Just a quick response to both Matt and Gordon: Matt- I'm not sure exactly how comparable the numbers are; many of the teams that played in both tournaments had different personnel, and the tournaments also had varying field strength. (I know that at least some teams, such as Chicago A and Texas A&M Grad, brought much stronger squads to ACF than NAQT. And a lot of teams didn't bring full-strength A teams to ACF Fall.) I would expect such an adjustment to reveal ACF Regionals to be harder than you indicated, while ACF Fall would probably be easier. Also, when computing PPK, how did you figure points avaliable? Many NAQT matches don't finish the packet, so it would probably be a fairer comparison to use points per tossup heard. (Unless, of course, you've done that already.) Gordon: Saying that CBI teams would struggle on ACF Regionals material seems to me to be a red herring. As near as I can tell, ACF as a whole means three things and nothing more- pyramidal, academic, packet submission. Their three tournaments are each aimed at a different cross-section of the quizbowl community, though. ACF Nationals is, I'd say, aimed at just the top 30 or so teams in the nation, Regionals at teams that could be described as "circuit regulars", and Fall at just about any level of team interested in academic competition (with an eye towards younger teams). CBI- only schools would be much better served by making their first ACF experience be ACF Fall, where I'm confident that most of them would not be overwhelmed by the difficulty at all. The same goes for any other team that is afraid of ACF for it's percieved difficulty: Try the Fall tournament, you'll be pleasantly surprised. (And you're absolutely right that people should keep an open mind, try things out, and draw their own conclusions instead of blindly following either side of flame warriors.) People have seem to come to the general consensus that this year's Regionals was too hard (and I would have to agree: our team had the same bonus conversion- about 12.5- in both ACF Regionals and Nationals, and we had one fewer player at Nationals.) What this should mean is that next year's Regionals will probably be that much more accesible. -Chris, speaking only for himself Matt Weiner <darwins_bulldog1138_at_...> said: > <html><body> > > > <tt> > In response to Mr. Adelman's point that a mean or median figure for the<BR> > fields was not meaningful in itself because a lot of low-end teams choose to<BR> > play NAQT exclusively, I took a look at the numbers for teams who played<BR> > both Division I NAQT Sectionals and one or both of ACF Fall and ACF<BR> > Regionals last year. Part of the working hypothesis here is that just about<BR> > everyone agrees that NAQT Sectionals are of appropriate difficulty, and thus<BR> > it constitutes a good baseline for gauging the difficulty of other<BR> > tournaments.<BR> > <BR> > I found that the mean points per thousand available (PPK) for teams who<BR> > played both NAQT Sectionals and ACF Regionals was 284 at NAQT and 270 at< BR> > ACF, a 5% decrease from NAQT to ACF. 10 teams scored better at ACF Regionals< BR> > than at NAQT Sectionals, and 15 scored worse. Under the hypothesis that<BR> > analyzing these teams is the best way to gauge difficulty, this shows that<BR> > ACF Regionals is somewhat more difficult than NAQT Sectionals.<BR> > <BR> > The mean PPK for teams who played both NAQT Sectionals and ACF Fall was 259< BR> > at NAQT and 330 at ACF, a 28% increase from NAQT to ACF. 18 teams scored<BR> > better at ACF Fall than at NAQT Sectionals, and 5 scored worse. Under the<BR> > above hypothesis, this shows that ACF Fall is much less difficult than NAQT<BR> > Sectionals.<BR> > <BR> > The data are below if anyone else wants to do something with them. Some<BR> > notes: I assigned A, B, etc to teams from the same school based on their<BR> > ordering in PPK only (but with D1 teams always coming before D2), in order<BR> > to provide the most logical comparison across tournaments. I did not include<BR> > teams who played D2 at NAQT Sectionals in the calculations for ACF Fall and<BR> > Regionals, since the ACF tournaments were all held on one question set and,<BR> > with a single exception, as one division.<BR> > <BR> > Sectionals vs. Regionals <a href="http://www.hsquizbowl.org/regionals.html">http:// www.hsquizbowl.org/regionals.html</a><BR> > Sectionals vs. Fall <a href="http://www.hsquizbowl.org/fall.html">http:// www.hsquizbowl.org/fall.html</a><BR> > Date on all teams who played Sectionals in either division and played at<BR> > least one ACF tournament <a href="http://www.hsquizbowl.org/data.html">http:// www.hsquizbowl.org/data.html</a><BR> > <BR> > </tt> > > > > > <!-- |**|begin egp html banner|**| --> > > <table border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=2> > <tr bgcolor=#FFFFCC> > <td align=center><font size="-1" color=#003399><b>Yahoo! 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