2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

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2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

Post by vinteuil »

If you have issues with any particular question (or small, specific set of questions), this is the place to post about it.
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

The tossup on information asymmetry has some issues. Is there any particular reason "adverse selection" isn't accepted outright instead of promptable - what if someone went "wait, a special case of adverse selection? huh?" on a prompt or "incentive misalignment in general?" on an anti-prompt? Also, the clue about high risk insurance customers isn't uniquely identifying as phrased, because it equally applies to moral hazard (since people have less incentive to avoid high-risk behavior when insured).
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

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Going out of order:
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:Also, the clue about high risk insurance customers isn't uniquely identifying as phrased, because it equally applies to moral hazard (since people have less incentive to avoid high-risk behavior when insured).
The book I wrote this question out of (Varian) presents moral hazard as a kind of information asymmetry as well, so I thought that ambiguity might be OK, but I can see how this clue might have been confusing to play (especially if you're thinking the answer was "adverse selection").
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:The tossup on information asymmetry has some issues. Is there any particular reason "adverse selection" isn't accepted outright instead of promptable - what if someone went "wait, a special case of adverse selection? huh?" on a prompt or "incentive misalignment in general?" on an anti-prompt?
Here are the first few clues of the tossup:
An attempt to reduce this state may produce the "sheepskin effect," or result in "separating" and "pooling" equilibria. Employees acquiring education has often been studied as a way of remedying this situation similar to a warranty. A form of this situation was first named to describe how high-risk customers drive up the cost of insurance.
I think you're right (and will change the answerline to reflect this) that either "moral hazard" or "adverse selection" should just be accepted up to this point. The first two sentences are about signalling, which (I'm under the impression) is a way to combat information asymmetry in general, and thus certainly applies to either of those more specifically.
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

Post by vinteuil »

More generally: I got some good feedback about the econ questions in general (my first time writing in that category). On top of changing the information asymmetry answerline, I'll be fixing up the "risk" question to, among other things, move beta lower and accept "volatility," and I'll flesh out the answerline of the production functions question. I've probably forgotten other fixes—let me know if anything else comes to mind.
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

While moral hazard and adverse selection both fall under the category of "things caused by information asymmetry" I don't think this means that a prompt will always get people to the right answer, because they both also fall under the category of "misaligned incentive problems." Admittedly that wouldn't ever be an answer (thank goodness) but figuring this out on the fly can be challenging. I think you should accept more specific answers outright in these cases, because the point of a tossup is that people don't know the clues they didn't buzz on, so they can't always be expected to rule out overly specific answers based on early clues.

(the econ was very well done especially for a first try from someone making "curricular" questions without a huge academic econ background)
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

A couple more nitpicks:

To my recollection, Hobbes never uses the phrase "social contract" a single time in Leviathan, so the clue from the "social contracts" tossup that claims he argues for the setting up of [one of these] (these being social contracts) is just straight-up wrong (he uses the word "commonwealth") unless you're supposed to speak as if you're a latter-day interpreter using Rousseau's terminology, as opposed to literally saying what's in the text.

I have no formal education in theory or Baroque music, but the clue about sonate da camera being analogized to suites seems iffy to me and feels like a potential massive hose to people who have amateur/basic knowledge of the concept. A sonata da camera is, to my understanding, literally a "chamber sonata" where one or several instruments play several movements of music, usually with a continuo background. For anyone who hasn't learned that specific comparison, which the tossup admits is only "usually" (and not always) done, how are you supposed to make the jump to "suite"?
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

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Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:To my recollection, Hobbes never uses the phrase "social contract" a single time in Leviathan, so the clue from the "social contracts" tossup that claims he argues for the setting up of [one of these] (these being social contracts) is just straight-up wrong (he uses the word "commonwealth") unless you're supposed to speak as if you're a latter-day interpreter using Rousseau's terminology, as opposed to literally saying what's in the text.
Considering that we are all, in fact, latter-day interpreters, I'm just not sure what the problem is with this. As you know, everybody since Locke considers Hobbes to be the founder of contractarianism, treats him as such, and teaches him as such. This is like saying that a clue giving the standard form of the Pythagorean theorem is "straight-up wrong" because Greek mathematicians didn't use the Latin alphabet, the equals sign, etc. etc. Sure, you're right! But then I don't know what "wrong" means for quizbowl purposes.

