The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

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The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by Charley Pride »

To prove that the arguments claiming that HSAPQ is inaccessible to the regular quizbowl player, I'll do a very simple analysis of a real HSAPQ answer space. The answers I list are lifted from packet 1 of HSAPQ's ACF-1 set. It's available on their site. This analysis pertains specifically to varsity quizbowl, but it can be extended easily to fresh/soph and JV. If it gets too long and boring, skip to the next post.

In order for this to work, we have to maintain a few assumptions:
1. A quizbowl player is better equipped to answer questions than a regular high school student. This can be compared to the idea that a member of the high school basketball team is better (way better) at basketball than the regular high school student.
2. Based on the first assumption, we can equate very basic quizbowl canon knowledge to stuff students are taught in school, because they fit into the "beyond the classroom" classification. To continue the basketball analogy: most everyone can dribble the ball, but it takes more advanced skill to play a zone defense--skill that every basketball player should have.
3. If a question can be answered by the giveaway, it is considered gettable and, furthermore, it is equated to a question that can be answered in the middle or even at the beginning. This assumption works because detractors of HSAPQ difficulty claim that those tossups would go dead. Therefore we also assume that all questions go to the end, and no negs happen.

Posted are just the giveaways and answers.
1. For 10 points, name this heavily fortified French defensive position that failed to prevent German invasion in
World War II.
ANSWER: the Maginot Line
I supposed you can say this is on the hard side, but I should hope that most high school world history classes will talk about the Maginot Line at some point. Definitely gettable.
2. For 10 points, identify this protagonist of a novel by Miguel de Cervantes.
ANSWER: Don Quixote
Every team should have at least one person who would get this, and any team that doesn't is a team in which someone isn't doing their job.
3. For 10 points, identify this element with atomic number 5 and symbol B.
ANSWER: boron
I suppose someone can say something like "barium" or "beryllium", but there's still no excuse for getting this wrong, especially since we require our students to learn at least basic chemistry in Illinois. Additionally, this is basic science canon knowledge.
4. For 10 points, name this "Hall of the Slain" where Valkyries escort fallen warriors in Norse myth.
ANSWER: Valhalla
This definitely isn't school knowledge, so I can see people fighting it. But if there's one thing you know about Norse myth, it's Odin. If there's one more thing, it's Thor. If there's just one more, it's probably Valhalla. This is admittedly less gettable than other mythology, but it's still very very basic quizbowl knowledge.
5. Billy Dee Williams played him as DA Harvey Dent in one film. For 10 points, name this dualistic villain played by Aaron Eckhart in “The Dark Knight”.
ANSWER: Two-Face
It's trash, so it doesn't pertain to our discussion. But for the record, this should have a 100% conversion rate.
6. Formerly his country's ambassador to India, for 10 points, name this Mexican poet of The Labyrinth of Solitude.
ANSWER: Octavio Paz
This isn't that hard for even a moderately serious quizbowler, but I can see this going dead in a lot of places. In fact, I don't even expect half the teams in the IHSA to get this. We'll call this one a dead ("ungettable") tossup.
7. For 10 points, name this ballet about Clara, which begins on Christmas eve, a composition by Tchaikovsky about a toy which turns into a
prince.
