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Truman High School sKnow Bowl 2009

Tournament announcements, results, and discussion about specific tournaments.
hugatree1715
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Post by hugatree1715 »

It's coming again, this time on Saturday, January 10th. Get ready, because it will be neither new nor improved!


(here's a link to last year's discussion)
http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... /518073/1/

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

Who is providing the questions?

hugatree1715
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Post by hugatree1715 »

Who is providing the questions?
For Varsity, I'll have to get back to you on that.
For JV, as has been the tradition for years and years, the questions are written in-house by the Varsity team.

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Post by DIoanis »

I think our coach said something about using Questions Galore but I'm not 100% sure. Practice is tomorrow and I'm sure Michael or I will ask.

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Post by FishyFreshman »

Wonderful! My favorite!!

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Post by Jeffrey Hill »

Does this mean I'll have the joyous privilege of hearing/reading old Questions Galore when I stop by practice over break? Those Triple Q questions I read for JV last week were absolutely unbearable; you should really just start practicing exclusively on good packets as I don't see practicing on the bad style helping at all, even if it is what's going to be used at the tournament.

And since I'll actually be in KC for the vast majority of this break I will be at the tournament following Liberty so I get to hear them firsthand as well.

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Post by hugatree1715 »

I think our coach said something about using Questions Galore but I'm not 100% sure.
In a shred of defense for the questions, it makes some sense for us to use the same provider that we will encounter again for Districts, Sectionals, State, etc. I'm not defending the quality of Questions Galore packets; I'm just trying my best to reason out why we are using them, and why our coach would buy these sets (did I sound convincing?).


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... ree1715</a>, Dec 2 2008, 10:16:06 PM.</div>

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

No.

WillHack
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Post by WillHack »

Haha, it's understandable why Questions Galore would be used . . . although that doesn't mean the selection will be popular.

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Post by FishyFreshman »

Nope, doesn't make sense to me. Games played on Questions Galore packets are going to be largely based on speed and luck, so why practice speed and luck for state, when you could practice actual knowledge for nationals? And Jeffrey I don't decide what questions we read. If it were up to me we'd read big ol' collegiate stuff all the time. We probably will read more Questions Galore nonsense, at least to JV.

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Post by AShoaib »

It's understandable, but it's a really bad excuse....

It's like those AP classes that *just* teach for the test... like our AP Language class.... focuses solely on what will be on the AP exam. Very little literature, just do multiple choices, timed writes, and reading anchor papers.

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Post by Charbroil »

*Shrug* It's effective if your objective is preparing for Districts & State, I suppose, especially if you're not planning on going to Nationals...

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Post by hugatree1715 »

Did I sound convincing?
Didn't think so. But the powers that be already ordered the questions, and on our shoestring budget, I don't think we can afford to get new ones this late in the game. So Questions Galore we have.

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Post by redliberte »

Charbroil wrote:*Shrug* It's effective if your objective is preparing for Districts & State, I suppose, especially if you're not planning on going to Nationals...
Yeah, I used to be a big proponent of this argument too... but it's not a very convincing one.

Fact is, there's only a limited amount that you can gain from practicing on poor questions, even if they are the ones being used at the tournament(s) you'd like to do well at. You can get the general feel of the questions and know what sort of things are typically asked. That seems like it would be enough, right? Well, with the nature of most of these poor questions, you can put a lot of effort into practicing with them, and have that still not be enough to win. Poor questions are always a crapshoot-- buzzer races and other things of that nature that typically come about because the questions suck are always going to affect your final outcome.

On the other hand, you can practice with good questions, and gain factual knowledge that should be the bread and butter stuff of being a quizbowler anyway. And when you go to tournaments with crappy questions, you still have about the same chance of screwing up because of the questions that you would if you had wasted your time practicing with them. But you should still do well, because you'll have more knowledge than the other teams. And when you play at tournaments with good questions, you'll do well there too. Basically, practicing on good questions makes your team a better team and you a better player over all.


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... liberte</a>, Dec 3 2008, 04:16:08 PM.</div>

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Post by WillHack »

Makes sense. The best questions are the ones that help you get better, that ask questions in a way that provides useful information as well as demanding it.