Anyways, I'll add a clarifying phrase like "did not use this term, but has been interpreted as"—close enough?
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:I have no formal education in theory or Baroque music, but the clue about sonate da camera being analogized to suites seems iffy to me and feels like a potential massive hose to people who have amateur/basic knowledge of the concept. A sonata da camera is, to my understanding, literally a "chamber sonata" where one or several instruments play several movements of music, usually with a continuo background. For anyone who hasn't learned that specific comparison, which the tossup admits is only "usually" (and not always) done, how are you supposed to make the jump to "suite"?
Just because the name means "chamber sonata" in Italian doesn't mean that that's where the generic conventions end! A sonata da chiesa is more or less invariably "slow-fast-slow-fast," and a sonata da camera is more or less invariably a collection of dances. (I only have two survey books on Baroque music in my room, but they say: Taruskin volume 2 p. 178: "essentially a dance suite." Bukofzer, p. 137: "sonata da camera (or suite).") The word "usually" was only to cover instances where the comparison isn't made because the reader is already expected to know it.

Besides, I can't believe that anybody would encounter the term "sonata da camera" without actually encountering one; then the list of movements (or track listing on Spotify or whatever) would immediately tell you that the movements are dances ("allemanda," "corrente," "giga" etc. If you don't know those are dances, that's fine, but then I'm ok with you not buzzing in on the second line of my tossup.) And how could it be a hose if there's nothing else you could reasonably neg with?

("Comparison" is a bit of an iffy word anyways, because the suite is, again a "latter-day" generic concept imposed on all collections of dance musics, including "partitas," "ordres," and "sonatas da camera." Sometimes, quizbowl expects people to know things from the "presentist" perspective, and that's perfectly ok.)
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

Post by naan/steak-holding toll »

vinteuil wrote:Sure, you're right!
Yes, I am, because - as the class I took on political economy highlighted - his text says commonwealth in plain [17th-century] English! The point of good questions is that you're supposed to give the right answer that matches the given clue, not "well, the answer to this particular clue is X but I think the question writer wants me to say Y, even though this clue applies to X and not Y." It's not a hard fix, as you say - "The "commonwealth" outlined in Hobbes' Leviathan is considered to be an early formulation of this concept..." or something along these lines would prevent this problem.

I'll admit to not paying attention to the names of the movements of Corelli's concerti grossi (which are sonate da chiesa/da camera) when I listened to them, and yeah - upon inspection, many or most of the movements (but not all of them) for the concerti that are sonate da camera have names that are dances. So, in retrospect, the analogy does make sense. Still, it seems a bit iffy for a clue - some of them only have two out of five movements with dance names, others have more.
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

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Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:
vinteuil wrote:Sure, you're right!
Yes, I am, because - as the class I took on political economy highlighted - his text says commonwealth in plain [17th-century] English! The point of good questions is that you're supposed to give the right answer that matches the given clue, not "well, the answer to this particular clue is X but I think the question writer wants me to say Y, even though this clue applies to X and not Y." It's not a hard fix, as you say - "The "commonwealth" outlined in Hobbes' Leviathan is considered to be an early formulation of this concept..." or something along these lines would prevent this problem.

I'll admit to not paying attention to the names of the movements of Corelli's concerti grossi (which are sonate da chiesa/da camera) when I listened to them, and yeah - upon inspection, many or most of the movements (but not all of them) for the concerti that are sonate da camera have names that are dances. So, in retrospect, the analogy does make sense. Still, it seems a bit iffy for a clue - some of them only have two out of five movements with dance names, others have more.
Another way to look at these clues: what I'm arguing is that it's perfectly reasonable to clue the standard interpretation of something (you seem to agree with this for the sonata da camera), or at least a very common interpretation of it (I don't think you're denying that people at least very often analyze the Social Contract concept in Leviathan. Certainly, the introduction to my copy (Curley, which I thought was pretty widely-used) falls into this tradition.), as long as you disambiguate properly (which I'm sorry the Social Contract question didn't do originally).
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

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This tournament contained yet another tossup on slaves that used the pronoun "this commodity". Tossups like these seem pretty dehumanizing to me. On the other hand, this tossup construction might be the best way to ask about the slave trade. What do people think?
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