ANSWER: The Nutcracker
The Nutcracker is perhaps the most well-known ballet, and I'd be shocked if this ever went dead.
8. For 10 points, name this president who lost the 1932 election to Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression.
ANSWER: Herbert Hoover
Learning about Hoover is integral to learning about the Great Depression, which has to be integral to every high school US history class. Shouldn't go dead.
9. For 10 points, identify this organelle, which houses the cell's genetic information.
ANSWER: nucleus
100% conversion. Yes?
10. For 10 points, identify this Jewish sect that was known for its firm opposition to Roman polytheism, whose name is now synonymous with fanatic.
ANSWER: Zealots
The knowledge the question is testing is somewhat hard, but the vocab clue is pretty easy. Still, I can see how people could mess this up, so I'll stay on the safe side and call this one dead.
11. For 10 points, name this novel in which Nick Carraway describes the downfall of Jay Gatz, written by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
ANSWER: The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby is a very common "school novel", and it has to be one of the most basic parts of the high school literature canon. This shouldn't go dead.
12. For 10 points, identify this ocean which in 2007 lost nearly 10 million kilometers of sea-ice during the summer thaw.
ANSWER: Arctic Ocean
There aren't that many oceans in the world, and there's only one that's known for being really really really cold.
13. For 10 points, identify this Jewish holiday, which celebrates Esther’s victory over Haman’s evil plans.
ANSWER: Purim
There are enough Jews and studiers (I hope) where I shouldn't call this dead, but it is a moderately hard answer, so I'll let it go dead.
14. Often placed in mazes by researchers, For 10 points, name these rodents frequently used in psychological experiments.
ANSWER: rats [do not accept “mice”]
I can imagine tons of people buzzing in with "mice", but that doesn't really hurt this question's gettability, especially since the other team should get it if one team gets it wrong.
15. For 10 points, name this Tudor Monarch from 1509 to 1547 who had six wives.
ANSWER: Henry VIII
Henry VIII easily is one of the most famous English monarchs, and I think most teams should get it.
16. For 10 points, name this man who won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect.
ANSWER: Albert Einstein
Okay, so they don't mention E=MC^2. I learned this giveaway in sophomore chemistry class, and it's basic quizbowl canon knowledge. But since I'm being forgiving in this analysis, we'll let this one go dead, even though Albert Einstein would be expected to be THE stock guess for a physicist.
17. For 10 points, identify this Spanish painter of Third of May, 1808.
ANSWER: Francisco José de Goya
I guess this is reasonably hard to get, and while I'd like to expect most players to get this, I won't. Dead.
18. For 10 points, name this poet of “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” who wrote “beauty is truth; truth beauty” in “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”
ANSWER: John Keats
Should most every quizbowl team get this? Yes. Will they? No. Let it go dead.
19. For 10 points, identify this programming technique which reduces problems to base cases, commonly used for computing the terms of the Fibonacci sequence.
ANSWER: recursion
I guess this is a hard answer, but every calculus student should know it. It's not too hard, but we'll say it goes dead.
20. For 10 points, name this composer of The Creation and the “Farewell” and “Surprise” symphonies.
ANSWER: Franz Joseph Haydn
Fine, I'll let this one die, even though it shouldn't be that way.
Last edited by Charley Pride on Tue Mar 09, 2010 9:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by Charley Pride »

