Protests, and their bearing on tiebreakers
Guy D. Jordan
John J Edwards <j...@cldc.howard.edu> wrote:
>
>Maybe a tournament could have a designated "protest adjudicator". Maybe
>this could be your TD or assistant TD or someone else, but this person
>could be around to settle such problems. And to cut down on abuses, maybe
>do what the NFL did- penalize if the protest is considered completely
>unreasonable and irrational. There are probably more problems with this
>than I could name now, but it is just an idea.
One or two people *should* be enough. . .especially if you *penalize* for
incorrect protests. Maybe if the penalty were say. . .20 points, it would
limit most protests to legitimate ones. This could work. That might also
make sure the question editors at a particular tournament do a better job.
. .no tournament director will want to deal with multiple angry captains
and coaches crying "protest" three times every round due to wrong answers,
wrong lead-ins, and bad moderating and whatnot.
It also goes without saying that the "equal accesss" on misinformation
rule (that both teams heard the wrong info and both were equally
disadvantaged) should be dragged out and ginsued. Usually the better team
is the one narrowing down answers from particular bits of info anyway. .
.a wrong date or a wrong place or name can cause an unnessecary neg 5 or
an unnessecary non-buzz, usually by the *better* team. If information is
incorrect, access is *not* equal.
--
______________________________________________________________________________
Guy Jordan, Religion/History Of Art 1995, George Washington University
"In life, I was your partner. Now I'm just a dead guy with cool chains"
-Butthead, as the Ghost Of Christmas Past
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
J. Andrew Lipscomb
(Matt Bruce) wrote:
> The obvious solution is, IF AT ALL POSSIBLE, scrap points-related
> tie-breaks completely.
>
> If head-to-head works, great. If not...
> I've always been partial to something like best-of-5 tossup shootout. :-)
I would prefer a half-match shootout myself. Other possible tiebreaks
include Solkoff for Swisses (strength of schedule) and Sonnenborn-Berger
(sum of defeated opponent's scores, plus half of tied opponents' scores if
any) for round-robins. (I would prefer to use that to seed a playoff--eg
to decide which of 3 teams gets the bye.)
J. Andrew Lipscomb <ew...@chattanooga.net, them...@delphi.com>
PGP keys by request
Matt Bruce
: Can someone explain to me the disadvantages of using total points?
Easily. Just see the rest of the thread. Consider the very problem at
hand, of protests that don't affect the specific game outcome, and the
Scylla and Charibdis(?) of either intentionally screwing a team over by
not hearing a "meaningless" protest or else getting the protest-fest cited.
Consider the problems when, say, Pat Matthews or Mitchell Sch[pine][check]
is reading in the same timed tournament as John Q. Tortoise, and Team A
happens to have the former in 3-4 games. There may not be drastically
more unfairness here than in the head-to-head case, but there is _at least_
as much.
Head-to-head gives at least the illusion of total fairness. (I grudgingly
add "illusion of" to the sentence because of the performance of pack-sensitive
teams or the effects of too weighty a lunch or something.) This impression
is good enough for the NFL, and most other sporting leagues that I know of.
(on the other hand, the more I think about it, the more I like best-of-3
or best-of-5 tossups to settle ANY tie-breaking situation)
--Matt
--
Matt Bruce (mlb...@fas.harvard.edu); my opinions are uniquely mine.
Law Apps sent as of 1/9 to BU, BC, Columbia, GW, Harvard, UMich, NW,
NYLS, Penn, and Texas. No acceptances, rejections, or wait-lists to date.
(Acknowledgements from all but Michigan, Texas, Northwestern)
Matt Bruce
tie-breaks completely.
If head-to-head works, great. If not...
I've always been partial to something like best-of-5 tossup shootout. :-)
--Matt
(serious, despite the smiley)
Jeremy Smith
: > One or two people *should* be enough. . .especially if you *penalize* for
: > incorrect protests. Maybe if the penalty were say. . .20 points, it would
: > limit most protests to legitimate ones. This could work. That might also
: > make sure the question editors at a particular tournament do a better job.
: I like the penalty if it's an "irrelevant" bonus. If a team loses, and
: there's no way that the protest will change the result of a match, BUT they
: want to adjudicate the protest for total points, then I think a penalty
: would be valid.
You're both forgetting a couple of important realities of the tournament
situation, and those are that 1) not every protest can be resolved to a
degree of accuracy which will satisfy everyone, 2) many protests are
merely clarifications of answers and, done properly, benefit everyone
involved.
