2018 Sun God Invitational General Discussion

[Jason Cheng]

Thanks for playing Sun God Invitational, everyone!

We first started working on this set over a year ago--the whole thing has very much been a labor of love. I'm proud of the product that came out, and of the members of our team for our hard work and marked efforts to improve both the set and ourselves as writers. At some point in the next two days, I'll post some specific thanks since a lot of people contribute to this effort, but for now, you know who you are.

This thread will be for general thoughts and discussion; other more specific threads will go up later.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

Not sure I have too much to add to what Jason had to say. I worked on this set with the goal of combining the same sort of "realness" and willing to happily venture outside the bounds of the canon that people appreciated about Regionals 2018, with Jason's strong vision for a highly accessible regular difficulty tournament. This meant a lot of work, and indeed I don't think I've ever worked harder on a tournament than this one, but I'd like to think we succeeded.

I edited history, RMPSS, and auditory arts and teamed up with Aseem and Jason to tackle science. We had a ton of great questions by new writers in every area - particularly Emmett, who wrote a ton of questions in literature, history, and visual arts, but also the Blischak twins, Rahul Rao-Pothraju, Beck Duggleby, Spencer Oung, and Nolan Dannels. Eddie Kim (tagged as <KL>) and Jonathan Luck also contributed.

My specific thanks also go out to the following non-writing folks:

Billy Busse - Patiently reviewing all the science and giving me lots of helpful clue suggestions. This was my first time writing a lot of science questions for a collegiate tournament and I think it turned out pretty well, and Billy's feedback was the single most important contributor to this (followed by Aseem's)
Andrew Wang, Eric Mukherjee, Jordan Brownstein, Tejas Raje, Benji Nguyen, Itamar Naveh-Benjamin, Stephen Liu - for playtesting lots of questions and giving clue suggestions and massive amounts of helpful feedback
Ophir - Testing all the music, providing good feedback, and proofreading everything
Ike Jose - Drilling into a few sketchy questions I sent him and taking his time to teach me how to make them better
Jacob Reed - Improving a few music questions I sent him
...and people I probably forgot :( please feel free to message me if I forgot you!

[Jason Cheng]

On top of Will's acknowledgements, I'd like to thank everyone (else) who playtested our set for their willingness to provide tons of feedback and engage in several cumulative man-hours of discussion with us on the Discord server afterwards (Matt Mitchell, Jeremy Tsai, and Erik Christensen even helped us proofread on Wednesday/Thursday as we were hosting the packets onto the Ophir's server!). The set changed and improved a lot since the playtest mirror, and a lot of it was thanks to them.

I had a few intentions in mind when I organized this project and decided to call myself the head editor for whatever reason:

• to give some relatively new people an opportunity to work on a college-season set in as prominent a capacity as they want (myself included)
• to, as Will said, and knowing that we could pull it off, produce as close to a gold standard of "well-produced, tightly difficulty-controlled" set which also carried the flavor and excitement/engagement with content that I want to hear when I'm playing.
• and because I was bored that day and looking for something to do

For the first point, I think this worked as well as it could have--we got a solid contribution from members of the UCSD club, an excellent (lol) sophomore effort from Aseem (who's instinctively a very good writer, highly recommend working with him), a strong effort from Rahul Rao-Potharaju, and a heroic effort from Emmett Laurie. In particular, I think everyone who contributed was very willing to back-and-forth on how to improve their writing, and they got better with each successive question. Rahul and Emmett in particular were phenomenal about taking feedback and finding ways to fix issues with their questions on their own accord.

Tons of messages, time, and sometimes even arguments went into our Facebook group chat, and I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that we've all learned a lot and gotten a lot better at writing, editing, and our understanding of how to do so.

For the second point, I'll leave it to the jury to decide whether or not it worked. This wasn't easy, and we really did take the almost 16 months since we first announced the set working on this, especially since the large workload was a monumentally new experience for most of us. I really do think this set only turned out as close to the goal as it did because we (shoutout to Will and Aseem) were so committed to it, and to turning out a quality product.

Ways we tried to accomplish this goal included strictly reviewing answerlines looking to find the most intuitive/accessible/easy way to ask the content we wanted to, making sure we stayed grounded in "bread and potatoes" widely-gettable topics, and using our own judgment on how best to utilize the "canon," as much as the "canon" exists. That last part means trying to figure out when to adjust our content to prior questions/"quiz bowl knowledge" (ex. long debates over whether "The Cremation of Sam McGee" constituted a medium part or whether we cared that Robert Hass came up twice last year, after I'd written our bonus on him in 2017) or when to just ignore it (ex. "we'll just keep writing questions on fashion until people in quiz bowl start getting it"). I'll probably never post my thoughts on the canon, but I don't think it really exists in a concrete, hydra-headed way that people seem to talk about it as, so contra Will, I don't think we were venturing outside the bounds of anything. Reality is what you make of it, especially since I wouldn't consider myself a high-tier player with mastery of what comes up, but I don't think we "defied" the canon as much as we tried to construct a set that reflected knowledge we come across as knowledge-seeking individuals rather than as people who've played a lot of questions over the last 6-9 years. I don't think I've opened an old packet more than like five times in the last half a year.

Personally, one of the ways I checked clues intended to challenge players was to think if I'd encountered it in any way isolated from quiz bowl, or if I could search it up and find discussion/conversations about the subject of the clue anywhere. In a group chat just now, Aseem mentioned that he mined a (cut) hard part on "the aestheticization of politics" from Walter Benjamin's from the fact that he'd heard someone on a random podcast say "fascism is politics aestheticized" and that it matched up with a vague memory of The Work of Art in... --that's more or less how I mined clues and checked content too, although hopefully in easier ways.

On top of trying to give input on every question I could, I edited the literature, a couple of dangling Other Arts, and teamed up with Aseem on the bio and chem, and "edited" the Other Academic/Misc. For specific subjects, I can't say I had much of a philosophy for tackling them besides what's already been encapsulated in the overarching general philosophy of the set. I will say that, for literature, at some point I told Will that "I wouldn't even enjoy playing [hypothetical] tossup, why would I want to write it?" That probably gets you as close to a philosophy for specific subjects as I'll ever have (clues and content that I'd want to play). I guess with lit I also try to make sure most of the clues I use have some kind of link to a greater meaning of the work--themes, contextual interest, there's a Broadway play about Sarah Bernhardt playing Hamlet in like 1890, whatever.

Lastly, I'd like to thank our team one last time. In the course of set production, all of us have been through a lot of things outside of our work for this set and outside of quiz bowl--starting new jobs, moving, applying for things, personal life events, etc. Aseem and I were talking about how, sometimes, we'd rather chill out or mess around after work (which lol I totally did) than put even more time into a side project with looming deadlines on top of a bunch of other things going on in our lives. In terms of time investment, and because this set was definitely a labor of love for us, I sunk dozens of hours alone into arguing with Will over content (and I think the questions turned out much better for it). At many points, I wasn't even looking forward to thinking about the set, let alone working on it. Like I said, though, I'm extremely happy with the way we worked with each other, pieced together a product so close (in my view) to our initial goals, and pulled what weight needed to be pulled. It wasn't always the case, but when I saw everything fall in place on Thursday night into a finalized set we'd have absolutely zero qualms about sending out, I thought, "Yeah this project was definitely worth committing to in the end."

Thanks for playing (and/or reading) Sun God Invitational!

[Jason Cheng]

Oh yeah also Will wrote three hundred (300) questions for this set so if you take into account that whole blurb about how hard it was to do this set production thing on top of the life thing, that’s pretty neat

[VSCOelasticity]

I can't really comment on much outside of science, but I really enjoyed this set. The clues used seemed really fresh and genuinely interesting, and the bonus hard parts almost never felt like I was being asked to remember some unimportant minutia. Thank you to all the editors and writers for your hard work!

[a bird]

There were a lot of positives with the science in this set, especially in terms of topic selection and fresh ideas. I think the set did a solid job of focusing on things of real world importance and rewarding engagement with science. (I will try to elaborate later on which approaches to this were most successful.) The main issue with the science is difficulty control.

While tossup difficulty was probably fine, a lot of bio and chem bonuses were significantly harder than other parts of the set. While I enjoyed most of the questions in those categories, I think many of those bonus would be at home in a "spring open" set. I have more thoughts about the physics, but in most places the difficulty was controlled better than bio or chem.

[Votre Kickstarter Est Nul]

Just to add my own small note: this was my first collegiate writing experience and I cannot be grateful enough to Jason and Will for taking me on despite my zero prior collegiate quizbowl writing experience; the same goes for Jason, Will, and Aseem (as well as everyone else on the writing team who playtested) for all of the editing and guidance they provided me. I am incredibly proud of the set that we wrote and I couldn't be happier about getting a chance to contribute to it.

Any and all comments people have about my questions would be greatly appreciated, whether that be here or in private messages (I'd assume until the set is clear the easiest way to do this would be to check writer tags on ophirstats). Hope y'all liked the set!

[vinteuil]

Is it true that this tournament had less than 1/1 Philosophy? What was the rationale behind that decision? Why was it not announced? (In fact, why was 1/1 Philosophy explicitly announced then?)

[naan/steak-holding toll]

Is it true that this tournament had less than 1/1 Philosophy? What was the rationale behind that decision? Why was it not announced? (In fact, why was 1/1 Philosophy explicitly announced then?)

As to the former two - because we wanted to make room for more Other Ac / Misc questions. We felt philosophy was an easy place to trim from because it's one of the less accessible categories - we got this idea from MUT 2014. The usual trend is to cut into myths/legends for this, and we chose differently. I do think we were a bit excessively light on core Early Modern stuff (only the Locke bonus in the finals, and a mention or two of Kant), and that was an oversight on my part.

As to the latter, human error

[Here Comes Rusev Day]

I enjoyed playing this set. There were points where I felt difficulty started flying off the rails later in the set in terms of some of the bonuses, but nothing too absurd. Was especially excited to see historiography was going to be part of the distribution, but I only remember 1 historiography question all day (I could be mistaken about this though). Either way, I’m glad this set was here.

[Borrowing 100,000 Arrows]

Is it true that this tournament had less than 1/1 Philosophy? What was the rationale behind that decision? Why was it not announced? (In fact, why was 1/1 Philosophy explicitly announced then?)

As to the former two - because we wanted to make room for more Other Ac / Misc questions. We felt philosophy was an easy place to trim from because it's one of the less accessible categories - we got this idea from MUT 2014. The usual trend is to cut into myths/legends for this, and we chose differently. I do think we were a bit excessively light on core Early Modern stuff (only the Locke bonus in the finals, and a mention or two of Kant), and that was an oversight on my part.

As to the latter, human error

Yeah, I wasn't super thrilled about this for obvious reasons. I think cutting a subject because it isn't as accessible is a pretty questionable rationale. The distro shouldn't be determined by what people know, it should be determined by what they should know. While myths and legends are studied very little in the academy, nearly everyone takes at least one philosophy class.

Otherwise, I thought this set was quite good. Thanks for everyone who worked on this set!

[heterodyne]

Is it true that this tournament had less than 1/1 Philosophy? What was the rationale behind that decision? Why was it not announced? (In fact, why was 1/1 Philosophy explicitly announced then?)

As to the former two - because we wanted to make room for more Other Ac / Misc questions. We felt philosophy was an easy place to trim from because it's one of the less accessible categories - we got this idea from MUT 2014. The usual trend is to cut into myths/legends for this, and we chose differently. I do think we were a bit excessively light on core Early Modern stuff (only the Locke bonus in the finals, and a mention or two of Kant), and that was an oversight on my part.

Even if you are committed to making this poor decision, why would you deliberately mislead teams by announcing that the tournament has 1/1 philosophy?

[a bird]

Is it true that this tournament had less than 1/1 Philosophy? What was the rationale behind that decision? Why was it not announced? (In fact, why was 1/1 Philosophy explicitly announced then?)

As to the former two - because we wanted to make room for more Other Ac / Misc questions. We felt philosophy was an easy place to trim from because it's one of the less accessible categories - we got this idea from MUT 2014. The usual trend is to cut into myths/legends for this, and we chose differently.

This is a reasonable choice*, given the stated motivation, but I'm not sure it fits the ethos of other parts of the set. The editors cut philosophy to make room for more accessible content, while other areas of the distribution focussed on "real," but quite difficult things. I think this demonstrates the issues with the split between Will's stated goals: accessibility and "realness." I think the set ended up more a salad bowl than a melting pot in this respect—some questions favored accessibility while others favored deep knowledge.

