Re: Ken from Utah, the 18-time Jeopardy champion......

madelman1 <*no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com*> · Fri, 02 Jul 2004 04:35:20 -0000

--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, grapesmoker <no_reply_at_y...> wrote:
> How much is "a lot" of the questions? I would say that if 18 out of 
> 20 tossups are answered in a match between two middling teams, 
that's 
> good, although of course this number will depend on the tournament. 

Actually, from two middling teams I'd accept 15-16 tossups answered, 
but that's neither here nor there.  The problem is that there have 
been times where I've seen two middling teams answer 5-6 tossups; 
maybe it was an off game, but it's still not good.

> Also, how will you decide what is "actually represented in academic 
> setting?" If I take a class on international European history, does 
> that mean it's OK for me to write a question on the Peace of 
> Karlowitz, despite the fact that most people will never have heard 
of 
> it outside that sort of class? Are the novels of Kobo Abe or the 
> poetry of Heine ok? I bet I can find a class where those are 
covered. 
> My point is that at almost any university, you're bound to find 
some 
> class where the topic you're writing on comes up on a regular 
basis. 
> So the criterion you propose seems essentially moot to me because 
> almost any answer would satisfy it.

Good point.  How about this: if in a subject area of 5/5, about 2/2 
should be about topics that can reasonably be expected to come up at 
some point in the classes of a major in that subject.  For example, 
two of the English courses I took in college were American Literature 
and Science Fiction; now, I don't think that it would be unreasonable 
to think that a typical English major could come across The Scarlet 
Letter or the works of Edgar Allen Poe in his four years in college, 
but I do think it would be unreasonable to expect someone to come 
across The Female Man or China Mountain Zhang; so, in spite of the 
fact that all four have come up in English courses I took in college, 
only the first two would fit into the 2/2 distribution I described 
above.  It would be up to the writer and the editor to make a 
judgement call as to what a person majoring in a subject can 
reasonably be expected to cover in their studies, and mistakes will 
certainly be made from time to time, but I think that at least making 
the effort to bring part of the distribution back into line with a 
typical undergraduate education will have a positive effect on the 
game.  The problem is, I don't know if what I've described can 
actually be put into effect, partly because there is no firm 
guidelines that I can think of; it's just something I'd like to see 
happen to keep things accessible for younger teams while still 
maintaining enough space in the distribution for more advanced topics 
so that older players, and newer players for that matter, can still 
be challenged.

Michael Adelman