So out of 20 tossups, 8 were deemed ungettable by the majority of IHSA teams, and I was being pretty generous, in my opinion, as far as declaring things dead. Furthermore, much of what I declared dead was more because people wouldn't know them than because they were actually hard. What can we conclude from this?

1. In a round of 20 questions, it's possible that students learned 8 or more new quizbowl answer lines, and everyone learned something new about something. Is this such a bad thing? Is a tossup on Octavio Paz that goes dead inherently better than a tossup on Margaret Chase Smith that goes dead? In a word, yes. I want to know the conversion rate for that tossup, by the way. I predict 0%.

2. If asked why his (or her) players didn't know an answer that is reasonably easy, a coach basically has two options: (A) lie and say the answers are too hard and shouldn't be asked in quizbowl or (B) admit that they should have known it and endeavor to help them learn it, knowing that that is a coach's foremost duty: helping the players get better.

3. Detractors of good quizbowl claim that players cannot learn from what we call "good" questions, citing reasons like difficulty of information or domination by another team. To them I pose this question: what are you players learning from one liners? Furthermore, are your students actually learning anything? Are they studying quizbowl? Do they take notes (even mental) during matches? I'll answer for them and say the players are learning very little, because they aren't doing those things. My proof is the disappointing lack of both quality and improvement among the bulk of Illinois teams. So if so many players are learning very little, if anything, from any quizbowl, then why not use a format in which at least someone benefits? Specifically, why not use questions that good teams can learn from? My team, a team that takes notes all the time, doesn't do so for IHSA. We doodle. It's partially because the awful format makes us write a lot more, but it's also because it's a really poor source of learning for a serious quizbowler.

4. What makes quizbowl different from other activities so that we don't expect players to study or make major improvements over time? What makes it different so that we don't expect teams to be good or get better, and not only that, we fault good teams insisting on a system that rewards the hard work they have put in and (presumably) they bad teams haven't? The answer should be that quizbowl is not different, and it should not be treated differently from any other activity. A basketball player who didn't get better would be removed immediately from his team, not defended by an asinine coach who would prefer to lay blame on other (read: good) teams for his own team's stagnation. Handicapping a basketball game by altering the format would be greeted as ludicrous; quizbowl should be treated the same way.

EDIT: Tweakery.
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by jonah »

I really like this analysis. I disagree about some of the individual choices on questions — assuming the worst, I would've let Valhalla go dead, converted Einstein, and converted Keats — but that would only strengthen Zahed's ultimate point. (Also, I wouldn't've known Two-Face myself, but whatever.)
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by Important Bird Area »

Let's look at some conversion stats. The following are the stat lines for these answers from the NAQT database (assuming for the moment that both companies are doing a decent job of providing actual giveaways, which might not hold in some cases).

Maginot line (87%)

Don Quixote (93%)

Boron (no data)

Valhalla (89%)

Two-Face (no data)

The Nutcracker (no data)

Octavio Paz (no data)

Herbert Hoover (82%)

Nucleus (94%)

Zealots (no data)

Gatsby (94%)

Arctic Ocean (no data)

Purim (no data)

Rats (no data)

Henry VIII (92%)

Albert Einstein (94%)

Goya (68%)

Keats (53%)

recursion (29%)

Haydn (66%)

The overall number for the twelve tossups with data is 78.42% (that's not far off our historical averages for IS sets).

Worth noting that essentially no high school tossup ever has a 100% conversion rate.
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by Charley Pride »

bt_green_warbler wrote:data
This is wonderful. Thanks, Jeff. Obviously, nothing is ever always converted, and I hope people understand I was exaggerating with "100%", albeit only slightly.
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by at your pleasure »

Could you post a conversion analysis for a IHSA set? Might be an intersting comparison.
Also, note the assumption that we are talking conversion by weak teams. For at least middling teams, conversion numbers will be significantly better.
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by jonah »

Dave Breger wrote:Could you post a conversion analysis for a IHSA set?
The data do not exist. The IHSA only requires that final scores be reported, and I'm not aware of any hosts tracking other stats. I started taking notes on the rounds I read yesterday, but gave up after about ten questions (about half of which went dead). I think we're going to try to do stats at the Maine South sectional this Saturday, but those numbers won't be very useful for this comparison as the teams there will be quite strong.
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by jdeliverer »

Is it just me, or does that set seem to have particularly easy answer lines? I mean, I usually don't have 100% conversion on HSAPQ sets, and that one seemed far from the bounds of the HS canon.
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by Self-incompatibility in plants »

jdeliverer wrote:Is it just me, or does that set seem to have particularly easy answer lines? I mean, I usually don't have 100% conversion on HSAPQ sets, and that one seemed far from the bounds of the HS canon.
Let me first note that I don't have any problem with the difficulty of HSAPQ's questions, but it needs to be said that one packet from one set hardly is representative of anything. I really don't see the point of using twenty questions to create a model for thousands of other questions. If those answers seem easy, then it's because that one particular packet was easy, but it does not necessarily hold any ground for the other 14 packets in the set, and the other 15 packets in the other 9 sets HSAPQ has produced. Also, this argument doesn't account for the other half of the packet, which are the bonuses (however, even if bonuses were looked at for this packet, it would once again not be enough to create a model of difficulty for all the other thousands of questions).
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by Mechanical Beasts »