Were the editors trying to make an accessible medium difficulty tournament, or were they trying to focus on differentiating experienced players based on depth of knowledge? The answer is probably both, but it seems like many questions were primarily serving one purpose or the other, not both.

My first post alluded to this in the science distribution, and I want to elaborate here. There were probably similar difficulty swings in other categories (possibly lit), but science will be my main example. Many science bonuses were trying to ask about "real" things, often to the point where easy parts were pretty challenging to solid science players and "elite" high school teams (ask me for specific examples). Many middle parts were quite hard for experienced teams (look at Chicago A's bio ppb for example). In contrast the chem tossups covered some fairly standard ground (a decent amount of orgo, covering name reactions that come up frequently), while many physics tossups included lots of clues from grad level coursework and research (mathematical forms of potentials, power in laser systems, quantum scattering theory). I really like Will's goal of blending the best parts of ACF Regionals 2018 with a more accessible tournament, but I'm not sure how well it worked out. I think it led to a lot of variance with some unexpectedly easy tossups and unexpectedly hard bonuses.

To summarize, this set had lots of good questions, it just had an identity crisis in terms of difficulty.

*EDIT: I agree that it should have been announced beforehand—not doing so is a pretty big issue.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

Is it true that this tournament had less than 1/1 Philosophy? What was the rationale behind that decision? Why was it not announced? (In fact, why was 1/1 Philosophy explicitly announced then?)

As to the former two - because we wanted to make room for more Other Ac / Misc questions. We felt philosophy was an easy place to trim from because it's one of the less accessible categories - we got this idea from MUT 2014. The usual trend is to cut into myths/legends for this, and we chose differently. I do think we were a bit excessively light on core Early Modern stuff (only the Locke bonus in the finals, and a mention or two of Kant), and that was an oversight on my part.

Even if you are committed to making this poor decision, why would you deliberately mislead teams by announcing that the tournament has 1/1 philosophy?

As to the latter, human error

I'm still not convinced that there is necessarily as big a dichotomy between "accessible" and "real" as people are postulating here, but whatever.

Also, I reject the assertion that "almost everyone has taken a philosophy class." This is extremely false. I took classes that discussed material from political philosophy, but never took a "philosophy class" per se and neither have many people on our writing team. Maybe we're a strange group of folks in this regard.

I think we're at odds with a lot of value judgments here as well. Perhaps some people in this thread think philosophy is a subject people "should know" more than, say, legends and myths. I personally wouldn't agree with that value judgment.

[vinteuil]

Is it true that this tournament had less than 1/1 Philosophy? What was the rationale behind that decision? Why was it not announced? (In fact, why was 1/1 Philosophy explicitly announced then?)

As to the former two - because we wanted to make room for more Other Ac / Misc questions. We felt philosophy was an easy place to trim from because it's one of the less accessible categories - we got this idea from MUT 2014. The usual trend is to cut into myths/legends for this, and we chose differently. I do think we were a bit excessively light on core Early Modern stuff (only the Locke bonus in the finals, and a mention or two of Kant), and that was an oversight on my part.

Even if you are committed to making this poor decision, why would you deliberately mislead teams by announcing that the tournament has 1/1 philosophy?

As to the latter, human error

How about this: you made a decision that runs against the grain of received quizbowl practice. That is extremely your right, but the decision not to announce it just seems odd, and I at least was looking for an actual explanation. (For instance: was this decision made after announcing the tournament? As the set was nearing completion?)

[Jason Cheng]

The power rate for sites last weekend were 19-20%, the neg rates were 23%, and the conversion rates for tossups were about 90%. Until we get more teams into the advanced stats and visualize it, we won’t know for sure, but so far the average buzz point distribution looks fairly even across tossups.

When I was vetting and deciding the type of content that constituted the knowledge that aligned with the goals I laid out earlier in this thread (with my philosophy for those goals), I held a firm belief that there was no such thing as a dichotomy between “accessible” and “real.” Definitionally, a clue that constitutes things people engage with is something that people should be able to convert for points.

Accessible is not (and should not be!) a strict function of how much things have come up before, nor is it a function of some nebulous canon. Learning things from reading or carding is only one form of knowledge acquisition—learning from classes or learning from following podcasts and YouTube channels about cybersecurity or learning from looking up references from other media or learning from being a Broadway fan or learning from listening to your immigrant parents tell stories about the myths and legends they learned while growing up. My directive was to reward as many varieties of knowledge acquisition as possible, which was how we’d reward “real” knowledge. Maybe I undervalued some types of knowledge for others, but as I alluded to in my earlier post, I didn’t necessarily (but I did in some cases) make difficulty judgments based on whether something had come up before and how often it had come up before. What I often did was instead try to integrate knowledge from one field about a subject into more broadly-rewarding answerlines (for example, I got a comment that “90% of the lit was common links”—actually, about 40% of the lit was common links, and that’s if you include tossups like “Spanish” as the language Parra and Neruda wrote in or “Kenya” entirely from Petals of Blood, which seems more like a tossup on a plot point to me). Sometimes (much less often), I decided that a top 5 essential ballet like La Bayadere according to pretty much any easily Google-able list, which was a ballet I knew not from any real study but by growing up with and watching ballet dancer friends at their performances, was worth a tossup on because that (and dance in general) is something many people acquire knowledge easily of, or in other words, “real” and indistinguishable from “accessible.” I had similar justifications for other examples, like the 1/1 on fashion which I did not think was difficult to acquire knowledge and was well-known by large representative populations (Christian Dior and things about UNIQLO and highly penetrant streetwear brands and Harajuku don’t strike me as “inaccessible”).

If some questions turned out harder because we misjudged knowledge, I’ll gladly take responsibility for that and apologize. The idea, though, that “real” only means hard and “accessible” only means standard questions that are asked at every tournament is part of why we have hand-wringing over how hard it is for players to just get good and learn the canon, and strikes me as either a false belief or a writing philosophy I have no interest in adhering to.

[Jason Cheng]

The Phil distribution miscommunication was actually my fault—Will broached the idea but was ambivalent about it, and I told him it was a good idea and that I liked the justification as an editorial decision, and we made the change.

All these decisions were made last December, but in my eagerness to moan about how much life was getting in the way of working on this tournament, I never updated the announcement post—I profusely apologize for this

[Borrowing 100,000 Arrows]

I think we're at odds with a lot of value judgments here as well. Perhaps some people in this thread think philosophy is a subject people "should know" more than, say, legends and myths. I personally wouldn't agree with that value judgment.