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

Assuming that MSHSAA state doesn't cease to exist, and that they refuse to improve their format and questions, I personally would like to see MSHSAA districts/state become a just a novelty bad event anomaly in a season full of good tournaments and see the list of events that use MSHSAA questions "in preparation" for state cease to exist. This is what has happened in circuits like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia, and every single one of these places is much better for it.


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... enaziCD</a>, Dec 3 2008, 09:58:35 PM.</div>

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Jeffrey Hill
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Post by Jeffrey Hill »

Yeah, that is yet another problem with most tournaments that are available right now.

Speaking of which... if Liberty is able to attend one of our spring tournaments, I sure hope it's the NAQT qualifier.

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Post by DeckardCain »

ScoBo1987 wrote:Speaking of which... if Liberty is able to attend one of our spring tournaments, I sure hope it's the NAQT qualifier.
I don't believe Liberty is coming to the NAQT qualifier, but they have signed up for the spring tournament.

For what it's worth, I think Stephanie has hit the nail on the head in her post above. High-quality pyramidal questions help players learn info better than short questions, and knowing more is still more beneficial than familiarity with systematic quirks even if the questions are poor.

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Post by Charbroil »

To be honest, you're probably right--while teams should probably practice at least a little with the District/State question provider, that would probably be better done within team practices and not during tournaments.

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Post by BeholdIndecision »

I'm not sure really what the trend of choosing horrible question writers. *cough *cough MSHSAA However, I suppose it is true that all question writers have their faults, eg. Pickrell (sp?) apparently hates math, questions galore doesn't like pyramidal-shaped questions, etc. However, some are much worse than others, and I don't understand why it is difficult to see which ones are better.
I see our coach's point in trying to "prepare" us for districts and whatnot, but, as it has been said, I believe a couple packets of that kind of trash will prepare us for districts, not whole tournaments.

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

Who said Pickrell hates math?

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Post by STPickrell »

I think the accusation was probably that I hate difficult math.

I'm glad, however, to be the baseline for Bad Quizbowl in Virginia.

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

No, looking through this guys posts suggests he honestly thinks you refuse to ask math questions.

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Post by BeholdIndecision »

Well, it's not that I think he doesn't write them. I don't mean to deny that fact. It's that his math questions are far from many, and, from my experience (which is pretty much one year), they are usually buzzer races when they are present.

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

We've repeatedly established the fact that no matter what your perception of Pickrell is, you are wrong and he most certainly asked 20% math (the MSHSAA distribution) for Missouri events. Also, there is no such thing as a non-buzzer race math calculation.

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Jeffrey Hill
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Post by Jeffrey Hill »

After reading in practice today... oh my. I read about half of a JV game from last year and the "questions" were absolutely terrible. One major problem was half of them didn't really ask a question; they were just statements, like "He was the first president of the United States." and that was the entire question. Questions have some kind of prompt like "identify..." or "who was...". Not to mention the set also had stupid bonus answers that nobody is expected to know, etc.

Then we went on to a Questions Galore packet... once again, impossible math, stupid things nobody in their right mind would know, generally bad questions, etc. And in both cases severe antipyramidality. Like, "Name the author who wrote Tom Sawyer" and THEN describing other stuff about Mark Twain. I sure hope this year's JV set is much better, because I honestly can't decide whether QG or last year's Truman JV set was worse.

I'm guessing it's probably too late to have much influence on this year's JV set, but the goal is to help the players get to the answer, not show off how much random knowledge the writer knows. That means selecting answers that are meaningful, not random trivial crap like "what's the longest recorded flight of a chicken" (an actual bonus part from the JV set).

I highly doubt Liberty's players gained anything from today's practice (they probably would have been better off [but not by much, of course] with someone who has never read a quizbowl packet before, because at least they'd be able to read the questions without being distracted by how terrible they are). I'm never reading non-pyramidal questions again, and after I do stats at Richland's tournament on Saturday (which negates my statement in an earlier post that I'd be following Liberty at Truman this weekend) I'm never helping out at a tournament that uses non-pyramidal questions.