A perfect case in point: UW's match against Chicago in the Michigan MLK
tournament. (disclaimer: I do this as an example only) UW pulled out a
victory by something like 40 points (I think it may have been forty five)
and Chicago had filed two protests. The first was on the name Madeline
L'Engle, where our player had said "Madame L'Engle" which, complete
knowledge or not, was correct. This was adjudicated in seconds, and no
one complained. The other was on a complex answer on set theory that
Steve Wang could explain, where he protested that his neg 5'd answer was
synonymous with the correct answer (we had not clue). Regardless, the
moderator and he debated for a good number of minutes, and the argument
ventured into epistomological grounds. I do not know whether a consensus
was reached, but as is normally the default, we kept the points.
It seems self-explanatory to me that a protest penalty would be unfair
for either of these cases.
jer
--
Jeremy R. Smith | yor...@yar.cs.wisc.edu | http://yar.cs.wisc.edu/~yorick
First they repealed the 8th, but I didn't speak because I wasn't guilty.
Then they took away the 6th, but I didn't speak because I wasn't accused.
Then they took away the 4th, but I didn't speak because I didn't use drugs.
Then they took away the 2nd, but I didn't speak because I didn't own a gun.
Then they took away the 1st, and I couldn't speak at all.
Doug O'Neal
> This sounds kind of silly, seeing as I've been around here forever, but
> I have yet to hear an explanation of the "equal access to misinformation"
> interpretation. I mean, I've heard the term used, and have even heard
> tourney directors use it to dismiss some of my protests, but I have yet
> to hear anything approaching a definition...
Any such rule -- written or unwritten -- is bad, for the reasons that Guy
and Pat have covered. In my opinion, any question with demonstrably false
information should be thrown out entirely. There are too many possibilities,
including such small things like "I would have buzzed but I didn't since
I *knew* the guy was born in 1589 and not 1579...."
Doug
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
How 'bout those Nittany Lion hoopsters? I'm a little disappointed I'll be in
Philly and won't be around to witness Saturday's glorious demolition of the
Hoosiers. I hope Bobby enjoys his camping trip though. BTW, check out my new
personal web page: http://www.astro.psu.edu/users/oneal.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Keshavan
more important things to do, and this is excellent procrastination, or b)
that it's been echoing some of our in-house debates over rules for T5? :)
Matt the Bruce (mlb...@scunix4.harvard.edu) wrote:
: The obvious solution is, IF AT ALL POSSIBLE, scrap points-related
: tie-breaks completely.
: If head-to-head works, great. If not...
: I've always been partial to something like best-of-5 tossup shootout. :-)
I don't like points-related tiebreaks- incentive to run up the score, packet
dependent, screwupable by unprotestable hosing, etc- but shootouts have a
couple of negatives. First, they take up extra time, when teams want to
find out who made the playoffs, and either start them, or go home.
Second, the rest of the rankings are determined by reference to the same
criteria- performance on a uniform set of packets, against a uniform field.
If three teams made it into a fourth-place tie on those standards, and 1-3
and 7-n were ranked on them, isn't it somehow illegitimate to introduce a
whole new set of criteria (i.e. performance on a set of questions in no way
affecting anyone else's ranking) to separate 4 from 5?
-Peter Keshavan
Christian Edstrom
Doug O'Neal <on...@astro.psu.edu> wrote:
> (B) It encourages "running up the score". Often in a timed match when you're
> See above; in a timed match, there's a difference between running out the
> clock when you're way ahead (by taking your time on the bonuses) and
> shouting the answers as soon as you know them just so you can win by 350
> instead of 250. Regardless of your philosophical position on running up
> the score, it's still a lousy measure of how good you are.
I think this point is a very good one--total points isn't a very good
measure of team quality. However, the moral dilemma posed by Doug, and
others about running up the score confounds me. I don't think I have ever
been on a team that ran up points solely because of total-points tie-breakers,
nor have I ever been on a team that did not do so because of the lack of
these tie-breakers. Simply, I believe that teams who wish to run up the
score will do so regardless of the tie-breaking system.
And personally, I see nothing wrong with running up the score. In a
marathon, you don't ease up because you are in the lead.
>
> Doug
Christian
--
Christian Edstrom
cbed...@midway.uchicago.edu
Cann...@uchicago.edu
bed...@cello.gina.calstate.edu
Peter Keshavan
: One or two people *should* be enough. . .especially if you *penalize* for
: incorrect protests. Maybe if the penalty were say. . .20 points, it would
: limit most protests to legitimate ones. This could work.
What I don't like about this is that it assumes all denied protests are
sneaky attempts to deceive the officials by people who know damn well
they're wrong. OK, at least by people who don't have certain knowledge
that they're right.
But people can lodge protests in good faith, even who are aware they might
be wrong. I don't think this is illegitimate. And I don't think people
who aren't positive that they've gotten hosed should have to be afraid to
lodge a protest.
To take an example from the T-Party last month, there was a question that
asked for a type of wave, looking for "longitudinal." I couldn't remember
that term, so I answered "compression."
Now as far as I could remember from high school physics, "compression wave"
is just another name for a longitudinal wave. I didn't know whether there
were compression waves that aren't longitudinal that I just never studied,
whether I was remembering incorrectly, or whether my physics teacher liked
to make up his own technical vocabulary, or what. In any case, I certainly
wasn't going to flip out when my answer wasn't taken.
At the same time, when the game's outcome came down to that question, I sure
wasn't going to go home wondering whether I'd been right after all. When the
game ended and moderator asked if there were any problems, should I have been
unable to find out whether we should have won or lost the game because I was
afraid of a penalty? I wasn't certain my answer had been right, but if we
lost the game on that question, it'd better have been wrong.
I don't think I was at all being unreasonable to lodge that protest. Had I
held off for fear of a penalty, and later found out I'd been right, now that
would have would have been something illegitimate.
-Peter Keshavan
Peter Keshavan
: Can someone explain to me the disadvantages of using total points?
: It seems to me that using total points, or any other points-over-
: the-entire-tournament measure, would be more "fair" than using a
: head-to-head criteria in deciding tiebreaks. Head-to-head criteria
: depend only on one or two games, so they would be more subject to
: luck than something like total points, which is amassed over the
: course of 15 or so games.
Suppose Tech and State are the best teams in a bracket, and for
the argument's sake, that they are objectively equal in all respects.
Now suppose that there are three very good teams, and three very bad
teams, in addition to the two greats, and a bunch of averages.
As is the case at any invitational, question length and difficulty
varies from packet to packet (and moderator to moderator, for that
matter). Tech gets the luxury of drawing the weak teams on easy or
speed-based packets, and has no trouble running up the score on them.
State gets those packets against strong teams, and has to share some
of those "F25P, name this curved yellow fruit that rhymes with Santana"
questions with the other team.
Meanwhile, State gets the weak teams on "Andrew Wiles...FAQTP, solve it"
packets, and thus lacks the opportunities those teams gave the rest
the field to pad stats.
I'm starting to sound like I belong in a VVB/CUR thread, but you get
the idea.
: For example, say State U. and Tech U. are tied at the end of the
: preliminary round robin:
: team W L total pts
: Tech U. 10 1 4000
: State U. 10 1 3500
: Suppose State beat Tech in their only matchup, but State lost to
: some team that Tech beat. Using head-to-head, State would be declared
: the winner of this bracket. This seems odd to me: Tech has scored
: considerably more points over the course of 11 games, which to me
: would indicate that Tech is the better team. Further, State may
: have beaten Tech, but if Tech beat a team that beat State, I don't
: see how this is compelling evidence that State is better.
Agreed. But if #4 Tech finishes 10-5, and #5 State 9-6, and one of
Tech's losses came to State, there's not much "compelling evidence"
either way there, either. But there's nobody who would have the least
compunction about sending Tech to the playoffs and State to the showers.
We don't demand compelling evidence that one team is better than another
to rank them. We just set certain criteria in all sorts of hierarchies,
with winning percentage against the field at the top of everyone's,
and then see how things turn out.
It seems to me that if you're trying to decide between two teams with
the same overall record against the field, the most natural question
to ask is who beat whom? Why does it matter, if I am trying to do
no more than to compare two teams against each other, what happened
in some other games, if I already have the results of a match betwen
those two? Who cares which one is objectively better, or which wins
on paper, if one of them already won in real life!
: I've heard people say that using total points encourages a strong
: team to beat up on a weak team, but I don't understand this logic
: either. If your team is winning by a landslide, do you stop trying
: to answer questions, regardless of whether or not total points is
: a criterion? It would seem to me that whenever a question is being
: read, you'd try to answer it, regardless of what the score is.
True, but if they're up by 300 points with a minute to go, many teams
choose not to interrupt their bonus questions, out of mercy.
And if you have five players, it's nice to be able to rotate in a way that
lets everyone get a decent amount of playing time, without having to worry
about hurting your playoff chances.
