Re: web sources and plagiarism

• From: ZAMM_Phaedrus <no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com>
• Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 16:39:19 -0000
• Message-ID: <an21jn+aa31_at_...>

Of course, this assumes that one may only major in one subject and 
that one may gain a level of expertise in a subject only by majoring 
in it, but the point is taken.

The pyramidality of clues is in no way an objective thing. Almost 
every datum of knowledge can be approached from multiple perspectives. 
Pyramidality of tossups merely accepts that certain paths to knowledge 
are more common, but it can't prevent people from tangential forms of 
acquisition. And those tangential forms are not necessarily inferior, 
just different.

No one is entitled to questions in their major against non-majors. No 
one is entitled to any question in quizbowl. Having a certain level of 
expertise in a given subject matter, be it as broad an area as 
literature or history or physics or classical music--or more narrow 
such as the American Civil War or Renaissance art or characters from 
Jane Eyre or omphalic contempation--gives you an advantage over an 
aggregate number of questions. Given a deep level of knowledge and 
reasonable quizbowl skills (and not everyone with deep knoledge 
possesses these skills), one ought to get a clear and convincing 
majority of questions against non-experts given a sufficient aggregate 
of questions to be statistically relevant. But if it comes down to 
tossup 20 with the game tied, any single question is a crapshoot.

And the moral of the story is: Get tossups. Just remember, you have a 
non-zero chance of getting any given question before it begins, even 
if you are on the short end of an overwhelming disparity of knowledge. 
So, always pay attention and be on guard for that one clue that you 
may have acquired in some tangential manner, whether it be 
cross-disciplinary salience or just remembering that clue from 
practice, another tournament, or writing a question yourself. Even the 
worst of teams sometimes get tossups against the best of teams without 
the other team negging first.

--- In quizbowl_at_y..., "Joshua Hill" <jdh22_at_c...> wrote:
 
> My point is that if these standards were held, then it would be 
> virtually impossible for a five-person team to submit a playable 
> packet to a tournament, because those five people must comprise of a 
> physics major, a biology major, a history major, a literature major, 
> a music major, a philosophy major (that's six right there, so I can 
> stop now).  Quizbowl is meant to test the knowledge of a wide range 
> of subjects, and for a person to become a superb quiz bowl player, 
> he/she must learn about a wide range of subjects.  (If a history 
> player only studied in-depth history and got EVERY history tossup 
and 
> bonus, that's 40-50 PPG.  What about the other 150-160?)  Moreover, 
> it has been repeatedly stated that the best way to improve in 
> quizbowl is by writing your own questions.  Thus, I believe that 
> limiting acceptable questions to those written by majors in the 
> subject matter is ludacris, and I don't mean the hip-hop artist.
> 
> --Josh, whose weakest quizbowl subjects are the sciences despite 
> being an engineering major