Some NAQT ICT Responses (2)

ehillema · Mon, 10 Apr 2000 21:56:34 -0700

Rob Knobel wrote: "I very much appreciated the
huge hall we had the first meeting in - this would
have been great for the finals. [...] I also would
have liked to have had the chance to see the Division
II finals; would it be possible next time to have
ALL the finals in one room? Perhaps have game one of
Div I, then game one of Div II, alternating until
they are all done."

Regarding the huge hall -
yeah, that was a super room, but it cost hundreds of
dollars to reserve just for a few hours on Friday. For
this particular tournament, the room we had the Div I
final in was the best option we actually had. Regarding
being able to see both finals - _maybe_ it would be
possible to so arrange things that an audience could watch
both. I would certainly like to have seen both. (I
moderated the Div. II final and then caught the end of the
Div. II third-place game still going on, and so saw
none of the Div. I final myself.) To be considered:
time; as having these consecutively rather than
concurrently takes a little longer. (I'd rather have things
take more time but allow both to be seen by everyone
myself, but there might be others itching to end a long
day and get out as soon as they can.) And packet
availability: this year (see apologies later), Div. I and Div.
II played the same packets, and the finals played
concurrently were also played on the same questions. If we
have consecutive finals, we need to have enough
different packets on hand for each final to go its maximum
number of games, and the packets need to be entirely
different. Producing more packets is not a trivial
consideration. (Even in past and future years, when there have
been and will be separate sets for Div. I and Div. II
at the ICT, the Div. II questions are differently
edited versions of the Div. I sets, with a great deal of
identical or largely identical questions in each.) I do
think allowing the whole tournament to see both finals
is desirable, however, and would like us to give
strong consideration to making it possible. So: good
suggestion; we'll see.

Rob Knobel, and many others
over the past three years, wrote: "The tournament
format leaves a lot to be desired."

OK. IMO, the
Div. I format does leave a little, but only a little,
to be desired. Essentially, it works for what it
needs to do, which is to produce from a field far too
large for full round-robin, in a manner fair to every
team, and not overly dependent upon the ability of NAQT
to be accurate with pre-tournament seedings into
brackets, not one but two national champions (overall and
undergrad) with no team eliminated from either title at any
point by tiebreakers, and with the undergrad teams also
in full contention for the overall title as well. A
system that results in a precise finish for every team
is desirable on many counts, but is primarily
important for the need to have an undergraduate champion
(and 2nd, and 3rd) determined wherever in the overall
field that may be. A system that allows the entire
field into playoffs (the ladder rounds are playoffs) is
nice. Many, many of the suggestions that we get for
other ways to run the ICT act as if the only goal is to
determine an overall champion, which to be sure could be
done more easily by more traditional means such as
bracketing of the field into round-robin-sized divisions,
and then moving to playoffs. These sort of plans do
not usually result in an acceptable determination of
the undergraduate champion and top
finishers.

(continued next message)