Science Monstrosity III Results

DanTheClam · Post by **DanTheClam** » Sun Jul 03, 2005 4:32 pm

Science Monstrosity III: The Gay Science took place immediately after the end of the Chicago Open on Saturday, July 2nd. Unforunately, the plane flight of Head Editor/TD Jordan Boyd-Graber and co-editor Irene Ying was cancelled, leaving myself (Dan Benediktson) and Wesley Matthews in charge. Nonetheless, we persevered, and, after the players discussed, we chose to do a four-team competition with a double round robin.

The final results were:

1(t) Mike Sorice and Andrew Ullsperger (5-1)
1(t) Seth Teitler and Dan Suzman (5-1)
3(t) Ray from Chicago and Steven from Illinois (1-5)
3(t) Matt Weiner (1-5)

Full results are posted on the web at http://www.princeton.edu/~dbenedik/SM20 ... dings.html

Congratulations are therefore in order to both Sorice/Ullsperger and Teitler/Suzman, who split in their two games and went undefeated otherwise, making both teams the champions of Science Monstrosity III.

I want to thank everyone who played and especially thank Jordan Boyd-Graber, who made this tournament happen despite his not being able to make it to the event at the last moment. I had a lot of fun reading and watching these great players, and I think everybody present thoroughly enjoyed the competition.

One oddity to note in the statistics: Since only five of the six packets were blind to the teams present, Seth Teitler sat out the first round on his packet, making that competition just between Dan Suzman and Matt Weiner.

-Dan Benediktson
Princeton College Bowl

ezubaric · Post by **ezubaric** » Mon Jul 04, 2005 12:48 am

Packets are also available:

http://quizbowl.caltech.edu/packets/shuf-1-seth.pdf
http://quizbowl.caltech.edu/packets/shuf-2-paul.pdf
http://quizbowl.caltech.edu/packets/shuf-3-ray.pdf
http://quizbowl.caltech.edu/packets/shuf-4-irene.pdf
http://quizbowl.caltech.edu/packets/shuf-5-dan.pdf
http://quizbowl.caltech.edu/packets/shuf-6-wesley.pdf

I hope everyone enjoyed it; I am very sorry that I couldn't be there ... unfortunately, US Airways just wouldn't let me get off the standby list after cancelling my flight. Perhaps because I looked a little too much like some Lebanese hijacker?

ezubaric · Post by **ezubaric** » Mon Jul 04, 2005 12:54 am

I also should thank Dan for running the tournament on basically no notice, Dan, Wesley, and Irene for editing math, planetary science, and biology (respectively), all of the teams who submitted packets, and everyone who showed up to play.

As much as I enjoyed editing it (editing science questions is hard, but I think I learned a bit from the experience), I hope Jerry can reclaim his baby so I can play next year.

plujan · Post by **plujan** » Mon Jul 04, 2005 2:42 am

Overall I was as happy as a clam with the tournament. If only all tournaments could be Science Monstrosity, I could be a superstar!

I do have to complain about the Heine-Borel tossup in Round 4, though. Putting the exact definition of compactness in the first sentence and then having the answer be something which is *not* "compact" is doubly poor. If not for that, I could have had a perfect record. Ah well.

Other than that, I only wish there were more rounds! With 4 teams and only 3 blind packets, we were only able to play 4 rounds out West. Boo! People should write more science!

setht · Post by **setht** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 3:28 pm

Jordan, Irene, Dan, Wesley: thank you for your work, SM was a lot of fun to play.

Like Paul, I think the Heine-Borel tossup was unfortunate, and I wish there were more rounds.

Some other thoughts: the earth/planetary science seemed well-written, but very hard. Aside from Wesley and myself, I don't know of any active quiz bowl players who have ever seriously studied earth/planetary science. It's nice to hear a good question on facies, but if the price is that I'll neg on seiches and embarrass myself by blanking on diagenesis, perhaps it's not worth it. I imagine that several of the earth/planetary science tossups went dead, and that the earth/planetary science bonus questions had some of the lowest conversion--I don't know what other people thought.

There was more CS than I'd like, but then I guess any CS is more than I'd like. The CS also seemed rather hard (mostly the bonuses, I think). I think, with the smaller, secondary categories, it's probably best to assume that the majority of people don't have any deep knowledge/classroom exposure to the material, and adjust tossup/bonus difficulty accordingly.

Finally, I wasn't a fan of the other/fake science questions. It just doesn't feel good, when you're trying to stage a come-back, to get a bonus on rare minerals from Star Trek. However, I suspect I'm in the minority on this point.

I have some thoughts on future SM events, but I'll save them for a separate post.

There were some repeats, and there were some clunkers, but it was still a fun time. I know how much work it takes to do something like this, and I know it can't have helped that many packets, such as my own, were submitted late.

-Seth

plujan · Post by **plujan** » Fri Jul 08, 2005 9:18 pm

For what it's worth, I was all over seiches, but (as you might be able to guess) my familiarity with them is from a physics context. The Berkeley Waves book (Crawford) discusses them at some length.