What with everyone else weighing in about this weekend's questions, I feel compelled to post my own thoughts. I'm kind of curious how many others were transported back to their high school days by the frequent recurrence of the words "pencil and paper ready" on the bonuses. Admittedly, many of these were at the beginning of multiple-choice questions, with which I have no particular qualm (only a vague enmity), and which, if they're going to be written, should certainly include some phrase of warning. I won't, however, accept the presence of the computation bonuses so easily. I understand (without approving) that NAQT's apparent merger of the high school and college invitational sets has produced collegiate sets with both computation toss-ups and bonuses, but this set was (presumably) written exclusively for college play. Do the authors and editors really believe that such questions are appropriate for college-level qb? While they do reward knowledge of particular formulae, they are also predicated on one's ability to quickly crunch numbers (or memorize tricks and short-cuts for doing so). I'm a staunch advocate of numeracy, and I often wish other people could figure out 20% of their own restaurant tabs, but I don't see how the inability to calculate a Lorentz transform in one's head should be punished in qb. It's possible that I've surrounded myself with yes-people, but until Saturday, I hadn't ever heard anyone even attempt to defend that position (although I suppose it's been hashed out on the list, and this board, in the past). Also, since Andrew doesn't appear to be about to do it, I'd like to complain on his behalf about the CFCs question. My knowledge of chemistry is pretty poor, but I am led to understand that the question described a class of compounds containing elements other than just fluorine, and thus could not be correctly described as "CFCs". Better answers would have been 'halogenated hydrocarbons', or 'freons', which were neither acceptable nor promptable according to the question. In the name of balance let me say that the question on surjective mappings was mmm, tasty. That said, I thought the questions were of good quality overall, possibly more clueful and pyramidal than in years past, but very much what I expected them to be in terms of distribution (which is to say there were questions about rivers, tv characters, awful pop music, people who've died in the last year, and kitchen utensils). For those less curmudgeonly about trash, I'm sure they were terrific. Also, before I go, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank Chicago for running an excellent tournament (and for the pizza), and my teammates, especially Mr. Malamen. J.p. (who wonders, will next year see the return of the spelling question?)
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