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not quite wrote:This tournament contained yet another tossup on slaves that used the pronoun "this commodity". Tossups like these seem pretty dehumanizing to me. On the other hand, this tossup construction might be the best way to ask about the slave trade. What do people think?
I don't see a reason to avoid accurate and non-transparent terminology like this; if people are offended then they'd probably be offended by an awful lot of other terrible things in human history as well. "Commodity" is also an accurate way of describing how slaves were treated.
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

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not quite wrote:Tossups like these seem pretty dehumanizing to me.
I agree that calling a people a commodity is dehumanizing. The reason I wrote it this way was to reflect how the slave trade in Africa was conducted, which involved traders thinking of people as a "commodity." On the other hand, I can see your point for clues like "this commodity rose up in the Zanj rebellion."
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

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Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:"Commodity" is also an accurate way of describing how slaves were treated.
vinteuil wrote:On the other hand, I can see your point for clues like "this commodity rose up in the Zanj rebellion."
This makes a lot of sense, I suddenly "get" it. Thank you Will and Jacob!
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Harpie's Feather Duster »

The wording in the "masses" tossup might call for a bit of fixing, since the Lord Nelson Mass is just another nickname for the Mass in Troubled Times, but the way the tossup is worded makes it sound like they're different works.

The tossup on "production functions" should probably straight up accept "utility functions" on the first clue. This neg happened in 2 of the 3 rooms in our site and, in our case, ended with a protest being ruled in favor of us.
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

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What does the first clue of the "risk" tossup ("This quantity is elevated by counterparties") mean? I've Googled various iterations of "risk" "elevation" and "counterparty"/"counterparties" and can't seem to find what this refers to.
Last edited by Charbroil on Thu Apr 07, 2016 11:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

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Charbroil wrote:What does the first clue of the "risk" tossup ("This quantity is elevated by counterparties") mean? I've Googled various iterations of "risk" "elevation" and "counterparty"/"counterparties and can't seem to find what this refers to.
Forgot to post earlier, but I was also confused by this. That lead-in doesn't actually mean anything by itself. I think the author was trying to refer to "counterparty risk" i.e. the idea that if you have a financial contract, there's a risk that the other party might not be able to pay up if it owes you money (they go bankrupt beforehand, they don't honor the deal, etc). It's something that came up in finance class and is important, but I really don't think there's a way to phrase this in a non-transparent way that's also uniquely identifying.
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

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Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:
Charbroil wrote:What does the first clue of the "risk" tossup ("This quantity is elevated by counterparties") mean? I've Googled various iterations of "risk" "elevation" and "counterparty"/"counterparties and can't seem to find what this refers to.
Forgot to post earlier, but I was also confused by this. That lead-in doesn't actually mean anything by itself. I think the author was trying to refer to "counterparty risk" i.e. the idea that if you have a financial contract, there's a risk that the other party might not be able to pay up if it owes you money (they go bankrupt beforehand, they don't honor the deal, etc). It's something that came up in finance class and is important, but I really don't think there's a way to phrase this in a non-transparent way that's also uniquely identifying.
Is this the correct interpretation of this clue? If so, I have a comment about it, but I wanted to make sure before making it.
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

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Charbroil wrote:
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:
Charbroil wrote:What does the first clue of the "risk" tossup ("This quantity is elevated by counterparties") mean? I've Googled various iterations of "risk" "elevation" and "counterparty"/"counterparties and can't seem to find what this refers to.
Forgot to post earlier, but I was also confused by this. That lead-in doesn't actually mean anything by itself. I think the author was trying to refer to "counterparty risk" i.e. the idea that if you have a financial contract, there's a risk that the other party might not be able to pay up if it owes you money (they go bankrupt beforehand, they don't honor the deal, etc). It's something that came up in finance class and is important, but I really don't think there's a way to phrase this in a non-transparent way that's also uniquely identifying.
Is this the correct interpretation of this clue? If so, I have a comment about it, but I wanted to make sure before making it.
Okay, assuming this is the correct interpretation, you could always say something like "Bilateral netting reduces a variety of this quantity associated with counterparties." (link) (With a prompt on things like "credit exposure" or whatnot).