-Peter Keshavan
Peter Keshavan
: IMHO, Guy answered his own question:
: Guy Jordan wrote:
: [cut]
: #On the other hand, considering *every* protest might make play more like
: #litigation. You might get a situation where team coaches become bickering
: #lawyers and moderators would be swamping tournament directors with
: #"cases". . .so many that the small "inner circle" or tournamnet planners
: #would swell to include a large legal bench where an odd number of sitting
: #justices would deal with a backlog of. . .well, you get what I mean ;-)
: Protests take up an inordinate share of tourney staff time and resources.
: If *every* protest were to be held and considered, teams in the playoff
: hunt would have a strong incentive to protest *everything*.
Still, Guy made a good point that a system which does not correct for
moderator and packet errors will produce some injustices as long as
unadjusted scores are used to break ties.
I can't think of any good reason to use either total points or point
differential to rank teams, and I can think of lots of good reasons not to
use them. Now of course the criteria that consider only wins and losses will
not always suffice, but behind them should be criteria based on *head-to-head*
scoring.
In this way, not only are the games most relevant to the breaking of a tie
the ones considered, but the number of games used is hugely decreased, thereby
shrinking the number of opportunities for unfairness to creep in. Yes, the
sample size is smaller, but is it really relevant to the breaking of a tie
between two powerhouses which of them beat up more heavily upon the last place
team?
By eliminating total points and total point differential from the tiebreak
criteria, we eliminate most opportunities for irrelevant things like which
contender gets to play a weak team on a Matthews pack and which on a Sheahan
pack, who got hosed by a factual error in the pack in a close game and who in
a blowout, and who got stuck with the inaudible moderator in which game, to
interfere with the rankings.
Total points and total differential are less popular tiebreaks than they used
to be, but I would like to see them disappear altogether. I'm not sure if
Guy feels the same way, but it seems to follow from what he says.
-Peter Keshavan
Patrick Matthews
#Can someone explain to me the disadvantages of using total points?
#It seems to me that using total points, or any other points-over-
#the-entire-tournament measure, would be more "fair" than using a
#head-to-head criteria in deciding tiebreaks. Head-to-head criteria
#depend only on one or two games, so they would be more subject to
#luck than something like total points, which is amassed over the
#course of 15 or so games.
[cut]
Here are the problems I see with using total points, or for that matter,
*any* points-based tie-breaking system:
1. In timed matches, the mix of moderators can have a significant
impact on the number of questions--that is, opportunities to score--
a team hears. Let's say Team A gets to hear Ms. Speedy as a moderator
3 times and Mr. Slow twice, and vice-versa for Team B. Team A scored
more total points than Team B, but not significantly more, a margin
low enough that had B had the better moderator draw they might have
scored more. Which team was better? Depending on the variance in base
moderator speed, this effect can get rather large.
2. For any format, unless the bye schedules for the tied teams are
*totally* identical, the teams did not play on the same questions.
Let's say that Teams A and B are tied, and they played in the same
round for 14 packets. However, for their 15th match, Team A played
on a packet by Hard Question College and Team B on a packet by
Easy Question State. Let's say the difference in points is small.
Which team is better? In a tourney where there's a fair amount of
variance in packet tourney (i.e., almost every tourney on the circuit)
this can get large, and the potential bias is increased with the
number of scheduled byes.
3. It gives teams an incentive to run up the score. I actually do *NOT*
think this is a problem, but some people do. I feel the same way for
college football: don't criticize a team for scoring as many points
as it can. When I play, it's *my* job to hold down the opponent's
score--I can't expect them to do it for me.
Anyway, reasons #1 and #2 above are enough for me to decide that I
*really* don't like points-based breaks.
Pat
--
Patrick G. Matthews Franklin Building Room 721
Operations Analyst 3451 Walnut St.
voice: 215-898-1342 Philadelphia, PA 19104-6293
fax: 215-573-2069 patr...@pobox.upenn.edu
Patrick Matthews
[cut]
#It also goes without saying that the "equal accesss" on misinformation
#rule (that both teams heard the wrong info and both were equally
#disadvantaged) should be dragged out and ginsued. Usually the better team
#is the one narrowing down answers from particular bits of info anyway. .
#.a wrong date or a wrong place or name can cause an unnessecary neg 5 or
#an unnessecary non-buzz, usually by the *better* team. If information is
#incorrect, access is *not* equal.
This sounds kind of silly, seeing as I've been around here forever, but
I have yet to hear an explanation of the "equal access to misinformation"
interpretation. I mean, I've heard the term used, and have even heard
tourney directors use it to dismiss some of my protests, but I have yet
to hear anything approaching a definition...
