution to this problem that avoids this unwanted effect, please let us know; we'd be happy to adopt anything that can be reasonably plugged into our packet-construction systems.
Jeff Hoppes
President, Northern California Quiz Bowl Alliance
former HSQB Chief Admin (2012-13)
VP for Communication and history subject editor, NAQT
Editor emeritus, ACF

"I wish to make some kind of joke about Jeff's love of birds, but I always fear he'll turn them on me Hitchcock-style." -Fred
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Re: NAQT distributions posted

Post by millionwaves »

I split discussion of the ratio of American to European/World history over here.
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