Re: ICT Comments

• From: tgallows <no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com>
• Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 22:43:38 -0000
• Message-ID: <b7a4qq+lqh2_at_...>

Alright -- one last superfluous post, really just out of vanity, since
two people have commented on my last post and both misunderstood what
I was saying.

***************************************
(From Zeke):
> In my opinion, this dissonance about the questions results in such
> schizoid 
> assertions as Raj's (who I think is a great guy and player) statement
> that:
> > "As for the sketchy pyramidality (now there's a word) on tossups, I
> > really didn't think it was that bad.  There were a fair number of
> > shaky tossups, in retrospect." >
> 
> What's going on in this statement? Are the questions good or are they
> shaky? 
> Is-- "that bad"-- a standard that a National tournament should strive
> for? I think 
> most people would agree that questions that are"not that bad" should
> not 
> decide the national championship... there are 28 and 26 questions per
> round 
> in an NAQT packet and if we think some of them are not that bad or
> just "good 
> enough" instead of good, what happened to question quality standards? 

Reply:  Oops.  I meant that the number or proportion of poorly
structured tossups was being collectively overrated, at least by
implication if not by direct statement -- I wasn't referring to
individual poorly-structured questions being 'not that bad.'  My
second vague sentence was simply noting that, after seeing various
posts, I realized there were indeed quite a few mis-structured tossups
on second thought, since I initially only remembered about half a
dozen among the 388 I heard.  Sorry for the poor pronoun usage.

********************
(From Adam Fine):
"However, I have to take issue with this comment by Raj:

>'Up-and-down difficulty (to a degree) is not necessarily a bad thing -
>- even at an ICT, I don't think there's anything wrong with (say) a
>well-written tossup on Napoleon. If we as
>players don't buzz because of some expectation that it "has to be" a
>more difficult topic (just as I did on the Peloponnesian War, or
>however that's spelled), then that's our own fault.'

That's assuming that the toss-ups are structured pyramidally."

Reply: That's what I said one or two sentences later.  Pague
atencion!!!  :)
************************************

That is all.  My thanks again to UCLA and NAQT for running a
tournament which I enjoyed, and my thanks to Chicago, Michigan,
Berkeley, Yale, Maryland, and others for some excellent competition. 
Adios --

--Raj Dhuwalia, UF