Pat
Joseph K Wright
Steve Wang <wa...@aryeh.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>
>In separate posts:
>
>g...@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu (Guy D. Jordan) wrote:
>>In tournaments with playoff systems there are bound to be close races for
>>final playoff spots, frequently going down to tiebreakers involving either
>>total points or (more fairly) point differetial.
>
>Matt Bruce <mlb...@scunix4.harvard.edu> wrote:
>>The obvious solution is, IF AT ALL POSSIBLE, scrap points-related
>>tie-breaks completely.
>>If head-to-head works, great. If not...
>>I've always been partial to something like best-of-5 tossup shootout. :-)
>
>
[mucho deletia]
I've seen Pat Matthews' and Doug O'Neal's answers to this, and while I
agree with them, there is another reason I find much more compelling, though
I know others disagree.
Any game or sport (call AC whichever you please) is not about how many
points you can score - it's about how many points you score relative to
an other of some sort. For instance, the Steelers won Super Bowls X and
XIII (just to pick two examples off the top of my head :)) by scoring
21 and 35 points respectively, vs. the Cowboys' 17 and 31. But does that
mean that the Steeler team that played SBX would have lost to the SBXIII
Cowboys 31-21? No. You could argue that the difference is that football
has strong ofensive and defensive elements, while AC is almost exclusively
offense. But in golf, with no defensive element I can think of, sometimes
a -5 wins a tournament, sometimes a -15, sometimes a -20. Scoring is
only relevant to an individual (game, match, chucker, etc.) situation.
So once you've won a game, by 5 or by 500, a win is a win and you move on.
I don't think you should keep track of who beat who by how many, at least
not over the course of an entire tournament. I don't even like point
differential between tied teams as a tiebreak, but I suppose you have to
have something. Arguments about total points being a measure of who is
the "better" team don't mean anything to me because I have never heard an
adequate explanation of what it means to be the "better team," though I'll
admit that I generally know it when I see it. 8-).
--
Joe Wright, News Editor, The Pitt News; Prosecutors will be violated.
"Benoit Benjamin [not just on my fantasy league team, but a starter] has
now scored a point in 10 consecutive seasons" -Craig Kilborn
Madman Across the Water
>> I have yet to hear an explanation of the "equal access to misinformation"
>> interpretation. I mean, I've heard the term used, and have even heard
>> tourney directors use it to dismiss some of my protests, but I have yet
>> to hear anything approaching a definition...
The way I have always understood the rule is that an erroneous piece of
information theoretically harms no one because it affects both teams equally.
Therefore, since the opposing team which did not ring in based on the wrong
information still COULD have do so, there was no "unfair" advantage or
disadvantage given. There are more holes in this than Swiss cheese, but it
worked better in the days when there were not as many skilled players around.
> Any such rule -- written or unwritten -- is bad, for the reasons that Guy
> and Pat have covered. In my opinion, any question with demonstrably false
> information should be thrown out entirely. There are too many possibilities,
> including such small things like "I would have buzzed but I didn't since
> I *knew* the guy was born in 1589 and not 1579...."
This is really not the best solution. I think that when a person rings in on
a piece of information that uniquely identifies a particular answer, credit
should be given regardless of the inherent errors elsewhere in the question.
For instance, here's a possible question:
"Winner of the Best Picture Oscar in 1955, this movie had a memorable cast
which included Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden, and Eva Marie Saint. FTP, name this
picture which eanrned Marlon Brando his first Best Actor Oscar."
Answer: "ON THE WATERFRONT"
If I buzzed in after "1955" and answered "Marty", I would be ruled wrong by
the modertor who did not know her movie history. Of course, the answer is
correct- "Marty" did win the Oscar that year, and not "On the Waterfront",
which won in 1954 (a tribute to all our "Quiz Show" fans). I cannot think of
a good reason why the entire question should be thrown out. It would only
penalize the person with superior knowledge.
However, if the clue does not uniquely identify an answer and there is an error
in the question, it perhaps should be thrown out. Another scenario:
"This Philadelphia Phillie third baseman was the first player to win four
Cy Young awards. For ten points, name this 1994 Hall of Famer."
Answer: Steve CARLTON
OK, a horrible sports question that should be cuaght by an editor. It could be
missed. Let's say I rang in after "Third baseman" and said "Mike Schmidt". I
should not be given credit because such information, while strongly pointing
to Schmidt, is not unique to thhat answer. In fact, by buzzing in at that
point, a player has taken a risk. That penalty shuold stand because there was
no unique identification. The question shuold still be thrown out though. It
may be incongrous to keep the penalty and throw out the question, but a team
should not be awarded because of their interrupt.
John
John Sheahan
Madman Across the Water <jedw...@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>This is really not the best solution. I think that when a person rings in on
>a piece of information that uniquely identifies a particular answer, credit
>should be given regardless of the inherent errors elsewhere in the question.
>
>For instance, here's a possible question:
>
>"Winner of the Best Picture Oscar in 1955, this movie had a memorable cast
>which included Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden, and Eva Marie Saint. FTP, name this
>picture which eanrned Marlon Brando his first Best Actor Oscar."
>
>Answer: "ON THE WATERFRONT"
>
>If I buzzed in after "1955" and answered "Marty", I would be ruled wrong by
>the modertor who did not know her movie history. Of course, the answer is
>correct- "Marty" did win the Oscar that year, and not "On the Waterfront",
>which won in 1954 (a tribute to all our "Quiz Show" fans). I cannot think of
>a good reason why the entire question should be thrown out. It would only
>penalize the person with superior knowledge.
>
Just a note- isn't this question, technically speaking, correct?
_On the Waterfront_ was the best picture winner for 1954, as John notes,
but it would have won the award in early 1955.
I notice that there have been problems like this with both Oscars and
Super Bowls, the two events that take place in one year but are usually
tied to the events of the preceding year. Is there a standard rule
about how to deal with these? And if not, should there be one for
AC question writers?
--
"So it appears that everybody in this lecture hall knows at least something
about history, with the exception of Mr. Sheahan."
- Prof. Richard Helmholz, in Property I
Madman Across the Water
True enough, because of my error in vocabulary. I should have said "Winner of
the Best Picture Oscar FOR 1955" instead of "in 1955". However, the Academy,
while giving out the statues the following year, still recognizes the picture
as the winner for the preceding year. It can be problemmatic when you do stupid
things as I just did.
Most people who write questions about Oscars do not realize the year thing, and
thus I expect errors. Many questions which ask for a year will give an Oscar
clue, but then you realize that it is coming straight from the almanac, and
almanacs only list the year of the film.
I don't think the problem happens enough to need a rule per se, but just
an exercise in common sense.
John
Robert J Faunce
: Just a note- isn't this question, technically speaking, correct?
: _On the Waterfront_ was the best picture winner for 1954, as John notes,
: but it would have won the award in early 1955.
In a memorable moment at the 1994 Princeton tournament, I buzzed early
after the _exact_ line "She won the best actress Oscar for 1975". I was
negged for saying Louise Fletcher because the nimrod who wrote the
question was referring to the 1974 Best Actress winner (Ellen Burstyn).
While the question did not determine the game, the moderator claimed Pop
Culture Brain-deadness TM and let the subject drop.
Thus, I speak: If you are going to write this question, be VERY clear
what year you mean. 1995 Oscar winners win for 1994 films. If you use
the word "for" be sure to refer to the year before (that rhymes).
Further, just don't write the question that way--use a more appealing
lead-in.
Rob
--
______________________________________________________________________________
"Conservative in doctrine; radical in dreams"
______________________________________________________________________________
Rob Faunce rfa...@sas.upenn.edu
4004 Pine Street Apt. 3F rfa...@english.upenn.edu
Phila PA 19104 215/243 2380
______________________________________________________________________________
Doug O'Neal
> The way I have always understood the rule is that an erroneous piece of
> information theoretically harms no one because it affects both teams equally.
> Therefore, since the opposing team which did not ring in based on the wrong
> information still COULD have do so, there was no "unfair" advantage or
> disadvantage given. There are more holes in this than Swiss cheese, but it
> worked better in the days when there were not as many skilled players around.
> This is really not the best solution. I think that when a person rings in on
> a piece of information that uniquely identifies a particular answer, credit
> should be given regardless of the inherent errors elsewhere in the question.
I think "equal access" is ridiculous because, like I said, the incorrect
piece of information can throw off a player's thought process and he/she may
not ring in to answer a question that he/she otherwise would have aced.
Often the affected player would be the one who knows the most about the
subject matter; that is clearly unfair because it gives an advantage to
people who know *less*. I can imagine many situations in astronomy, say:
"This moon of Saturn, discovered by Galileo, has a dense nitrogen/hydrocarbon
atmosphere ..." Now the answer would probably be Titan. However, knowing
as much about the subject as I do, and knowing that Titan was discovered by
Huygens and not Galileo, I would be confused for a split second at least,
just long enough for someone who didn't know that Huygens discovered Titan
to beat me to the question. That ain't fair.