As is, the clue is pretty meaningless, as Will already mentioned.
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

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Charbroil wrote:
Charbroil wrote:
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea wrote:
Charbroil wrote:What does the first clue of the "risk" tossup ("This quantity is elevated by counterparties") mean? I've Googled various iterations of "risk" "elevation" and "counterparty"/"counterparties and can't seem to find what this refers to.
Forgot to post earlier, but I was also confused by this. That lead-in doesn't actually mean anything by itself. I think the author was trying to refer to "counterparty risk" i.e. the idea that if you have a financial contract, there's a risk that the other party might not be able to pay up if it owes you money (they go bankrupt beforehand, they don't honor the deal, etc). It's something that came up in finance class and is important, but I really don't think there's a way to phrase this in a non-transparent way that's also uniquely identifying.
Is this the correct interpretation of this clue? If so, I have a comment about it, but I wanted to make sure before making it.
Okay, assuming this is the correct interpretation, you could always say something like "Bilateral netting reduces a variety of this quantity associated with counterparties." (link) (With a prompt on things like "credit exposure" or whatnot).

As is, the clue is pretty meaningless, as Will already mentioned.
Thanks for the idea, Charles!
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Cheynem »

I enjoyed the tossup on various examples of the "energy crisis," but I felt like you had to mildly read the mind of the question writer to get the first clue. If I recall, it was about the shakeup of the Cabinet that occurred after the malaise speech--obviously that speech is heavily about the energy crisis, but it basically applies to anything else happening in the United States at that time--I think recession or stagflation could also work there. I might be wrong based on the wording.
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Mnemosyne »

The only thing I want to complain about is the "Gods of Flooding of the Nile" question. I haven't seen the full question text but I'll explain how it played out.

First clue: some god of this phenomenon that I don't know... so we're probably looking for some sort of domain that someone can be a god of

Next thing I hear is some clue about Khnum/Hapy or something that is obviously the Nile. I buzz in with rivers. The moderator spends over 5 seconds deciding whether he should prompt or not... so clearly the answer isn't Nile or else he obviously would have prompted without hesitation. Now the only thing I can reasonably guess now is that I was being anti prompted for water, which I wasn't.

So the issue is some combination of using only the word "phenomenon" to let me figure out the answer and then having an answer line as unnecessary as flooding of the Nile. If it says "these events", I get the question. If the answer line is Nile, I get the question.

I'm not sure if something actually needs to be changed or if I just had bad luck, but I was pretty frustrated when I felt like I almost lost us the tournament on something I 100% knew, but the question had such an unnecessary answer line that I couldn't figure it out. (I'm sure someone will post the question, and I'll discover I'm in the wrong, but it's fun to document thought processes anyway)
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Inifinite Jest »

I though it was a little harsh that the serialism tossup explicitly instructed the reader to not accept or prompt on the twelve-tone technique. I mean sure there are many serialist works that don't employ the twelve-tone technique, like a lot of Boulez and Stockhausen's stuff, but in layspeak those two terms are often treated as synonyms.

Also, I realize it was only 2 tossups, but the jazz in this set was on point.
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

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Inifinite Jest wrote:I though it was a little harsh that the serialism tossup explicitly instructed the reader to not accept or prompt on the twelve-tone technique. I mean sure there are many serialist works that don't employ the twelve-tone technique, like a lot of Boulez and Stockhausen's stuff, but in layspeak those two terms are often treated as synonyms.
I get where you're coming from, but they really are distinct (if somewhat sometimes overlapping) things, and a big chunk of that question was on non-twelve-tone stuff.
Inifinite Jest wrote:Also, I realize it was only 2 tossups, but the jazz in this set was on point.
Thanks! I wrote about stuff I thought was awesome and important.
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

Post by marianna »

Thanks for producing this set - I especially loved the thought, film, and contemporary art! It was a real blast to play.

Two quick comments:
- The converting to Judaism bonus congratulates the player on their conversion, then proceeds to give three parts all in the vein of: "you should wear [x thing that only males in Judaism wear]". Not all players are male!
- Alte Pinakothek is also known as the Old Picture Gallery.
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

Post by vinteuil »

serasuna wrote:Two quick comments:
- The converting to Judaism bonus congratulates the player on their conversion, then proceeds to give three parts all in the vein of: "you should wear [x thing that only males in Judaism wear]". Not all players are male!
- Alte Pinakothek is also known as the Old Picture Gallery.
My bad in both cases! I went to a fairly progressive conservative synagogue and completely forgot about the gender-exclusivity of any of those articles—I'll tinker with the wording.
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

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vinteuil wrote:
serasuna wrote:Two quick comments:
- The converting to Judaism bonus congratulates the player on their conversion, then proceeds to give three parts all in the vein of: "you should wear [x thing that only males in Judaism wear]". Not all players are male!
I went to a fairly progressive conservative synagogue and completely forgot about the gender-exclusivity of any of those articles—I'll tinker with the wording.
I don't see a clear problem with this bonus. In many congregations, women are not supposed to wear any of the things mentioned, as you suggest, but in many others, women are allowed (and even encouraged) to do so. I guess "have to" in the intro and "should definitely wear*" (first part) are questionable, but it's certainly not true that "only males in Judaism wear" any of the three things.

