2019 Fall Open Specific Question Discussion

[naan/steak-holding toll]

Lots of composers wrote askable chamber pieces with multiple cellos in them - especially considering that this tossup was very early in the tournament, I don't think this is problematic at all. Also, Shostakovich has a large repertoire and being able to infer that it might be a piano concerto takes a decent amount of knowlwedge - having your first hunch be right happens a lot if you know a lot about a subject! (I had the same hunch)

I think saying "a violin concerto" for Bruch would be an improvement though.

[women, fire and dangerous things]

For the Bruch, it mentioned a "violin concerto no. 1" quite early and, importantly, after Mozart, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and some Bach had already come up. Since most tossup-able composers only wrote one violin concerto if they wrote any at all, and most of the major composers who'd composed multiple had already come up, I was pretty much certain that it must be referring to one of Paganini or Bruch, and was able to get a quick buzz by recognizing the musical description of the Vorspiel. I might have instead phrased the question to just say "a concerto" or "a violin concerto".

There certainly isn't any harm in just saying "a (violin) concerto," but to me the way this question played out in your match sounds pretty ideal: you used a non-trivial amount of knowledge of the repertoire, which most players don't have, to narrow down the answerspace, enabling you to buzz quickly when you recognized a concrete clue that you knew.

(I should also mention that Bartok and Glass, at least, are tossupable composers with more than one violin concerto, but I haven't looked back at the question so maybe it made it obvious that it was a pre-modernist composer.)

[cwasims]

For the Bruch, it mentioned a "violin concerto no. 1" quite early and, importantly, after Mozart, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and some Bach had already come up. Since most tossup-able composers only wrote one violin concerto if they wrote any at all, and most of the major composers who'd composed multiple had already come up, I was pretty much certain that it must be referring to one of Paganini or Bruch, and was able to get a quick buzz by recognizing the musical description of the Vorspiel. I might have instead phrased the question to just say "a concerto" or "a violin concerto".

There certainly isn't any harm in just saying "a (violin) concerto," but to me the way this question played out in your match sounds pretty ideal: you used a non-trivial amount of knowledge of the repertoire, which most players don't have, to narrow down the answerspace, enabling you to buzz quickly when you recognized a concrete clue that you knew.

(I should also mention that Bartok and Glass, at least, are tossupable composers with more than one violin concerto, but I haven't looked back at the question so maybe it made it obvious that it was a pre-modernist composer.)

Well, the first clue did mention that a piece of his was quoted in Strauss's Alpensinfonie, which mostly rules out Bartok and definitely rules out class Glass (although how much I internalized that I the time I was thinking this through I'm not sure, since of course that also rules out Prokofiev and Shostakovich...). I get the argument about the phrasing rewarding a fairly deep familiarity with the violin concerto repertoire, but I'm still not sure it's ideal to narrow down the answer space quite so quickly just from this sort of knowledge--certainly, I think this is fairly frowned on in history and other categories that I'm reasonably familiar with. Personally, it also didn't feel that "ideal" to me: I was happy with the buzz, but I also felt that I likely wouldn't have gotten it without being primed by a piece of information the editors probably didn't intend to be as informative as it was.

[Eddie]

I've changed the clue to read "a violin concerto" instead of "Violin Concerto No. 1" as discussed.

As to the broader point about narrowing the answer space too early, I think that Will and Will have already expressed my thoughts more eloquently, as have Ophir's excellent article on evasiveness in music tossups and Part III of John Lawrence's A Detailed and Practical Guide to Music Writing/Editing. In short, most quizbowlers have much weaker senses of intuition (e.g. "this feels Baroque") and inference (e.g. "this is an octet composer") in music than in other categories, and descriptions of musical passages (e.g. "this sounds like Bruch's Vorspiel") are inherently more difficult to play due to the nature of transcribing audio into text. Consequently, I prefer to have playable clues with generous heaps of context, but I acknowledge that the aforementioned clue in the Bruch tossup was too generous in this respect. Nevertheless, the early clues in the Mendelssohn and piano concerto tossups were purposely written to this effect; for example, the lead-in of the piano concerto was specifically intended to have you draw up a mental catalogue of Shostakovich's famous "Piece No. 1"s.

I also disagree about the unmemorability of the clues in the B minor tossup, as evidenced by the healthy 17.6% power rate across the mirrors on 16 November. There are also a handful of other important Baroque keys to be written on, such as D major, D minor, G major, and G minor.