Yeah, my opinions about this are tied up in my opinions about what I think quizbowl ought to be. As is probably pretty clear, I think that the quizbowl canon should solely be a function of what is important in the academy. Anyways, sorry to bog down this thread with a debate that should probably take place elsewhere.

[a bird]

Accessible is not (and should not be!) a strict function of how much things have come up before, nor is it a function of some nebulous canon. Learning things from reading or carding is only one form of knowledge acquisition—learning from classes or learning from following podcasts and YouTube channels about cybersecurity or learning from looking up references from other media or learning from being a Broadway fan or learning from listening to your immigrant parents tell stories about the myths and legends they learned while growing up. My directive was to reward as many varieties of knowledge acquisition as possible, which was how we’d reward “real” knowledge.

...

If some questions turned out harder because we misjudged knowledge, I’ll gladly take responsibility for that and apologize. The idea, though, that “real” only means hard and “accessible” only means standard questions that are asked at every tournament is part of why we have hand-wringing over how hard it is for players to just get good and learn the canon, and strikes me as either a false belief or a writing philosophy I have no interest in adhering to.

My earlier post oversimplified the distinction between questions that focus on accessibility and questions that focus on academic relevance. I absolutely agree that accessible questions don't have to be things that have come up before. A more fleshed out scheme would take into account accessibility and how standard a topic is in QB as independent factors.

My argument is that the science in this set had a lot of questions that were quite difficult (and probably inaccessible) and quite academically/real world relevant. There were other science questions that were on more standard topics and thus were less difficult (I won't claim anything about their accessibility). Some questions felt like they were written to challenge experienced players while others felt like they were written to be a bridge from lower difficulty sets.

I'm not arguing that your (Jason's) writing philosophy was bad, I'm arguing that certain parts of the set were written with different visions.

[Banana Stand]

http://hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic. ... ks#p223874

^This is one of the better tournament discussions on common links ever so I suggest reading it. I’m not as much as a hardliner as Ted is here, but I think his critiques of “artificial common links” is pretty valid.

Looking back on this set, a lot of the literature common links were really good “organic common links”(tattoos in Melville, Aureliano, Kenya, the sea) that rewarded a engagement with a specific work or closely related set of works. Other “artificial common links” didn’t seem necessary to me. The tossups on The Idiot, “Daisy”, and Sleepwalking particularly stood out to me ones that should have just been straightforward tossups on a work. What type of engagement are you rewarding with these types of tossups? I have notecards on Batuman, Carol Shields, and Sleepwalking Land but have not read these works and suspect that 99.x% of the field hasn’t either, whereas people have read Dostoevsky and Henry James a ton at this level. I think it’s really important to think about why people are buzzing on certain tossups. If you think someone carding Stone Diaries or Mia Couto is more important to reward than someone actually reading the core works, then by all means keep making questions like this, but I personally don’t think it’s necessary.

That said, I thought the lit in this set was overall very solid and rewarded a lot of core knowledge, but I think some of the common links were just designed to shoehorn in a hard title at the beginning at the cost of other clues. This is the only reason I’d think people would have a problem with the common links, Jason, as a lot of them were very good and thematically linked tossups. There’s just no connection between Couto and Shakespeare, or Shields and James, so I’d say it’s better to leave that type of tossup on the shelf.

[Jason Cheng]

What type of engagement are you rewarding with these types of tossups? I have notecards on Batuman, Carol Shields...

https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/carol-shields
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/775 ... ne_Diaries

https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/elif-batuman
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30962053-the-idiot
https://lithub.com/?s=batuman

I was trying to reward the type of engagement where people apparently do read or discuss these specific novels in many, many avenues in the same way I learned about these things. By the way, this is one of those cases where someone mentioned "that's card knowledge too though" and I decided that, no, knowledge is just knowledge--I was trying to reward knowledge in general (the idea of punishing certain forms of knowledge never occurred to me and is a pretty bad way to write, just to preempt some comments that misrepresent the philosophy I tried to impose on every question in the set as head editor).

I'm also not convinced these are inherently... bad ways to ask about things--like you said, I had plenty of "good organic common links" (again, Kenya was actually all just written from one novel and then the author), but I do agree that this set went a little too far with Mia Couto/Macbeth in terms of forcing a link (it seems like you understand the link between Batuman and Dostoyevsky, though). The link between things like "Florida" (these are all things notably set in Florida) and "Daisy" (these are all well-read US novels with prominent women) seem fine to me, though, because certain questions are always just fine to write because they're playable, get a fluid distribution of buzzes, and you have to finish a set. I learned to write from Auroni, and he and I both have eventually agreed that trying to write tightly themed tossups only is how you go insane.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

Yeah, I wrote the Sleewalking Land tossup because I read the book and wanted to write a question that included it in some manner or another. I thought of "Portuguese" and "sleepwalking" as answerlines I could do this with, and chose the latter.

[heterodyne]

Clueing from Batuman's novel, which has been widely read and written about and was in general quite trendy last year, is fine. Dropping the (quite distinctive) name of the main character in the first line, however, strikes me as antipyramidal.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

Clueing from Batuman's novel, which has been widely read and written about and was in general quite trendy last year, is fine. Dropping the (quite distinctive) name of the main character in the first line, however, strikes me as antipyramidal.

This is, thankfully, an empirically testable statement! We have twenty-two rooms that played this tossup. How many people buzzed on this leadin? We can tell you: at most, one - Taylor Harvey, from Florida, who seems according to the data to be buzzing a bit after the first sentence was completely read. This tossup was not powered at all at the UIUC site, the strongest of the four that played yesterday.

Now if the response to this is an argument along Jacob's lines, i.e. "the player trusts the question to not be too easy" - well, that's a "heads-I-win, tails-you-lose" argument, and I don't think there's a way to see if that's correct without getting some player testimony. If an early clue has too many buzzes, then it is too easy. If an early clue does not have many buzzes, but the individual asserts that it is too early regardless, then it is still too early because it clearly caused hesitation in buzzing. Perhaps we can ask the people who powered this tossup if they experienced this phenomenon of delay of buzzing on the leadin?