Let me just say that if it were 4 years ago and I were reading this post then I'd think that it was nothing but warrantless complaining - I wouldn't have seen much wrong with these questions back then. I understand that people who aren't familiar with pyramidal questions might not realize it, but these questions are really terribly and inconsistently written. Once you get used to the consistency of pyramidal questions it makes the flaws in these packets much more evident. And question length is not even one of the worst issues - anybody familiar with good questions could write a set of one and two line questions that are infinitely better than these (of course, they wouldn't want to).

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Post by hugatree1715 »

I have missed a few practices in the recent past, so I'm not exactly sure if specific remedies have been made. In a final read-through before break, I marked many "science" (I can't call questions concerning the various names of farm animal organs, such as the name of a cow's third stomach, quality JV science questions) tossups and bonuses for review and to be rewritten, but I'm not sure if said rewriting ever occurred. If the questions have not already been sent to the copier, I'll try to do some extra quality check on Wednesday and Thursday. But beware: I tried to eliminate the horrendous questions last year (such as the recorded flight of a chicken, etc.) upon an eleventh hour readthrough and was vetoed by all parties for the sake of "let's just call these questions done and move on." Neither I nor my coach asked for quality pyramidal questions for every tossup (though you can probably see a cleavage in quality among the various genres of questions, as each team member was responsible for an entire set of questions in one topic). I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong this year, such as the large number of volunteers that canceled that morning...

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Post by FishyFreshman »

Did we ever get a team list for this?

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Post by hugatree1715 »

Did we ever get a team list for this?
I never got a team list...I know that there are 26 varsity and 26 JV. And the varsity field looks relatively competitive.

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Post by Jeffrey Hill »

Just got a text from Katelin... a general comment about the QG questions that I cannot post verbatim due to board rules. They must really be that bad, apparently.

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Post by NKCtrashman »

OHhh myyyy God. There are not words in english to describe that. :angry: :wacko: :blink:

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Post by DIoanis »

Results for today

JV
1st Liberty
2nd Columbia Hickman
3rd Truman


Varsity
1st Truman
2nd Columbia Hickman A
3rd Columbia Rock Bridge


NKC went 3-2 losing to rock bridge in the 3rd round and to liberty in the 5th. Liberty went 4-1 losing to
LSN in the 3rd round. As for the quality of the questions they were not that great...


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... DIoanis</a>, Jan 10 2009, 03:38:30 PM.</div>

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Post by LibertyBowler09 »

Yes, Jeffrey. They were that bad. I expect a long rant from Spencer sometime soon.

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Post by FishyFreshman »

Not that great?! They were terrible. They were the worst questions I have ever heard. Anywhere. In fact this tournament was my least favorite that I have been to in four years of quizbowl.

The first and foremost flaw were the questions. At least half of the questions went like this.
"Fact. Fact. Statement. Misleading statement. Actual question, may or may not have actual gettable clues."

Buzzing in early was punished, which is obviously not desirable.

The math was awful, and the first few rounds were filled with logs and trig. The later rounds were loaded with ridiculous equations that I honestly believe are impossible to complete in 15 seconds. Our JV math prodigy took a minute and half to solve one.

The literature seemed to be lacking, with either ridiculously easy clues, or clues no one has heard of.

There was also an inordinate amount of trash. Home ec questions... Everyone sports questions was about baseball, and there were at least 5. The lightning rounds varied immensely, but that will be covered momentarily.

The science was decent, and in my opinion were the "best" questions there. That being said, there was a math bonus and then a science bonus with incorrect answers.

I also did not like the format. Lightning rounds are awful quizbowl, as they are inherently unfair. One team gets first choice at perhaps the only easy lightning round. There is no way to even tell which round your team could be good at. These should be replaced by another toss up round, or a worksheet if people insist, though a worksheet would only be slightly better. The lesser of two evils of bad quizbowl.

The method of determining who "won" the tournament is extremely faulty. If I am not mistaken Truman decided the same way as always. They play 5 rounds, with no play off. Whoever comes out with the most wins, then the most points, is given a trophy.