Well, sure, but the argument had been "there is NO WAY that HSAPQ could produce a state series that would get converted by some of these crappy high schools"; the counterargument is that "there's at least one case of HSAPQ's regular fare being pretty reasonable; there could well be cases of HSAPQ's easier fare being reasonable." I don't think this is meant as definitive proof, but merely refutation of the fallacy that HSAPQ is inherently too hard.
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by Dan-Don »

Charley Pride wrote:In order for this to work, we have to maintain a few assumptions:
1. A quizbowl player is better equipped to answer questions than a regular high school student. This can be compared to the idea that a member of the high school basketball team is better (way better) at basketball than the regular high school student.
2. Based on the first assumption, we can equate very basic quizbowl canon knowledge to stuff students are taught in school, because they fit into the "beyond the classroom" classification. To continue the basketball analogy: most everyone can dribble the ball, but it takes more advanced skill to play a zone defense--skill that every basketball player should have.
3. If a question can be answered by the giveaway, it is considered gettable and, furthermore, it is equated to a question that can be answered in the middle or even at the beginning. This assumption works because detractors of HSAPQ difficulty claim that those tossups would go dead. Therefore we also assume that all questions go to the end, and no negs happen.
I think this analysis is great. But let me add something. When you were a freshman, you came into a program that fostered your skills at good quizbowl. HSAPQ is good quizbowl. I (and many others who don't post on these forums) did not. We were trained from Day 1 by our teams to succeed on Bryce, Chip, QG, and what have you. I remember quizzing each other on facts from :kenj: 's trivia almanac before matches my freshman and sophomore years. This is where the basketball analogy doesn't hold: in organized high school basketball, there is only one format, one set of rules, one way to play. For quizbowl teams making the transition from bad to good, the idea of only being able to convert 8/20 tossups can be quite daunting. It's like a basketball team coming to basketball match only to discover the rules have suddenly made the game a lot more difficult. I wouldn't say that "HSAPQ is hard" is a fallacy, because for those teams (e.g. North White at Wildcat), it is. The statement "We can't learn the things presented in an HSAPQ set and make our team better" is a fallacy. Although not quite as catchy for a thread title. So, point taken. It's the right point. Just don't forget about the people who didn't come from a quizbowl background as privileged as yours.
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by Charley Pride »

Self-incompatibility in plants wrote:
jdeliverer wrote:Is it just me, or does that set seem to have particularly easy answer lines? I mean, I usually don't have 100% conversion on HSAPQ sets, and that one seemed far from the bounds of the HS canon.
Let me first note that I don't have any problem with the difficulty of HSAPQ's questions, but it needs to be said that one packet from one set hardly is representative of anything. I really don't see the point of using twenty questions to create a model for thousands of other questions. If those answers seem easy, then it's because that one particular packet was easy, but it does not necessarily hold any ground for the other 14 packets in the set, and the other 15 packets in the other 9 sets HSAPQ has produced. Also, this argument doesn't account for the other half of the packet, which are the bonuses (however, even if bonuses were looked at for this packet, it would once again not be enough to create a model of difficulty for all the other thousands of questions).
What's your point? I never claimed my analysis was conclusive or exhaustive, because it isn't, and not by any means.

And I didn't discuss bonuses for a couple of reasons. First, that would be an outrageously long process. Second, bonuses aren't the crux of the anti-good questions debate; tossups are. Bad quizbowl advocates claim that HSAPQ, etc. leave the less knowledgeable teams out because tossups are too hard. They want access to bonuses, but they can't have it when they don't get tossups. Bonus difficulty has never been a sticking point, so I left them alone.

