Math

Mathematics is a common subject of quizbowl questions. Most tournaments treat math as a subset of science in their distributions, giving it .5/.5 or fewer guaranteed questions per round. At the high school level, some independent tournaments such as LIST and IMSANITY have increased the amount of math per round significantly, in order to better account for its prominent place in the high school curriculum.

Computational math, a controversial subject in high school quizbowl, is largely on the wane in independently-organized tournaments across the country. Tournaments at all levels nonetheless feature so-called "theoretical" math questions, which are written like ordinary tossups with verbal clues written in descending order of difficulty. Math questions often draw on algebra, geometry, trigonometry, precalculus, calculus, linear algebra, and advanced topics from "contest math" competitions; at the college level, clues from abstract algebra, analysis, topology, and other advanced disciplines become usable as well.

Many successful quizbowl coaches, such as John Barnes, Chris Romero, and Noah Prince, teach math during the day.

Examples

All of the math questions that appeared in Scobol Solo circa 2012, as well as those from LIST, are enumerated in this thread.