> For instance, here's a possible question:
> "Winner of the Best Picture Oscar in 1955, this movie had a memorable cast
> which included Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden, and Eva Marie Saint. FTP, name this
> picture which eanrned Marlon Brando his first Best Actor Oscar."
> Answer: "ON THE WATERFRONT"
> If I buzzed in after "1955" and answered "Marty", I would be ruled wrong by
> the modertor who did not know her movie history. Of course, the answer is
> correct- "Marty" did win the Oscar that year, and not "On the Waterfront",
> which won in 1954 (a tribute to all our "Quiz Show" fans). I cannot think of
> a good reason why the entire question should be thrown out. It would only
> penalize the person with superior knowledge.
My point is that if someone answers "On the Waterfront" after the entire
(or most of the) question, and someone else contends that he/she would
have given the answer earlier if the year had not been misidentified,
then the question should be thrown out because the misinformation was
enough to confuse the person who knew the most about movie history, and
gave the question to someone who knew less and so wasn't confused by the
misinformation.
The answer "Marty" should be acceptable after "1955". However, "On the
Waterfront" should not be an acceptable answer; the question should be
thrown out. In my Titan example, there is no other choice but to get rid
of the question because Galileo did not discover any moons of Saturn, so
any response would be incorrect based on the first clue.
> However, if the clue does not uniquely identify an answer and there is an error
> in the question, it perhaps should be thrown out. Another scenario:
> "This Philadelphia Phillie third baseman was the first player to win four
> Cy Young awards. For ten points, name this 1994 Hall of Famer."
> Answer: Steve CARLTON
> OK, a horrible sports question that should be cuaght by an editor. It could be
> missed. Let's say I rang in after "Third baseman" and said "Mike Schmidt". I
> should not be given credit because such information, while strongly pointing
> to Schmidt, is not unique to thhat answer. In fact, by buzzing in at that
> point, a player has taken a risk. That penalty shuold stand because there was
> no unique identification. The question shuold still be thrown out though. It
> may be incongrous to keep the penalty and throw out the question, but a team
> should not be awarded because of their interrupt.
No penalty, question should be thrown out. Why no penalty? Because with
the answer given, there is *no possible way* for you to get it right after
"third baseman". No matter what you say you'll be wrong, and that is
unfair because players interrupt tossups with the expectation that there
is at least a possibility that they're right. The player has indeed taken
a risk, but it was a "no win risk" through no fault of his/her own, but
rather because of the incorrect given answer. If you're going to penalize
for saying "Mike Schmidt" after "third baseman" to this question, than
the given answer must be Rick Schu, Charlie Hayes, or any of the other
guys who have played the position for the Phillies.
> John
Doug
Doug O'Neal
> Amen. If someone wants to stake his ego on how he plays in quiz bowl,
> then he'd better be prepared to run with the big dogs.
Matt, you're assuming that anyone besides you does have his/her ego bound
up in how they do in quiz bowl. Most people, even good players, have more
important things in their lives.
Doug
Jason Ronald Remy
[deletia]
>Just a note- isn't this question, technically speaking, correct?
>_On the Waterfront_ was the best picture winner for 1954, as John notes,
>but it would have won the award in early 1955.
>
>I notice that there have been problems like this with both Oscars and
>Super Bowls, the two events that take place in one year but are usually
>tied to the events of the preceding year. Is there a standard rule
>about how to deal with these? And if not, should there be one for
>AC question writers?
>--
[deletia]
I'm sorry to butt in, but I always assumed that such events were based on
the year they OCCUR in. You could also claim the same problem with things
like the australian open, that has throught it's history swapped either
between december and january. Even though the 1995 seasons, for instance
(either movie
or football) lead up to said oscar or movie, the honors themselves occur
during 1996, and I had thought that by convention this seasons superbowl
(or oscars) were the 1996 events.
Remy
The Supernatural Anaesthetist
>In article <ONEAL.96J...@aloha.astro.psu.edu>,
>Doug O'Neal <on...@astro.psu.edu> wrote:
>
>
>> See above; in a timed match, there's a difference between running out the
>> clock when you're way ahead (by taking your time on the bonuses) and
>> shouting the answers as soon as you know them just so you can win by 350
>> instead of 250. Regardless of your philosophical position on running up
>> the score, it's still a lousy measure of how good you are.
>
head-to-head. It's certainly not perfect by any means, but if head-to-head took
first priority, it would only be used in relatively rare circumstances. I would hope
to not have to use total points - it would be at the bottom of tiebreaking criteria.