I sought to prove that HSAPQ isn't inherently difficult, and I think I succeeded to a reasonable degree.
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by Matt Weiner »

I guess I can add a few things to this thread based on conclusions I've derived from data that I'm privy to, as well as opinions from being inside the HSAPQ process:

1) I think HSAPQ's 08-09 sets were, on average, too hard, and I think we did a lot better in the current academic year of hitting a correct happy medium of difficulty. Feel free to repeat your analysis when this year's sets are released.
2) We received zero complaints about overall question difficulty from VHSL participants this year, and a total of one complaint from one team about the difficulty of one category. To put that in perspective, Virginia has approximately 300 public high schools, around 90% of which participate in VHSL; of that VHSL-participating number, no more than 20% (generously speaking) participate in any Saturday invitationals or anything else besides VHSL and their local TV tournament if they have one.
3) Illinois, if anything, has a higher proportion of schools who at least play something outside of IHSA, even if it's the bad IHSA-style invitationals. Virginia has a similar range of public schools to Illinois in terms of large ones, small ones, urban ones, suburban ones, rural ones, well-funded ones, less well-funded ones, and so on. One thing VHSL does not have is private school participation; for historical reasons, it's public schools only and private schools do something else. So, if one subscribes to the controversial idea that being a private school gives some sort of inherent advantage in quizbowl, one would expect VHSL numbers to be slightly depressed accordingly; yet, scoring is higher than any at any bad-question state tournament. In my opinion, this is because properly written questions are by definition on important things that educated people know, and HSAPQ and NAQT are constantly discarding overly hard submissions during the editing process. HSAPQ writers are probably all familiar with my "this is too hard, write something else" comments on their submissions by this point. In contrast, all bad-question providers (most notoriously QG, but all of them to some significant degree) write one-liners on arbitrary things that do not get answered and have no concept either of what high school quizbowl players know or what a well-rounded education should teach.
4) Scoring throughout VHSL, from league play up through districts, regionals, and the state tournament, remained at the same level as it was during the early 2000s when one-liner questions on weird material predominated, and also at the same level as it was during the later Shawn era where league play was on short questions and everything else was pyramidal. We moved to a 100% pyramidal-tossup, distribution-compliance system (by which I mean, the exact number of questions VHSL requires for science was written on real science and not on how candy is made, the exact number of required literature questions was written on real literature and not Harry Potter, and so on) this year and the sum total of complaints about this was: one district out of 30 needed some help with moving their tournament along more quickly in light of longer questions and was satisfied with the tips we gave them, and about twenty times as many customers expressed their appreciations for the change.

The point of all the above is this: I don't see why, if HSAPQ's VHSL questions were difficulty-appropriate and palatable to teams in Virginia who were used to something else, don't play many other tournaments, finished at the bottom of their local leagues this year, and fit the profile of the rural, small school who is worried about the deck being stacked, then I don't see why they wouldn't be just the same for those sorts of teams in Illinois. The top 2 or 3 teams in Virginia may be better than the top 2 or 3 teams in Illinois, but Illinois's 10th team is probably better than Virginia's 10th team, and once you get down to the teams we're really talking about, teams 50 through 200, I doubt there's any significant talent gap one way or the other that would affect comparative question conversion rates.
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by CometCoach72 »

For the specific packet Matt used in his analysis, my varsity team could convert at least 15 of those questions in practice. My JV team could probably snag 12, 13 tops.

Translate: Matt's right, it is a fallacy, and he presents an excellent example. I never thought HSAPQ was hard; I just don't think to use them.
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by Charley Pride »

CometCoach72 wrote:For the specific packet Zahed used in his analysis, my varsity team could convert at least 15 of those questions in practice. My JV team could probably snag 12, 13 tops.

