Some NAQT ICT Responses (3)

ehillema · Mon, 10 Apr 2000 22:00:11 -0700

You can be sure that NAQT wants to use whatever
we are convinced is the best format that would do
what we need it to do. If an alternative is suggested
that we recognize as superior, we will certainly adopt
it. We don't do "fancy-shmancy" for its own sake, and
want the simplest means we can find that actually does
accomplish what we need a format to do. Almost none, if any,
of the alternative suggestions given us over the
past few years have met the basic standard of doing
the multiple things we need a format to do, tending
to forget the need to determine an undergrad
champion with just as much fairness (nothing decisive
being determined by tiebreakers) as for the overall
champion. 

One thing that I have come to view as a
mistake in our current format, however, is the situation
(which came to the fore this year) by which it is
possible for a team to beat another two of three times
prior to the final, for neither team to have lost to
anyone else, but for the team that has only one one of
the three meetings to enjoy a one-game advantage in
the finals due to their one victory having happened
to be the last of the three pre-finals meetings.
Thus a team could win the title by winning only 2 of 5
meetings against the other, with neither team losing to
anyone else. I think a change is indeed called for here,
whereby such an anomaly would not be
possible.

Beth G. wrote: "I thought certain areas within
categories were over represented for example the M in RMP
and lots of fine arts questions on classic films but
few on painting and sculpture."

In line with
what I wrote earlier, the sub-quotas for painting and
sculpture are always going to be tightly controlled and are
in fact about the same in all NAQT collegiate
packets, and whatever it may have seemed like, if you went
through and counted there will be just as much painting
and sculpture in this year's ICT as there always is.
NAQT doesn't use "RMP" as a category whereby any of R,
or M, or P, have any relation to one another. But we
do have quotas for various sorts of questions about
religion, for mythology (as well as guaranteed minimums
with that for a percentage that is "Classical" and for
a percentage that is not), and for Philosophy. It
may be that our quota for mythology is larger than a
given player would like, but it is its own area with a
constant level of representation, not an area within a
hypothetical "RMP" category we don't use.