>I think this point is a very good one--total points isn't a very good
>measure of team quality. However, the moral dilemma posed by Doug, and
>others about running up the score confounds me. I don't think I have ever
>been on a team that ran up points solely because of total-points tie-breakers,
>nor have I ever been on a team that did not do so because of the lack of
>these tie-breakers. Simply, I believe that teams who wish to run up the
>score will do so regardless of the tie-breaking system.
>
>And personally, I see nothing wrong with running up the score. In a
>marathon, you don't ease up because you are in the lead.
Absokutely. I think I can comment on this objectively, having in my career been on
both ends of lopsided scores. "Easing up" on a weak team sends a clear signal : "We
don't take you seriously." When teams did this to squads I played for, I felt far
more insulted than I did by losing by several hundred points. I remember being on
Dartmouth B teams that lost several blowouts - one a particularly bad loss to
Harvard A at Princeton in '93. I've improved myself, as have the rest of my
teammates, and now our A teams are capable to delivering an occassional blowout
itself. But I remember what it's like to be on a weak team, believe me, it wasn't
long ago. When one weak team at RCT's we gave a particularly harsh thrashing. asked
me about this last year, I told them exactly what I'm posting now.
The Supernatural Anaesthetist
*Tim Young (21...@dartmouth.edu) | "I never travel without my diary : one *
*Dartmouth College(Class of '96)| should always have something sensational*
*HB 4431, Hanover, NH, 03755 | to read in the train." - Oscar Wilde *
* ->Dartmouth College Bowl/Academic Competition President *
* ->Columnist Extrodinare, The Daily Dartmouth (whatever!) *
***************************************************************************
Julie K. Stahlhut
(previous posts deleted for brevity)
Has anyone ever been involved in a nasty protest because of a
moderator transposing parts of a date? I know that I've often
been tempted to include a pronunciation guide ("Nineteen
twenty-six!") whenever I include a date in a question.
The next time a moderator sets you down the track of authors who
might conceivably have been born in 1598, and then mentions that
this writer just gave an interview to Rolling Stone, pay special
attention to the grinding and squealing noises in your head.
They are the sounds of your brain trying to take a sharp curve
like one of the old Green Line cars at Boylston Station in Boston.
We all make mistakes moderating, but what are people's feelings
about the fairness of this kind of thing? Should uncorrected
moderator errors ever cause the question to be thrown out?
--
Julie K. Stahlhut, Portable Curmudgeoness julie.s...@wmich.edu
"Orchestral music represents everything I don't want from the
Renaissance: extremely slow feedback loops."
-- Brian Eno
Doug O'Neal
> We all make mistakes moderating, but what are people's feelings
> about the fairness of this kind of thing? Should uncorrected
> moderator errors ever cause the question to be thrown out?
Yes. In the example you mentioned (transposing 1958 to 1598), it can cause
someone who knows a lot about a subject to not get the answer to the
question because that answer didn't match all the "facts" as they were
read by the moderator. If I made such an error and someone pointed it out
to me, I would throw the question out regardless of the results of the
question. Another reason why "equal access to misinformation" is crap.
Doug
Peter Keshavan
individual games alone; a team can "run up the score" for a tournament, too.
If you have five players on your team, you probably want each of them to have
the chance to play a good number of games. If tiebreaking criteria include
points or point differential, however, you have a good reason not to weaken
your lineup, even against the last place team. I hope most TD's would place
more importance on giving as many people as possible the chance to enjoy as
many games as possible, than on whatever benefits point-based tiebreaks might
offer. YMMV.
-Peter Keshavan
The Supernatural Anaesthetist
rfa...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Robert J Faunce) wrote:
>Thus, I speak: If you are going to write this question, be VERY clear
>what year you mean. 1995 Oscar winners win for 1994 films. If you use
>the word "for" be sure to refer to the year before (that rhymes).
>Further, just don't write the question that way--use a more appealing
>lead-in.
Tossups like that benefit only people who list memorize. So I echo Rob's comment :
don't write them. Start with something else.
As to that question @ Princeton, where a wrong answer was uniquely identified, it
should have been throwm out, as should all such misleading questions.
>Rob__________________________________________________________
>"Conservative in doctrine; radical in dreams"
You have doctrine, Robert? I wasn't aware of this...
***************************************************************************
*Tim Young (21...@dartmouth.edu) | "I never travel without my diary : one *
*Dartmouth College(Class of '96)| should always have something sensational*
*HB 4431, Hanover, NH, 03755 | to read in the train." - Oscar Wilde *
* ->Dartmouth College Bowl/Academic Competition President *
***************************************************************************