Translate: Zahed's right, it is a fallacy, and he presents an excellent example. I never thought HSAPQ was hard; I just don't think to use them.
fixed.
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by CometCoach72 »

With incredible amounts of apologies.
Charley Pride wrote:
CometCoach72 wrote:For the specific packet Zahed used in his analysis, my varsity team could convert at least 15 of those questions in practice. My JV team could probably snag 12, 13 tops.

Translate: Zahed's right, it is a fallacy, and he presents an excellent example. I never thought HSAPQ was hard; I just don't think to use them.
fixed.
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by Matt Bardoe »

jonah wrote:
Dave Breger wrote:Could you post a conversion analysis for a IHSA set?
The data do not exist. The IHSA only requires that final scores be reported, and I'm not aware of any hosts tracking other stats. I started taking notes on the rounds I read yesterday, but gave up after about ten questions (about half of which went dead). I think we're going to try to do stats at the Maine South sectional this Saturday, but those numbers won't be very useful for this comparison as the teams there will be quite strong.

Here is some data from the Latin Regional, which definitely had some teams that are not strong :wink: .

Round 1: 60 Percent of TU Converted
Game TU Conversion Rates: 56.7, 60, 50, 73.3

Round 2: 66.7 Percent of TU Converted
Game TU Conversion Rates: 53.3 and 80

Round 3: 60 Percent of TU Converted


So even when the scores were a total 250ish we had 50% of TU converted. There was a one part out 4 with the bonuses of the weaker teams. I guess I need someone to tell me what a reasonable conversion rate is for "average" teams.
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by dtaylor4 »

Matt Bardoe wrote:
jonah wrote:
Dave Breger wrote:Could you post a conversion analysis for a IHSA set?
The data do not exist. The IHSA only requires that final scores be reported, and I'm not aware of any hosts tracking other stats. I started taking notes on the rounds I read yesterday, but gave up after about ten questions (about half of which went dead). I think we're going to try to do stats at the Maine South sectional this Saturday, but those numbers won't be very useful for this comparison as the teams there will be quite strong.

Here is some data from the Latin Regional, which definitely had some teams that are not strong :wink: .

Round 1: 60 Percent of TU Converted
Game TU Conversion Rates: 56.7, 60, 50, 73.3

Round 2: 66.7 Percent of TU Converted
Game TU Conversion Rates: 53.3 and 80

Round 3: 60 Percent of TU Converted


So even when the scores were a total 250ish we had 50% of TU converted. There was a one part out 4 with the bonuses of the weaker teams. I guess I need someone to tell me what a reasonable conversion rate is for "average" teams.
On a decent set of 20/20, I'd say at a bare minimum, 80-85%. Why pay for questions that are going dead, which also reduces the number of bonuses heard?
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by jdeliverer »

dtaylor4 wrote:
On a decent set of 20/20, I'd say at a bare minimum, 80-85%. Why pay for questions that are going dead, which also reduces the number of bonuses heard?

Good idea.
Robert Volgman wrote: Dear IHSA,

Last Saturday (3/6/10), St. Ignatius won the Masonic state tournament. They, however, did not even advance to their sectional meet in the IHSA state series. Clearly, there is something wrong with the way you run things. We in the scholastic bowl community suggest switching to Questions Galore and generally following the format and example of the Masonic tournament. Particularly poignant is the "No Practice Matches or You Will be Disqualified" rule and the reading of bonuses separately from tossups so that we can hear all of the bonuses.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by jonah »

dtaylor4 wrote:Why pay for questions that are going dead, which also reduces the number of bonuses heard?
http://masonicbowl.org/#What%20is%20it% ... 0it%20work?
Jonah Greenthal
National Academic Quiz Tournaments
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dtaylor4
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Re: The "HSAPQ is Hard" Fallacy

Post by dtaylor4 »

jonah wrote:
dtaylor4 wrote:Why pay for questions that are going dead, which also reduces the number of bonuses heard?
http://masonicbowl.org/#What%20is%20it% ... 0it%20work?
I said in 20/20. Try again.
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