Truman A won, without having to play 4 of the 5 best teams in attendance. We (Liberty), lost a game to LSN in the same round that NKC lost. The low scores of that round says something about the quality of the questions. There should be some method of playoffs, so that the teams that went 4-1 or 3-2 can actually go head to head and not be placed because of their point values which could be entirely misleading due to playing teams that just aren't as good.

Congratulations to the teams that placed, which may or not be the actual levels of ability.

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Post by FishyFreshman »

Long rant delivered Katelin. And I apologize if I sound harsh or whiny. I feel like I went easy though.

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

Yeah, the Truman tournament has a long history of flaws, so this is hardly a surprise, Spencer. I'm glad to see you have some righteous indignation about this stuff.

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Post by FishyFreshman »

I'm sure Brandon will back me up sooner or later. We played NKC and beat them by 30. The entire game whenever we were actually able to answer the crap the moderator was flinging at us we would glance at each other and exchange a dismal shake of the head.

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Post by hugatree1715 »

I suppose I have never seen as many 90-degree-turn questions in any tournament. One started "This author..." and nearly immediately after, someone on the other team buzzed in and gave a book title. Apparently, the question wasn't looking for an author, but in fact, a novel. And there were near duplicates on bonuses from round to round, with some authors appearing multiple times, with the questions referencing the same works.

While I won't claim that we were decidedly the best team there, we did defeat Rock Bridge, who defeated LSN, who defeated NKC. It's not like we won the tournament by skipping every good team.

But to be fair, a decision was made in advance to use QG, since we will be using those for district/sectionals/state. We had little agency over the fact that there were exceptionally poor questions, even for QG standards.

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Post by FishyFreshman »

The 90 degree turns were EVERYWHERE! You simply could not safely buzz in for a question until the very end, effectively making the entire tournament a crappy buzzer race.

I could have cited lots of specific questions, but I was under the impression we were not supposed to.

No offense, but you simply were not the best team there. I don't know who was, but I do know that on pyramidal questions Liberty, NKC, and Hickman can beat you. Also, Rockbridge may or may not have defeated LSN, but LSN did not defeat NKC. You didn't play us or Hickman or NKC, so I don't know how you think you didn't skip good teams. Just because you beat a team that beat another team, doesn't mean you can beat both. Especially with such variance between the rounds and questions.

This tournament was pretty much a tossup to whoever got luckiest.

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Charlie Dees
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Post by Charlie Dees »

Well, I think that shows the problems inherent in not using a playoff - one fluke result can have far greater ripples in a 5 game tournament dependent on swiss pairing than a 10 game tournament involving brackets.

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Post by LibertyBowler09 »

ashkenaziCD wrote:Well, I think that shows the problems inherent in not using a playoff - one fluke result can have far greater ripples in a 5 game tournament dependent on swiss pairing than a 10 game tournament involving brackets.
What really irritates me is that Truman has always used their swiss pairing format and every year teams always complain, but nothing is ever done to fix it. I always have to come back to the situation 2 years ago when Spencer, Lucas, Cameron, Allie, and I were on JV, ended up going 4-0 until playing Truman in the last round, where we lost to them and ended up leaving the tournament with nothing.

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Post by FishyFreshman »

Another thing-

I think Truman got to play team X the very first round. Having a team x might make the bracketing easier, but the opposing teams get an automatic win, regardless of them actually winning or losing.

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Post by hugatree1715 »

I could have cited lots of specific questions, but I was under the impression we were not supposed to.
I realized that right after I posted, and promptly replaced my specifics with general information.
Just because you beat a team that beat another team, doesn't mean you can beat both. Especially with such variance between the rounds and questions.
Did I say that we could have beaten Liberty? I never expressly said that.
While I won't claim that we were decidedly the best team there, we did defeat Rock Bridge, who defeated LSN, who defeated NKC. It's not like we won the tournament by skipping every good team.
Sorry, I misread the text message Dakota sent me. RB def. NKC, LSN def. Liberty, RB def. LSN. My mistake.