[krollo]

Thanks to all the authors for putting together what I think is my favourite of all the hard tournaments I've played. The only question that really bothered me on a factual basis was, funnily enough, the very first bonus of the tournament, on 'books artlovers might use'. While I actively like the idea - asking about how people actually engage with art like this is really cool - the first part perhaps lost something across the Atlantic.

I'm quite familiar with both the books mentioned, but honestly had no idea what you were going for - certainly I don't see how Gombrich is reified as a 'textbook', especially without any further qualification or (I think) any prompt instructions? I ended up saying 'survey histories', and I don't think that's really wrong as written. Perhaps it's far more reified as a textbook in the US - indeed, perhaps the notion of 'textbooks' is more reified - but in the UK I've mainly known it discussed as a history for the general reader.

Other than this, most of my gripes were pretty minor - I'll type them up when I'm a bit freer. But once again, great set!

[Red Panda Cub]

I thought the "bridges" TU in art was a bit odd, since it clued from both Japanese and Chinese art in a way that seemed slightly arbitrary to me. Also, the bridge in Guo Xi's Early Spring is super hard to see (unless the clue was about another work with the same name?)

I was also not entirely thrilled about the Poussin TU, despite thinking it was a cool conceit and which brought together some good stuff. Just a bit of a pet peeve when TUs clue books, especially long ones, entirely from page 1/2.

The small scale of these complaints hopefully indicates that I thought the set was really good overall.

[aseem.keyal]

The only question that really bothered me on a factual basis was, funnily enough, the very first bonus of the tournament, on 'books artlovers might use'. While I actively like the idea - asking about how people actually engage with art like this is really cool - the first part perhaps lost something across the Atlantic.

I'm quite familiar with both the books mentioned, but honestly had no idea what you were going for - certainly I don't see how Gombrich is reified as a 'textbook', especially without any further qualification or (I think) any prompt instructions? I ended up saying 'survey histories', and I don't think that's really wrong as written. Perhaps it's far more reified as a textbook in the US - indeed, perhaps the notion of 'textbooks' is more reified - but in the UK I've mainly known it discussed as a history for the general reader.

1. Answer the following about books that will probably be in an art lover’s collection, for 10 points each.
[10] At some point, you’ve probably owned one of these kinds of books, such as Gardner’s Art Through the Ages or Marilyn Stokstad’s simply-titled Art History.
ANSWER: art history textbooks
[10] If you’re obsessed with an artist, you might own one of these books or sets of books with a two-word French name, which are extensive and annotated listings of their works over their career or in a particular medium.
ANSWER: catalogue raisonné (“catalog reh-zon-NAY”)
[10] If you’re loaded, you might purchase a Warhol catalogue raisonné for over 700 dollars from this publisher with a one word Greek name. It owns Cahiers du cinema (“kah-YAY d’yoo cinema”) and published E. H. Gombrich’s The Story of Art.
ANSWER: Phaidon Press
<AK, Other Academic>

So while Gombrich isn't mentioned in the first part, this is a good point. Although both the books mentioned are explicitly intended for US classrooms, terms like "surveys" should definitely be acceptable. At some point I meant to go back and add an accept for that, but then it slipped my mind. I'll add it in now, thanks!

[jmarvin_]

For what it's worth, I'll add that my team answered with "surveys" as well after deliberating on whether "textbook" was too general to be the answer, and were unfortunately denied points.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

I'd just like to add that the bonus is really hard!

[Sima Guang Hater]

Could I see the tossup on the replication crisis, please

[Bosa of York]

It would be trivial to use the advanced stats to see that this is in packet 8, and then just go to it yourself, but

A Nature article by Marcus R. Munafò and George Davey Smith argues that responses to this phenomenon should focus on triangulation. In 2017, Susan Fiske drew controversy for alleging a form of “terrorism” by those writing about this phenomenon. This phenomenon is the focus of a “project” founded by Brian Nosek as well as an organization at Stanford led by Steven Goodman and John Ioannidis. This phenomenon is exacerbated by Robert Rosenthal’s (*) file-drawer problem, and has led organizations like the Center for Open Science to push for pre-registration measures. This phenomenon is most often attributed to p-hacking, high significance thresholds, and publish-or-perish mentality leading to a 36% success rate for a process in social psychology studies. For 10 points, name this ongoing problem in the social sciences of researchers failing to confirm the results of original studies.