Putting the data aside: I'd agree that Selin is a distinctively Turkish name and people who are aware that a Elif Batuman is a Turkish-American author wrote a novel titled "The Idiot" and who know some details about Dostoevsky's biography can put two and two together and deliver a buzz. I honestly don't think that's a problem. I also don't think it's particularly bad if someone gets a first clue buzz on this question because they are engaged with the contemporary literature scene, as you seem to be. In fact, I might even say that's pretty ideal!

Questions like this on The Idiot do beget an interesting question - should this question on The Idiot drop Batuman's name? There are pros and cons here. The obvious "con" is that it's easy to write a flashcard or single line note on Batuman and get an early buzz. The "pro" is that it's distinctly possible that someone's engaged with Batuman's novel in some way or another, but maybe they read about it in a book review and didn't focus a ton on the character names, or they recognized the leadin but couldn't place it immediately and naming Batuman lets them get that buzz, whereas if we never named Batuman again that person could very well spend the whole question trying to remember the leadin and never get rewarded for having interacted with Batuman's book in some way.

[Borrowing 100,000 Arrows]

I have notecards on Batuman, Carol Shields, and Sleepwalking Land but have not read these works and suspect that 99.x% of the field hasn’t either, whereas people have read Dostoevsky and Henry James a ton at this level. I think it’s really important to think about why people are buzzing on certain tossups. If you think someone carding Stone Diaries or Mia Couto is more important to reward than someone actually reading the core works, then by all means keep making questions like this, but I personally don’t think it’s necessary.

Not every tossup has to reward knowledge that people have acquired via reading, and not every clue not learned from reading is learned from cards. For example, I learned about Mia Couto from attending a lecture he gave at OU, and I learned about Batuman by reading The New Yorker, I don't think I remember either of them coming up in a quizbowl tournament I've played before. Not every question needs to reward reading, it's fine if some questions just reward you for being interested in literature.

[heterodyne]

To clarify my problem, it's not that the name Selin is too easy to have there simpliciter, but rather that it is easier than the other clues from the novel used in the tossup. The empirical stats aren't going to be much help, since very few people are buzzing on the first two clues (as it should be). I just think that in this case putting the name after the other clues ends up rewarding deep knowledge of the novel better.

[TaylorH]

I really enjoyed this set. It is among my favorite in the last few years. I constantly felt rewarded for pockets of knowledge I have from outside quiz bowl studying, so if that was what is meant by "realness" then this set succeeded. The mostly-freshmen players on our B and C teams also seemed to enjoy it quite a bit, even though they have very little college mid-difficulty experience. Thanks to everyone who worked on this set!

With regards to the question on The Idiot, I have read the Batuman novel and so I felt rather rewarded for buzzing first line. I recognized the plot clue immediately and hesitated for a second in trying to remember what novel it was from. I either didn't hear or recognize the name Selin, and I don't think I could have buzzed on that name without the plot clue along with it even having read the novel.

In general I am for common links of all kinds and I think this set handled them well.

[Mike Bentley]

I really enjoyed this set. It is among my favorite in the last few years. I constantly felt rewarded for pockets of knowledge I have from outside quiz bowl studying, so if that was what is meant by "realness" then this set succeeded. The mostly-freshmen players on our B and C teams also seemed to enjoy it quite a bit, even though they have very little college mid-difficulty experience. Thanks to everyone who worked on this set!

With regards to the question on The Idiot, I have read the Batuman novel and so I felt rather rewarded for buzzing first line. I recognized the plot clue immediately and hesitated for a second in trying to remember what novel it was from. I either didn't hear or recognize the name Selin, and I don't think I could have buzzed on that name without the plot clue along with it even having read the novel.

In general I am for common links of all kinds and I think this set handled them well.

I also really enjoyed this set (and have read The Idiot and buzzed in on the first line). I don't think that every set needs to do this, but I liked this set's emphasis on let's say "the current cultural conversation" when selecting clues for otherwise canonical answers.

[Carlos Be]

I really liked this set. I thought the lit in particular was very good, both in terms of question quality and in terms of clueing a diverse canon of interesting literature. I only have two small critiques:

First, out of 15/15 other science questions only 6/6 were marked as math, and this includes a tossup on logistic functions that clues earth science, computer science, biology, and all sorts of other things. The math also leaned more towards the side of statistics/applied math, and while I've heard the argument that more people encounter math through these means, that is not reflected in the conversion statistics and makes the subcategory seem rather repetitive.

Second, a few of the answerlines required more information than necessary to show knowledge of the subject. For example, I saw the tossup on cathedrals negged after someone said "churches" but couldn't pull the answer on the prompt. While all the paintings clued did depict cathedrals, is the question trying to test knowledge of paintings by Constable, or is it trying to test knowledge on the difference between churches and cathedrals? If the latter is necessary to show the former, the question did not make it clear why that would be the case. Similarly, on the tossup on trees that clued The Vegetarian, is it necessary to know that Yeong-hye's desire to become a plant incarnates specifically as her acting like a tree? Since at earlier points in the work this desire is expressed through other plants, I would lean towards no, although not having read the book I will defer to someone who has a better understanding of it.

[Cody]

6/6 math is a perfectly appropriate amount of math for a 15 packet set; even as little as 4/4 is standard.

I don't know what you mean by applied math, but a good focus on the math subjects that many non-math majors are required to take is the right move at all levels of difficulty, and especially at this level.

[Carlos Be]

a good focus on the math subjects that many non-math majors are required to take is the right move at all levels of difficulty

No other category is held to this standard— there is no subdistribution of biology reserved for "bio for physical science majors" and there is no subdistribution of literature reserved for "lit for STEM majors." Furthermore, the idea that stats/applied math is easier than pure math is not supported by conversion statistics. (logistic / t-distribution) had a 95% combined conversion percentage and 68% average buzz point while (convergence / rank / intersection) had a 96% combined conversion and 70% average buzz point. Similarly, (Galois theory... / Noetherian... / Riemann sphere) had a 94%, 37%, and 14% conversion percentage for easy, medium, and hard, while (PCA...) had 95%, 21%, 16% for easy, medium, and hard.

especially at this level

College regs is a very difficult level. Math is not so obscure that you cannot find .5/.5 or more answerlines that are difficulty appropriate.

[vinteuil]

No other category is held to this standard— there is no subdistribution of biology reserved for "bio for physical science majors" and there is no subdistribution of literature reserved for "lit for STEM majors."