*This is also iffy for non-gender-related reasons; in most traditions, basically any headcovering is acceptable, notably including various hats that Chasidim tend to wear.
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

Post by marianna »

jonah wrote:
vinteuil wrote:
serasuna wrote:Two quick comments:
- The converting to Judaism bonus congratulates the player on their conversion, then proceeds to give three parts all in the vein of: "you should wear [x thing that only males in Judaism wear]". Not all players are male!
I went to a fairly progressive conservative synagogue and completely forgot about the gender-exclusivity of any of those articles—I'll tinker with the wording.
I don't see a clear problem with this bonus. In many congregations, women are not supposed to wear any of the things mentioned, as you suggest, but in many others, women are allowed (and even encouraged) to do so. I guess "have to" in the intro and "should definitely wear*" (first part) are questionable, but it's certainly not true that "only males in Judaism wear" any of the three things.
Fair; I don't claim to know about the details of specific congregations (or even a ton about Judaism generally...). I think my main issue is, as you mentioned, with the obligatory tone in the lead-in ("you now have to wear"), and in some of the parts.
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

Post by 1992 in spaceflight »

vinteuil wrote:
Inifinite Jest wrote:I though it was a little harsh that the serialism tossup explicitly instructed the reader to not accept or prompt on the twelve-tone technique. I mean sure there are many serialist works that don't employ the twelve-tone technique, like a lot of Boulez and Stockhausen's stuff, but in layspeak those two terms are often treated as synonyms.
I get where you're coming from, but they really are distinct (if somewhat sometimes overlapping) things, and a big chunk of that question was on non-twelve-tone stuff.
I don't think the distinguishing characteristics are enough that you can really rule out the twelve-tone technique as an answer for serialism (especially because most prior questions on serialism use the twelve-tone technique as a clue to rule that out as an answer a team should give).
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Amizda Calyx »

I (and Ben Zhang) mentioned the serious issues with the tyrosine kinase question, in that saying "this functionality" is horrendous and the entire question should just be on "these proteins". Also "platelets" being referred to as "cells" was Bad. Hopefully these problems were fixed for subsequent mirrors.
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vinteuil
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

Post by vinteuil »

Amizda Calyx wrote:I (and Ben Zhang) mentioned the serious issues with the tyrosine kinase question, in that saying "this functionality" is horrendous and the entire question should just be on "these proteins". Also "platelets" being referred to as "cells" was Bad. Hopefully these problems were fixed for subsequent mirrors.
If you'd taken five seconds to check, you would have seen that the tyrosine kinase was modified according to your suggestion. You never complained to me about the wording of the platelets question.
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Sima Guang Hater
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

vinteuil wrote:
Amizda Calyx wrote:I (and Ben Zhang) mentioned the serious issues with the tyrosine kinase question, in that saying "this functionality" is horrendous and the entire question should just be on "these proteins". Also "platelets" being referred to as "cells" was Bad. Hopefully these problems were fixed for subsequent mirrors.
If you'd taken five seconds to check, you would have seen that the tyrosine kinase was modified according to your suggestion. You never complained to me about the wording of the platelets question.
It's actually an open question whether to call platelets "cells": http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4335469/
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Re: 2016 MYSTERIUM Question-Specific Discussion

Post by Amizda Calyx »

We did complain about the platelets question, just not as much as with the TK one and more offhand. I know there is debate regarding whether platelets are cells, but they're conventionally considered fragments and there are unambiguous cells that fit the early clues anyway, which makes it more confusing to call them cells. When I heard "dense bodies" in "cells" that didn't seem to be muscular, I thought the answer would be megakaryocytes, which seemed way too hard so I held off buzzing in with that. Apparently "megakaryocyte" isn't in the answerline anyway (???).
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It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
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