ANSWER: replication crisis [or reproducibility crisis; accept any answers relating to a problem in replicating studies]

<JM, Psychology>

[Sima Guang Hater]

A Nature article by Marcus R. Munafò and George Davey Smith argues that responses to this phenomenon should focus on triangulation. In 2017, Susan Fiske drew controversy for alleging a form of “terrorism” by those writing about this phenomenon. This phenomenon is the focus of a “project” founded by Brian Nosek as well as an organization at Stanford led by Steven Goodman and John Ioannidis. This phenomenon is exacerbated by Robert Rosenthal’s (*) file-drawer problem, and has led organizations like the Center for Open Science to push for pre-registration measures. This phenomenon is most often attributed to p-hacking, high significance thresholds, and publish-or-perish mentality leading to a 36% success rate for a process in social psychology studies. For 10 points, name this ongoing problem in the social sciences of researchers failing to confirm the results of original studies.

ANSWER: replication crisis [or reproducibility crisis; accept any answers relating to a problem in replicating studies]

So the clue about the file-drawer problem, which very specifically is one way that publication bias occurs, is somewhat misleading (I negged on that clue with "publication bias"), not to mention the clues about triangulation and the METRICS center (the Goodman/Iannidis thing) can also apply to publication bias.

[cwasims]

It would be trivial to use the advanced stats to see that this is in packet 8, and then just go to it yourself, but

A Nature article by Marcus R. Munafò and George Davey Smith argues that responses to this phenomenon should focus on triangulation. In 2017, Susan Fiske drew controversy for alleging a form of “terrorism” by those writing about this phenomenon. This phenomenon is the focus of a “project” founded by Brian Nosek as well as an organization at Stanford led by Steven Goodman and John Ioannidis. This phenomenon is exacerbated by Robert Rosenthal’s (*) file-drawer problem, and has led organizations like the Center for Open Science to push for pre-registration measures. This phenomenon is most often attributed to p-hacking, high significance thresholds, and publish-or-perish mentality leading to a 36% success rate for a process in social psychology studies. For 10 points, name this ongoing problem in the social sciences of researchers failing to confirm the results of original studies.

ANSWER: replication crisis [or reproducibility crisis; accept any answers relating to a problem in replicating studies]

<JM, Psychology>

On this topic, I know my teammate was quite annoyed that his answer of "statistical methodology" wasn't accepted, since the Susan Fiske paper is titled "Methodological Terrorism" and he mentioned that the paper was about general criticisms of psychological methodology, not specifically the replication crisis.

[Zealots of Stockholm]

A small nit to pick: in the bonus about Art history textbooks, Michael Cothren should also be credited as one of the authors of Art History.

[a bird]

I want to point out that the question on Fourier optics was talking about a lot of cool and important stuff, but that it could be kind of harsh and unpleasant to play. I realize there are lots of books called "Fourier Optics," but many of these clues just strike me as techniques from optics that use a Fourier transform, so I was confused as to what the question was going for. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't really think of Fourier optics as a separate field, but rather a set of tools.

[Zealots of Stockholm]

A bit late, but I felt pretty hosed by buzzing in on the Flann O'Brien tossup on the clue about Jem Casey and saying Steinbeck (due to Grapes of Wrath) and being negged. Obviously the prior clues rule out Steinbeck, but I clearly did not know them.

[mehrj14]

A Nature article by Marcus R. Munafò and George Davey Smith argues that responses to this phenomenon should focus on triangulation. In 2017, Susan Fiske drew controversy for alleging a form of “terrorism” by those writing about this phenomenon. This phenomenon is the focus of a “project” founded by Brian Nosek as well as an organization at Stanford led by Steven Goodman and John Ioannidis. This phenomenon is exacerbated by Robert Rosenthal’s (*) file-drawer problem, and has led organizations like the Center for Open Science to push for pre-registration measures. This phenomenon is most often attributed to p-hacking, high significance thresholds, and publish-or-perish mentality leading to a 36% success rate for a process in social psychology studies. For 10 points, name this ongoing problem in the social sciences of researchers failing to confirm the results of original studies.

ANSWER: replication crisis [or reproducibility crisis; accept any answers relating to a problem in replicating studies]

So the clue about the file-drawer problem, which very specifically is one way that publication bias occurs, is somewhat misleading (I negged on that clue with "publication bias"), not to mention the clues about triangulation and the METRICS center (the Goodman/Iannidis thing) can also apply to publication bias.

I'm sympathetic to the neg and maybe should've had a prompt in place, but the file-drawer effect is basically synonymous with publication bias, so the sentence "this phenomenon is exacerbated by the file-drawer problem" doesn't make that much sense if it's referring to itself. At game speed this might be hard to parse, but the file-drawer problem is literally what publication bias is, not a way it occurs, at least to my knowledge.