Re: HS Quiz Bowl

NAQT is an organization growing out of the
collegiate quizbowl circuit, and its basic approach in
expanding beyond college competition to high schools as
well has been to offer a game that is essentially the
same one (structurally) that players will find when
they get to college. The college game has
traditionally not had a great deal of math in it, especially of
the computation variety. (Whether or not this should
be the case is a recurring discussion point for
collegiate players, but this has long been the
norm.)

In its high school packets NAQT has bowed to the
insistence of coaches and put in a regular quota of
computation questions--that's the biggest way in which
NAQT-for-high-schoolers is NOT a preview of what the college game will be
like. When these same packets are also used for novice
collegiate events, tournament directors often just line out
all the computation tossups (those beginning "pencil
and paper ready") because they are sure to elicit
groans and basically annoy the heck out of most college
players when there are as many as one per packet. So a
high school coach perceives these packets (probably
correctly) as having hardly any math, compared to other high
school formats. Persons used to collegiate play perceive
the same packets (certainly correctly) as having way
more computational math than is usual for collegiate
play.

These sort of questions don't usually work very well in
fact as NAQT-style power-tossups. They are almost
never converted for power points. My observation (only
at the college level) has been that they are
answered correctly at all FAR less often than other NAQT
tossups.

(These views of why there is the amount of math there is
in NAQT's high school packets are my own, and would
not necessarily be subscribed to by other NAQT
members.)

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