No one ever claims much legitimacy to the results of our tournament. I don't know how many coaches of 0-5, 1-4, and 2-3 teams thanked our coaches for holding a tournament where they could come back in the afternoon. The sKnow Bowl isn't WUHSAC or Rolla. We all know this.

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Post by Charlie Dees »

I still don't know that there's any reason it couldn't be. At Rolla, all of the teams came back to play in the afternoon, and I co-directed a tournament this fall where every team that wanted to was able to play 10 games. I could easily track down a set for you guys to mirror for no money that would allow you high quality games, and I could easily pull together a format for the number of teams you have that allows teams lots of game play. This is how tournaments all over the country are run these days, so I don't really see the appeal to the masses thanking you as a good excuse.

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Post by FishyFreshman »

You didn't expressly say it, but the way I read your post implied it.
Here's the thing. I do not*** blame any of this on the Truman team. I was under the impression you guys were kind of kept in the dark about the tournament.

I realize this tournament is not acclaimed like Rolla or others, but there are things you can do to change it. Suggestions have been made for years and nothing has been done about it. Someone needs to talk to your coach and teach him how your tournament could be better. Sadly, I also got the impression that he is a fan of Questions Galore. I made a comment to him while looking at the scores that Questions Galore is an awful provider for state and he said he knew they were a "little harder" but that we just had to get used to it. I do not have a problem with difficult questions, but these questions are not difficult, they are just bad. I am not "blaming" your coach either, as much as just thinking that he is another person involved with MO quizbowl that doesn't quite know how good quizbowl should be organized and played.


<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... reshman</a>, Jan 10 2009, 04:51:31 PM.</div>

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Post by hugatree1715 »

I do not*** blame any of this on the Truman team. I was under the impression you guys were kind of kept in the dark about the tournament.
We, as players, were, indeed kept in the dark on many details. I'm sorry for broadcasting some of my anger here. The computer scoring system failed (due to a corrupt macro), so I was dealing with that from approximately 7:00-9:15 (the tournament was to start at 9). I have put in so many hours in formatting, writing, rewriting, running quality check on the JV questions, etc. in the past week. I'll see if I can throw my weight as captain to get some changes for next year. But as for the 2009 tournament, the thing is done, and I'm home with an evening to relax (my first in two weeks). I've washed my hands clean of this year's tournament. Now I'm ready for the rest of the season.

If anyone has any constructive points, send them to me or ltarvin@indep.k12.mo.us (since Tarvin is going to be the one to run this for years to come).



<div class="editby">Edited by <a href='http://s4.zetaboards.com/Academic_Compe ... ree1715</a>, Jan 10 2009, 04:57:53 PM.</div>

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Post by FishyFreshman »

Do you know if he reads these forums?

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Post by hugatree1715 »

I know for a fact that he does not. Maybe I should get him a link.

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Post by FishyFreshman »

That would be desirable.

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Post by nkc derek »

This has kinda been covered already, but I just wanted to talk about the math questions.

First off, Questions Galore has quite an affinity for triangles. I mean, I like triangles too, but two-thirds of the math questions? Really?

And the only calculus question (that I can recall) was nearly impossible to do within 15 seconds.

Speaking of ridiculous questions, there were at least a couple--if not more--that simply could not be done within 15 seconds. Clearly the writer doesn't actually know how to do math, which brings into question the legitimacy of the rest of the math, too.

AARG! Oh, and there were waay too many of them in general, and this is coming from a math-strong guy.

And some of the math boni were dumb as well. I'm not going to give a real example, but it was like asking 5*5, then 5*7, then 5*1, then 5*0. It's like the writer just wanted to know if you knew what multiplication was. You do? Here's 40 points! Again, it wasn't actually that simple, but it was roughly equivalent.

Does anyone else watch college football enough to see how much this is like the BCS system? No playoff. Heck, not even a championship game, which makes it worse. Only the reason the BCS doesn't have a playoff is because there aren't enough weeks, and they have bowl games. Scholar bowl has no excuses for a system like this.

Okay, I think I'm done. AARRG! Okay now I am.

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