Difference between revisions of "Collegiate difficulties"

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====Regular vs. Regionals====
 
====Regular vs. Regionals====
  
Theoretically, "regular" difficulty and "Regionals" difficulty are the exact same, as regular difficulty is defined as the difficulty of ACF Regionals. An emerging distinction between the "regular" and "Regionals" difficulties is a consequence of arguments to have ACF Regionals no longer represent the difficulty of the median tournament, e.g. by lowering the difficulty of other tournaments relative to Regionals or by making Regionals itself easier.
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Theoretically, "regular" difficulty and "Regionals" difficulty are the exact same, as regular difficulty is defined as the difficulty of ACF Regionals. However, regular typically refers to a wider range of difficulties between roughly 2017 [[EFT]] and [[2018 ACF Regionals]]. This distinction between the "regular" and "Regionals" difficulties has been pushed further by arguments to have ACF Regionals no longer represent the difficulty of the median tournament, e.g. by lowering the difficulty of other tournaments relative to Regionals or by making Regionals itself easier.
  
 
Advocates for lowering the average difficulty of college quizbowl to be roughly the difficulty of 2018 [[EFT]] have used "regular" difficulty to refer to this new difficulty - "Regionals" difficulty would then represent the unchanged objective difficulty of ACF Regionals, which would now be harder than "regular".
 
Advocates for lowering the average difficulty of college quizbowl to be roughly the difficulty of 2018 [[EFT]] have used "regular" difficulty to refer to this new difficulty - "Regionals" difficulty would then represent the unchanged objective difficulty of ACF Regionals, which would now be harder than "regular".

Revision as of 12:57, 8 November 2019

See also: Difficulty

The following is an (incomplete) list of commonly-used collegiate tournament difficulties, in order from easiest to hardest.

Terminology

There are four broad categories of college difficulty: novice, regular, nationals, and post-nationals. Each successively higher difficulty corresponds to another dot on Ophir Lifshitz' college quizbowl calendar difficulty scale.

The first three correspond roughly to ACF Fall, ACF Regionals, and ACF Nationals. In turn, ACF Regionals difficulty corresponds to DI SCT and ACF Nationals to DI ICT; there is no exact NAQT equivalent to ACF Fall, though DII SCT is similar. All are roughly interchangable. The fourth "post-nationals" difficulty designates any tournament harder than ACF Nationals, of which Chicago Open is the prototypical example.

Plus and Minus

Sets that aim to be easier or harder than an existing set or difficulty are typically denoted "plus" or "minus". For example, a set trying to be more difficult than ACF Regionals might call itself "Regionals-plus" or "regular-plus."

Regular vs. Regionals

Theoretically, "regular" difficulty and "Regionals" difficulty are the exact same, as regular difficulty is defined as the difficulty of ACF Regionals. However, regular typically refers to a wider range of difficulties between roughly 2017 EFT and 2018 ACF Regionals. This distinction between the "regular" and "Regionals" difficulties has been pushed further by arguments to have ACF Regionals no longer represent the difficulty of the median tournament, e.g. by lowering the difficulty of other tournaments relative to Regionals or by making Regionals itself easier.

Advocates for lowering the average difficulty of college quizbowl to be roughly the difficulty of 2018 EFT have used "regular" difficulty to refer to this new difficulty - "Regionals" difficulty would then represent the unchanged objective difficulty of ACF Regionals, which would now be harder than "regular".

The List