Re: one more thing in defense of timed questions

• From: grapesmoker <no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com>
• Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2003 21:20:39 -0000
• Message-ID: <b7ckb7+4br7_at_...>

--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, plitvak_17 <no_reply_at_y...> wrote:

> Though Samer is much maligned, I would have to say that his job at 
> Penn Bowl in the last two years was generally very good with 
>academic questions (though too much filler for me personally). Its 
>even more amazing when you think about how many questions he gets 
>from inexperienced programs across the country, unlike NAQT which 
>has a stable of "expert" writers. (Granted, this year PB was 
>untimed)

I did not play at the 2001 Penn Bowl, but I did play in 2002, the 
first year Berkeley ever got money to go there. I have to say that I 
was pretty disappointed with many of the questions. Now, Samer asked 
every A team to submit a packet of 21/21, and every A and B team to 
submit 36/36. This means that, given the 15 (or maybe 16) rounds 
actually played, there was a glut of questions. Why, oh why, were 
perfectly good packets written by competent A teams mixed with 
pretty crappy packets written by B or C teams? For example, a 
perfectly good Berkeley packet was freebased with a sub-par packet 
from some other school (I forget who it was). What's the purpose of 
that? We had to write 21/21 of what I thought were pretty quality 
questions and then see half of them go to waste. What for? Far 
better results in terms of question quality would have beet attained 
if Samer had just asked for 21/21 from every A team and ran the 
tournament on those questions. Or, if you're going to request 
questions from everyone, then don't compromise packet quality just 
so a team can get their (poorly written) questions heard. Overall, 
this led to questions on snowflakes being considred physics tossups. 
Woo-hoo.

The point here is that if you have a surfeit of questions like Penn 
Bowl does, you have the freedom to pick and choose the best of those 
questions. You don't need to lump good and bad questions together.

Jerry