I'm a junior from Detroit Country Day, and
attempting to cope with the graduation of 6/7 of our top 7
players. We've always just resigned ourselves to not
buzzing on most math... at least we can avoid the -5. I
would guess that the tournement doesn't want to deal
with the hassle (?) of supplying pencil and paper, and
the questions are not difficult, but often require
paper ("How much volume will 2.8 liters of gas occupy
at STP?")
One last comment... the first few
rounds are clearly intended to be easier than the rest,
leading to huge buzzer wars for entire games. ("What is
the y-intercept of the line with equation
y=2x+3?")
Again, on the whole, the tournament people do a great
job.
--Nate