This is flat-out untrue. Many of the thought categories are held to precisely this standard, for instance (things that literary and art theorists use; social science useful in history)—not to mention the other intersections within the science categories (chem-friendly biochem, physics-friendly thermo or physical chemistry, astro-friendly physics, computer science most commonly used in other applications).

Much as I would love it, I actually think that .5/.5 math would be excessive in any set beyond HS difficulty, and .5/.5 "pure math" would be just insane given how relatively few people study the advanced topics (compared to, e.g. CS).

[The Sawing-Off of Manhattan Island]

6/6 math is a perfectly appropriate amount of math for a 15 packet set; even as little as 4/4 is standard.

Regardless of the ideology behind it, wasn't the set announced as .5/.5 math initially anyways? It seems to have missed that percentage, if it really was 6/6 out of 15.

[Cody]

No other category is held to this standard— there is no subdistribution of biology reserved for "bio for physical science majors" and there is no subdistribution of literature reserved for "lit for STEM majors."

There is no standard that math is being held to, as I have simply articulated an argument from accessibility.

The questions we ask in science categories more closely follow "the classroom" than other categories, and rightly so because of the commonalities in science education across institutions. You cannot make any argument about what science should look like by drawing from non-science categories because that’s not the case for any other big 3 or big 5 categories. For example, literature in quizbowl bears practically no relation to how literature is studied by literature majors, so there is no “lit for lit majors” or any majors, including “STEM majors”.

Turning to science categories, however, there is a healthy portion of each category that is reserved for “core” topics. These “core” topics are “core” because they are accessible: not only are they taken by “majors” of their category, but they are also taken by many disciplines outside of the “major”. The most obvious example is organic chemistry in chemistry, but classical mechanics and electromagnetism + optics in physics also fit the bill, among others.

Furthermore, the idea that stats/applied math is easier than pure math is not supported by conversion statistics. (logistic / t-distribution) had a 95% combined conversion percentage and 68% average buzz point while (convergence / rank / intersection) had a 96% combined conversion and 70% average buzz point. Similarly, (Galois theory... / Noetherian... / Riemann sphere) had a 94%, 37%, and 14% conversion percentage for easy, medium, and hard, while (PCA...) had 95%, 21%, 16% for easy, medium, and hard.

I didn't play this tournament, so I have no idea what any of the questions look like or what bonuses you’re referencing. However, all 5 of the tossups you listed fall under the “core” categories I used to plan the ~majority of math tossups in my subdistributions when I wrote tournaments (differential equations, probability & statistics, linear algebra, calculus, discrete).

I don't understand why the applied math was repetitive or there was too much of it if you are only categorizing 2/1(?) (~25%) as applied math.

College regs is a very difficult level. Math is not so obscure that you cannot find .5/.5 or more answerlines that are difficulty appropriate.

I see now that the editors did state that there would be 0.5 / 0.5 math per packet, so – while I stand by my comments about 6 / 6 math being perfectly appropriate – I see why you brought that up.

While this tournament was below regular difficulty, regular difficulty is the difficulty that everyone in college should play and is definitionally not “very difficult”. I agree that you can fill out 0.5 / 0.5 math per packet at regular difficulty (and at all levels of college difficulty). I do not believe you can do it well without a subdistribution that rewards people for the math classes they actually take.

Regardless of the ideology behind it, wasn't the set announced as .5/.5 math initially anyways? It seems to have missed that percentage, if it really was 6/6 out of 15.

For sure.

[ryanrosenberg]

No other category is held to this standard— there is no subdistribution of biology reserved for "bio for physical science majors" and there is no subdistribution of literature reserved for "lit for STEM majors."

This is flat-out untrue. Many of the thought categories are held to precisely this standard, for instance (things that literary and art theorists use; social science useful in history)—not to mention the other intersections within the science categories (chem-friendly biochem, physics-friendly thermo or physical chemistry, astro-friendly physics, computer science most commonly used in other applications).

To give a specific example here, there was a psychology bonus in this tournament with a middle part on Lacan and a hard part on The Myth of Mental Illness, neither of which are things most psych majors would come across.

[Deepika Goes From Ranbir To Ranveer]

I thought this tournament was really, really good.

[1.82]

Much as I would love it, I actually think that .5/.5 math would be excessive in any set beyond HS difficulty, and .5/.5 "pure math" would be just insane given how relatively few people study the advanced topics (compared to, e.g. CS).

Pursuant to a private conversation I've been having, I think broadly that math could stand to come up a fair bit more. Math is a subject that intellectually curious people are drawn to even if they're not mathematicians (in a way that I don't think is necessarily true of the sciences), and empirically a lot of people in quizbowl have taken upper-level undergraduate math classes.

[ryanrosenberg]

Going off of my previous post, I looked at the psychology bonuses in this tournament and they did a pretty bad job as a whole of testing and rewarding a variety of psych knowledge. The five bonuses were:

• DSM/The Myth of Mental Illness/Jacques Lacan (focused on psychiatry and clinical psych)
• gender dysphoria/clinical depression/Reimer (also focused on psychiatry)
• the self/symbolic interactionism/Hazel Markus (social psych, very hard bonus)
• effect size/Flynn effect/100 (statistics, based off of calculating IQ)
• electric shocks/Ewen Cameron/LSD (also psychiatry, very pop psych)

So we have three out of the five bonuses on a field (psychiatry) that is related to psychology but distinct, and which very few psych majors will have taken a course in. One of the other bonuses has a not-psych-specific statistics part, then asks about IQ, which uh is not quite a focus of academic psychology study nowadays. Three out of the five bonuses also have middle parts that are more likely to be gotten based off non-psych knowledge (Lacan, LSD, symbolic interactionism). Having read a pop psychology book or two and played a couple of regular difficulty tournaments would have gotten you more points at this tournament than a non-clinical psychology major.

[Banana Stand]

Thanks for pointing that out, Ryan. As one of the only psych majors in QB, I’ve basically just stopped expecting the category to really be asked about in a way that reflects classroom knowledge. Since it’s such a relatively small part of the distro, there’s usually not a whole lot to point out across a whole set, but these bonuses show the skew towards things that aren’t really psych. There’s 5 bonuses and all of cog sci, personality, social and developmental psych are completely ignored in favor of 3 abnormal bonuses which are either pop psych or history of psych. The symbolic interactionism bonus is almost straight sociology. The IQ bonus is actually totally fine approached from a classroom standpoint; all psych majors should know these parts, but it’s still more stats than psych. These bonuses individually aren’t bad, and I thought they were all fine in game, but as a representation of psychology as a whole, they’re very lacking.

