Science Monstrosity: request for feedback

grapesmoker <*no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com*> · Mon, 12 Jul 2004 06:01:39 -0000

I put this in a separate message so that it wouldn't get lost in the 
announcements.

First, thanks to everyone who participated in my first full-scale 
editing effort. Also, thanks to Sudheer, who apparently managed to 
run the mirror despite the fact that I had sent him the questions 
rather late on Friday, and another packet even later. Now that the 
tournament is finished, I am very interested in hearing feedback 
regarding the quality of the questions. I am painfully aware of 
certain inadequacies in this packet set, so don't bother mentioning 
the following things because I already know about them:

- Typographical errors (more than I'd realized)
- Spelling and grammar mistakes (way, way too many of these)
- Repeats (there were at least 5 or 6 really blatant ones)
- lack of alternative answers, especially on a bonus part on the 
Krebs cycle.
- a tossup that was just fine until it tried to claim in the last 
sentence that Titania is the largest moon of Saturn.

What I'm interested in is commentary on the general quality of the 
questions themselves, as well as any specific questions you might 
have liked or disliked. Were they too hard or too easy? I personally 
am of the opinion that the difficulty of the questions was higher 
than last year's set but your mileage may vary. I'm especially 
interested in comments regarding the biology and chemistry questions 
in my packets, since I'm neither a biologist nor a chemist, so I had 
to go with my intuition regarding the arrangement of clues in 
tossups. Based on my observation of biology/chemistry students 
answering the questions at Berkeley, it didn't seem as though there 
were any blatant giveaways in the first sentence, but I'd like to 
know if that was the case everywhere. Feel free either to comment on 
the public boards for general edification, or to send comments to me 
at jerry_v at berkeley dot edu. Questions will be posted on the 
Stanford Archive sometime soon.

Again, thanks to all those who participated, and thanks to all those 
who wrote packets. Congratulations to my former teammate Seth 
Teitler, who is truly a science monstrosity, and his partner Trey 
Morris.

Finally, I'd like to say that while I enjoyed putting this together, 
it is unlikely that I will be running this tournament again next 
year. I have plans for this time next year which will preclude my 
participation in quizbowl events. If you are interested in taking up 
the torch, or at least holding on to it until two years from now, 
let me know at some point during this coming year.

Jerry