<<I've also observed--and am thus curious as to why there are so few math questions at the college level and at many national tournaments (Panasonic is the exception, VERY difficult math and science calculation questions are the norm there)--that many quiz bowlers consider math and science the "aristocracy" of subjects: an incorrect, printed answer in the humanities will barely receive any mention, whereas an incorrect math answer can ignite a small war. . .>> Well... actually, I think the fact that math and science questions are protested more often lies in the fact that these subject areas are more empirical and can be proven more easily than can a question in the humanities or social sciences. Take, even, the match that you(Mr. Riley) moderated for us last Saturday in which one of our team members stood on the desk and pointed to the various body parts that a bio bonus referred to. If you were going strictly on the answers that we gave you orally, we wouldn't have gotten any points; as it was, we were able to salvage 3/4 of that particular bonus. The same goes with math, where if an answer is just flat-out wrong, a quiz bowler who knows that he's right can prove to the moderator that his answer is right and therefore earn himself the points. (This happened in the finals of that same tournament, actually, so I'm speaking from personal experience.) On the other hand, humanities are more abstract, and as such it is MUCH harder to prove that your answer is correct over the printed answer. In fact, short of bringing a book with you and pointing out that, in fact, Anna Karenina kills herself by throwing herself under a train, not a car, and that Mendelssohn, not Wagner, wrote the Wedding Recessional, there is no way of successfully arguing a humanities question. Actually, even THIS tactic doesn't always work, because occasionally the questions require a base of knowledge across a book (especially in the case of boni), and the moderator obviously doesn't have time to read the whole book. As a primarily humanities-oriented player, this has been extremely frustrating to me. Then again, I think part of the problem is the lack of the familiarity that exists on science/math questions. When you say that the organelles responsible for ATP production are mitochondria, you KNOW that they're mitochondria, and your opponent will usually agree with you in case of a misprint, because very few people can get through a quiz bowl career without encountering basic biology like that. On a dispute over a book, though-- take, for example, Titus Andronicus, which despite the recent movie is not a part of many general literary curriculums-- you can insist all you want that the character that has her hands and tongue cut off is named Lavinia, not Livia, but if nobody else has read the play, which is very likely (especially at the high school level), your argument won't make much headway. I think the issue is not that people are more picky about science and math--though they probably are-- but rather that the people who know enough about humanities to protest questions know that they are almost assured failure and so don't even bother (this is my case, anyway). I don't know if this is different on the College circuit, so please feel free to correct me-- it's always nice to know that there's a ray of hope for us non-science people. ;)
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