[Lake Winnipesaukee Mystery Stone]

I mostly enjoyed this tournament, and might say more later, but while it's in my mind, there was at least one, and I think more, poor packet feng shui choices. The one in particular was having a TU on Rome, followed straight by one on Greek music clues

[Ewan MacAulay]

Thanks to all who worked on this set - was great fun to play and good to see some tossups trying to push the envelope. Science seemed solid - most of the stuff I negged was me being dumb rather than the questions, which I think is a good sign (for the set, not for my poor atrophied QB brain)

[Jason Cheng]

(in any case, I'm not going to be doing any science for next year's EFT or head editing any "main event" collegiate tournaments after that, so nobody will have to suffer through my apparently bizarre, pretentious, and aggravating approach to tournament construction - unless you choose to suffer through one of my side events)

I hope this decision to stop head editing isn't based on criticism of your questions. I, for one, have very much enjoyed the sets you've edited in the past two years and would be sad to not play more of them.

I'm going to cross post this into this general discussion so we don't derail the science discussion, but certainly my own decision for Sun God Invitational to be the first and only time I'll head edit a set was informed by how tiresome, disingenuous, and dishonest some of the criticism leveled at us has been (for example, I wonder which "end of the week" the massive write-up of everything fundamentally wrong with our set will be posted by any of the four-ish people who insisted it was bad from bottom up, or if there were real reasons why, or if there will ever be any explanation for why our set was "harmful to the community," or if there will be any response to the claim that "the majority of the community only liked SGI because they don't know shit" can answer our refutation that 19% (!) of tossups were, in fact, powered and that we have literal reams of buzzpoint data that more than just a single team does in fact buzz on clues--I could go on, but these are just things said on the quizbowl Discord server!).

This isn't to say I haven't greatly appreciated the valuable (tangibly, actually helpful) feedback we've gotten over the last month (three if you include the playtest mirror, which I certainly do), and I know the record (and our changelog) will show that we've taken most discussion and criticisms of the set to heart and made many changes which were hopefully improvements to the set between mirrors. I'll also say I found the overall experience generally enjoyable and absolutely intellectually rewarding, and that I enjoy contributing polished sets matching my philosophy/standards of "good" and "enjoyable" to quizbowl. I just don't believe those pros outweigh the effort that goes into organizing, head-editing, and polishing a set in conjunction with the exhaustion of dealing with toxic drive-by "criticism" by a narrow set of vocal people who don't contribute questions to the community, with such baseless or vague accusations and little willingness to actually engage in a discussion (or at least post in this here discussion forum instead of smearing us in Discord servers and group chats that I'm not a part of) that I had to assume it was just performative assholery.

I do recommend producing questions to anyone interested since it is a very rewarding intellectual activity and provides the content this community runs on, though. I won't quit editing or doing significant projects until about one project from now, mostly because I signed on to edit for ACF Nats this year a long time ago, but my interest in dealing with certain climates and people in this activity which evidently comes with the territory is at negative values at this point in my life.

[vinteuil]

a narrow set of vocal people who don't contribute questions to the community

Who exactly is this referring to? (The most vocal critics I can think of are editing and writing for PACE, NASAT, CAST, CO, and other projects.)

[Jason Cheng]

a narrow set of vocal people who don't contribute questions to the community

Who exactly is this referring to? (The most vocal critics I can think of are editing and writing for PACE, NASAT, CAST, CO, and other projects.)

That comment is born from hyperbole on my part out of long-lasting anger (although I'm not sure how much I'd want to count high school sets in this, since I didn't count my de-facto head editorship of 2015 CALI), but it seems from the sets you've listed out that you know who I'm talking about, and I don't think the examples I listed out from them can be denied, and I don't think the disingenuity is very deniable either.

EDIT: I'll also add that I have no idea who's editing NASAT 2019 and CO 2019 and don't really know how I'd know that either, so let me amend that to "who have not done any major contribution of questions"

[vinteuil]

it seems from the sets you've listed out that you know who I'm talking about, and I don't think the examples I listed out from them can be denied.

I'd actually love to see you source the claim that "the majority of the community only liked SGI because they don't know shit," which is an extremely distorted version of any criticism I've seen or heard anybody make.

[Jason Cheng]

it seems from the sets you've listed out that you know who I'm talking about, and I don't think the examples I listed out from them can be denied.

I'd actually love to see you source the claim that "the majority of the community only liked SGI because they don't know shit," which is an extremely distorted version of any criticism I've seen or heard anybody make.

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I guess while we’re at it, thanks for becoming an example

EDIT: Sorry Jacob, I didn't mean that dig at you and you've been helpful in general to us

[Jason Cheng]

But wait, there’s more!

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[Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock]

I personally feel that trashing of a set based on vague, unsubstantiated claims like "people at the site said they disliked it," especially when there is plenty of empirical evidence and statistics to actually discuss, is the bigger issue to highlight than picking out a now-admitted error of hyperbole. I understand that people can say whatever they want to say, but I'm a firm believer in put-up-or-shut-up, especially when the failure to do so appears to be driving away interested and skilled writers/editors from a community that pretty darn well needs people able to do exactly those things.

[heterodyne]

I'm going to cross post this into this general discussion so we don't derail the science discussion, but certainly my own decision for Sun God Invitational to be the first and only time I'll head edit a set was informed by how tiresome, disingenuous, and dishonest some of the criticism leveled at us has been (for example, I wonder which "end of the week" the massive write-up of everything fundamentally wrong with our set will be posted by any of the four-ish people who insisted it was bad from bottom up, or if there were real reasons why, or if there will ever be any explanation for why our set was "harmful to the community," or if there will be any response to the claim that "the majority of the community only liked SGI because they don't know shit" can answer our refutation that 19% (!) of tossups were, in fact, powered and that we have literal reams of buzzpoint data that more than just a single team does in fact buzz on clues--I could go on, but these are just things said on the quizbowl Discord server!).

I may not have been entirely clear in the Discord, but what I said is "taste should be disputed when it recommends harmful things to a community." I take the "harmful things" here to be "modeling one's future questions on the state of SGI when it was played at UIUC." I stand by this statement. I have been clear in several places that I do not think the set was bad "from bottom up." I really liked a lot of the answerline selection and I thought the clues after power were pretty universally well-worded and well-ordered. I *do* think that a lot of errors passed by people because they weren't concerned with the clues I had a problem with.

