Re: Comments on ICT

R. Robert Hentzel <*topquark_at_rhentzel.yahoo.invalid*> · Wed, 16 Apr 2003 22:32:54 -0000

--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, Matt Weiner 
<darwins_bulldog1138_at_y...> wrote:
> <<Clues that only one person at a tournament knows are
> not effective uses of time or paper >>
> 
> I disagree. Any given game at the ICT could quite
> easily be between the two best teams in the country.
> Since it's equally important that questions
> differentiate between teams 1 and 2 as it is that they
> provide an entertaining game between teams 31 and 32
> (or 35 and 36...), a single opening clue that may only
> be answerable by the top player in that category on
                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> team 1, followed of course by more accessible clues,
  ^^^^^^
> should be included quite often.

Matt --

I don't quite understand the disagreement.  Your paragraph doesn't, I 
think, address my point (or perhaps I am misreading it).  My initial 
claim that was a clue that only distinguished between the top two 
players in a subject at the entire tournament (regardless of the 
teams for which they play), was an inefficient use of time and paper.

You seem to be saying that "quite often" questions should have clues 
in which the best player on a given team knows before the best player 
on the team he or she is playing.  This is equivalent to saying, I 
think, that few tossups should result in buzzer races, a sentiment 
with which I (and the rest of NAQT) definitely concur.

We would be disturbed (and disappointed) to discover that an entire 
set of NAQT questions (22 to 28 tossups, say) did not adequately 
distinguish between the top two teams (or the bottom two teams) in 
the field, but the fact that a single question (or even most of the 
questions, taken individually) would not distinguish between the two 
most knowledgeable players at a tournament in that question's subject 
(regardless of their teams), does not suggest--to us--that there is a 
critical unfairness in the system.

All that we require for differentiation is exactly your criterion:  
Most tossups should measure a difference between the most 
knowledgeable players on any pair of teams that happen to be playing 
on them.

-- R. Robert Hentzel
President and Chief Technical Officer,
National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC