Re: Night of the Living Computation Bonus!

• From: tak_seorangpun <no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com>
• Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 09:54:42 -0000
• Message-ID: <b3feh2+reor_at_...>

--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, "Chris White <cwhite2_at_s...>"
<cwhite2_at_s...> wrote:
[...]
> 2) Bonus formats:  I think I'll join with the chorus of people in 
> saying that computation boni (and tossups, for that matter) are
wholly 
> inappropriate for collegiate play...

I was never any good at answering quiz bowl questions that required
computation, but it's hard to keep them out when you're expected to
ask about academic topics like physics.  In most college physics
classes, most of the time you're working with equations.  R. writes a
good defence of computational questions in 11480.

About Penn Bowl:
> a few of 
> the questions were sketchy (the visual language id bonus- a
10-10-10, 
> BTW- comes to mind)

If you're going to complain about a question you heard, and you don't
want to hear more of its kind, then the minimal constructive thing to
do is to describe the question and say what you didn't like about it.
Otherwise, those of us who don't know what question you're talking
about will ignore your complaint.  Like probably most readers here, I
wasn't at Penn Bowl.  But my interest is piqued because I wrote a
10-10-10 visual language ID bonus for last year's Vancouver Estival
Trivia Open.  My bonus had a few lines of text written in each of
India's 15 official languages, and the question asked players to
identify any three of them (their choice).  The languages were listed
in alphabetical order, to make things a bit easier for guessers.  I
don't want to suggest that this was a great question, but I'm
interested to know what you and your teammates consider to be bad
about 10-10-10 visual language ID bonuses either generally or in
particular.  Not many tournaments have any visual questions at all.