If you take another look at the Facebook message that you have helpfully quoted here, you'll notice that I said that I wished there was a stronger social pressure against saying sets are good when one does not know shit. This implies that I take some proportion - in this case, a small one - of the endorsements of the set to be from people who, to stick with my vulgar idiom, "don't know shit." Reading skills will allow you to see how this claim differs (rather majorly!) from "the majority of the community only liked SGI because they don't know shit", and I don't appreciate the later being attributed to me when I said the former.

I had hoped to provide comprehensive feedback by the end of the week at the time that I said that. Unfortunately, this was derailed by 1) the sudden turn to poor health of my grandmother, my consequent emergency visit to Alabama, and the accompanying need to make up work 2) The need to prepare for and take the GRE following this disruption 3) mounting deadline pressure for my graduate school applications 4) running into a difficult spot on my thesis. I'm sorry that this interfered with your desire for prompt feedback. I understand that it's frustrating when people offer criticisms without backing them up - if I had been aware that my comments on what I took to be the issues with the questions in this set would be so delayed, I would not have been so cavalier in offering them in the first place. Nevertheless, I'm still hoping to provide detailed comments on this set as soon as I have the time. As your post suggests that you believe I am acting in some combination of bad faith and idiocy, I would understand if you don't have any interest in these comments. If so, let me know, and I won't waste my time on something that will fall on deaf ears.

[Jason Cheng]

I'm going to cross post this into this general discussion so we don't derail the science discussion, but certainly my own decision for Sun God Invitational to be the first and only time I'll head edit a set was informed by how tiresome, disingenuous, and dishonest some of the criticism leveled at us has been (for example, I wonder which "end of the week" the massive write-up of everything fundamentally wrong with our set will be posted by any of the four-ish people who insisted it was bad from bottom up, or if there were real reasons why, or if there will ever be any explanation for why our set was "harmful to the community," or if there will be any response to the claim that "the majority of the community only liked SGI because they don't know shit" can answer our refutation that 19% (!) of tossups were, in fact, powered and that we have literal reams of buzzpoint data that more than just a single team does in fact buzz on clues--I could go on, but these are just things said on the quizbowl Discord server!).

I may not have been entirely clear in the Discord, but what I said is "taste should be disputed when it recommends harmful things to a community." I take the "harmful things" here to be "modeling one's future questions on the state of SGI when it was played at UIUC." I stand by this statement. I have been clear in several places that I do not think the set was bad "from bottom up." I really liked a lot of the answerline selection and I thought the clues after power were pretty universally well-worded and well-ordered. I *do* think that a lot of errors passed by people because they weren't concerned with the clues I had a problem with.

If you take another look at the Facebook message that you have helpfully quoted here, you'll notice that I said that I wished there was a stronger social pressure against saying sets are good when one does not know shit. This implies that I take some proportion - in this case, a small one - of the endorsements of the set to be from people who, to stick with my vulgar idiom, "don't know shit." Reading skills will allow you to see how this claim differs (rather majorly!) from "the majority of the community only liked SGI because they don't know shit", and I don't appreciate the later being attributed to me when I said the former.

I had hoped to provide comprehensive feedback by the end of the week at the time that I said that. Unfortunately, this was derailed by 1) the sudden turn to poor health of my grandmother, my consequent emergency visit to Alabama, and the accompanying need to make up work 2) The need to prepare for and take the GRE following this disruption 3) mounting deadline pressure for my graduate school applications 4) running into a difficult spot on my thesis. I'm sorry that this interfered with your desire for prompt feedback. I understand that it's frustrating when people offer criticisms without backing them up - if I had been aware that my comments on what I took to be the issues with the questions in this set would be so delayed, I would not have been so cavalier in offering them in the first place. Nevertheless, I'm still hoping to provide detailed comments on this set as soon as I have the time. As your post suggests that you believe I am acting in some combination of bad faith and idiocy, I would understand if you don't have any interest in these comments. If so, let me know, and I won't waste my time on something that will fall on deaf ears.

We didn't actually rewrite the set from ground up, and I'll bet you actual money that you wouldn't have said this about any other set if someone said "hey I liked _____," because this is the set you chose to perform your drive-by crusade against

It's been a month since you and several other of your fellow drive-by commentators first began your smear campaign against our set, and I still haven't seen any of the detailed comments promised by several of you! All the mirrors except for a potential closed online mirror and a high school mirror have been played out! Even if I didn't want "prompt commentary," at what point does this commentary become delayed to the point of uselessness? Anything you post now won't necessarily fall on deaf ears, but they're no longer usable for the purpose of "improving the questions that lots of teams besides your own plays on." As I'll point out again, we've very clearly solicited lots of feedback and incorporated what we could of that into this set, so I don't know, maybe someone who wants ideas on how to improve player experience. On the other hand, "X set was terrible" and "I'll post why at the end of the week"--no one buys that anymore. I sympathize with being incredibly busy, because that's what I've been for the last half a year while producing this set and doing these discussions, but could it kill you to maybe _not_ drive-by criticize a set which you suddenly have some good opinions about and then go radio-silent with no intent to clarify your statements of "SGI was most certainly not good" and "SGI wrote questions in ways that are harmful to the community?" Because if you're going to say those two things together in one conversation, you have to understand that you're constructing an... argument. This goes for you and your teammates, by the way, in case you think I'm suddenly just on an anti-you crusade--I've interacted with you many times in person and I'm sure you're pretty cool, but come on now.

(By the way, I'm having trouble believing your attempts to backtrack your claims and say you enjoyed large parts of the set because I never saw that caught up in the storm of negative commentary coming from you)

You'll have to excuse me if I take the things you keep saying about people who apparently don't know anything to be part of one overarching opinion from one person using my "reading skills," because when I see you say "It doesn't surprise me that the most people liked SGI because I had a problem with hard clues and people didn't buzz early" and shortly afterwards receive word that you said "I wish some people wouldn't say sets are good because those people don't know shit," it kind of sounds like a related underlying belief (Hey, by the time you said people weren't buzzing in power, the detailed conversion stats had already been up for a week and the second set of mirrors were being played! The stats that said 19% of tossups were powered were in those conversion stats!).