Re: [quizbowl] Re: Sectionals questions

William Paul Meyerson <*meyerson_at_mmailliw.yahoo.invalid*> · Mon, 10 Feb 2003 03:03:07 -0500 (EST)

Actually on the compactness one I was thinking "closed or compact" and one
of my teammates buzzed in before I knew which one with "compact"... at
least it didn't hurt the team

mmailliw

On Mon, 10 Feb 2003, jpahk wrote:

> --- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, jp_lien <no_reply_at_y...> wrote:
> > I'm not sure if the more
> > common (if grammatically hideous) 'onto' was acceptable, although
> > based on the stare I got from the moderator, I'm going to assume
> that
> > it wasn't.
>
> no, it was. on the bounceback my teammate said "onto" and it was
> accepted. (i was also planning to go in with "onto" had he not buzzed
> first, and then say "surjective" only if prompted.) also, for the
> tossup whose answer (i gather) was compact, i buzzed early and said
> closed, and it was right--i didn't know until now that it was in fact
> about compactness. i don't remember exactly how that one started, but
> i could've sworn i heard something unbounded--like maybe "the whole
> real line"--as one of the examples, which would rule out compact, and
> that's exactly why i had enough confidence to go in with closed.
> perhaps i misheard, though, since it would seem that if the "true"
> answer was compact, then they wouldn't have included an unbounded set
> as an example.
>
> > I do have to agree, though, that the unfortunate choice of
> > examples could easily lead knowledgeable people astray.  Of course,
> > given the set of askable functional properties, it isn't easy to
> > narrow the set with just two examples, or to anticipate ways in
> which
> > people might misinterpret your intentions.  Frankly, I was helped
> by
> > my inability to picture the functions as quickly as they were read,
> > which forced me to wait for the clues which I found useful.
>
> i agree that it isn't easy to anticipate what people might neg with.
> but if you do anticipate something like that, it's not all that hard
> to narrow the set with two examples. like i said earlier, using "any
> cubic polynomial" (or linear, or quintic, or odd-degree in general)
> instead of the very-specific-and-emphatically-odd "x^3-x" would have
> pretty much done it.
>
> tastiest tossup imho: heimdall.
>
> joon
>
>
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