NAQT distribution

[Wbrandon]

Does anyone dislike the NAQT distribution. I always feel like people who happen to be interested, and therefor specialize in geography/history are at a colossal advantage to those who are passionate about science, economics or ETC.

[High Dependency Unit]

I can't back you up on this one, Will. NAQT has a decent science distribution, but I will admit they have alot of geo (although housewrites have too little geo) and almost no economics, although econ has a very small canon, so having more isn't very feasible.

[Sniper, No Sniping!]

If you really enjoy social studies (and what is happening in the world around you), you may find NAQT's distribution to be favorable towards you. A "colossal advantage"? No. Science and literature are pretty well represented themselves (in fact, I believe science is actually represented the most amongst all categories) in NAQT. There's been a discussion about this before, but the one category I (and I think many others may) personally feel is underrepresented is fine arts, while at the same time there is perhaps "too much" pop culture/sports.

Personally, I enjoy NAQT's history / geography a lot more than the history you may commonly see in mACF styled sets. Perhaps there is evidence to suggest the contrary, but I think you end up seeing a lot more "modern" historical topics (by this, I mean events after 1989) wind up in NAQT sets then you do in your typical HSAPQ or housewrite. There isn't anything wrong with that, either, but it's just merely an opinion and personally I like the history in NAQT sets for that particular reason. You can also find some awesome, outside the box answerlines in NAQT that you might not find in typical mACF sets ("Sumerian mythology" is one of my favorite tossups of all time).

However, as much as I might be praising NAQT, there are some imperfections of course with writing style and distribution. I enjoy some trends in non-NAQT writing we're starting to see (i.e. seems like we're seeing a lot more "One character created by this author" instead of arbitrary plot summary and title dropping of fourth most famous works as early/middle clues).

NAQT is always a cool set to play on, I enjoy getting to play it the two or three times during the regular season we'll play it (but not more). It can feel refreshing after you play non-NAQT five straight times.

[Sniper, No Sniping!]

I can't back you up on this one, Will. NAQT has a decent science distribution, but I will admit they have alot of geo (although housewrites have too little geo) and almost no economics, although econ has a very small canon, so having more isn't very feasible.

Disagreed (and I'm going to preface this by asking you how many NAQT IS sets have you played to help you form this opinion?). Quiz bowl does not need more geography, especially not if that extra geography is just extra "the X river flows in this region" or "this country's highest point". NAQT has enough economics questions as is. I don't know how a high school freshman can determine how NAQT has too much or too little of economics, but oh well. I'm taking economics right now at my school and the curriculum base emphasizes economic theory and economic concepts, not arbitrary introduction of your favorite non-Marx European economists. So I think NAQT's Econ is fine in that regard.

[Stained Diviner]

Here is the distribution. In my opinion, it could use a little more Fine Arts and less Pop Culture, Geography, Current Events, and Miscellaneous. That being said, the stuff I would like to see less of has a large answer space and makes it easier to get to 336/336 several times a year.

[Lefty734]

Last year, I felt like there was way too much geography and science, and I felt there wasn't enough literature (but I am biased because that is my specialty). Now this year after reading some packets, I feel that there is a lot of current events, pop culture, and trash lit.

[Important Bird Area]

Here are some past threads that may be of interest:

NAQT distribution change 2011

conversion stats by category

Note that social science is quite consistently harder to convert than geography.

[MorganV]

If you really enjoy social studies (and what is happening in the world around you), you may find NAQT's distribution to be favorable towards you. A "colossal advantage"? No.

I personally disagree. The idea of an "NAQT boost" can be almost blatant at times. For instance, of my two teammates, one was a literature/fine arts specialist, and one was an american history/current events specialist. Can you guess which is which?

Overall, while geography tends to be one of the more convertible categories, conversion statistics NAQT has posted also tend to show it's one of the least powered categories; thus it's more that it tends to be easier to answer "what country has capital bogota" or "what river runs through lisbon?" than highschoolers actually having deep geo knowledge. whether or not that's a good thing is debatable.

Honestly though, I think that the fact that the two nationals have different distributions is tolerable, if not outright preferable. There would be little point to having two nationals without some significant differences between them.

[Important Bird Area]

Discussion of young adult literature is now here.