Re: Lists

ZAMM_Phaedrus · Mon, 12 Nov 2001 13:55:10 -0800

As Guy Jordan pointed out, anything can be a
list. I suppose ACF has, in part, shifted knowledge
towards lists of worthier tidbits of information. One
could argue that writers could choose to bias
themselves towards lists have not yet been compiled and
which are difficult to generate.

While I
personally wouldn't make lists, I could, if I wanted to,
from memory generate a list of fifty social scientists
who come up and a couple of facts, works, or linked
concepts about each. Having the capacity to make that list
probably would get me somewhere between 5 and 10 extra
points per game in a normal invitational tournament
where you have a spread of good, mediocre, and bad
teams.

List knowledge will get you a decent number of points
in a normal invitational, based on an ability to
convert negs and to answer questions in the weak areas of
the top teams and to run up the score against weak
teams. The ability to self-generate a list of possible
answers, whether or not it is the reconstruction of a
previously studied list, allows one to make better educated
guesses. If you've ever just sat back and watched top
teams play, you notice that there is sometimes a level
of uncertainty in answers. To a certain extent, the
top teams are the ones which have the guts to buzz in
when they don't know the answers for sure, yet have
the skills to give good educated guesses so that they
are ususally right. Also, the top teams are the ones
which can at least give a plausible guess to most bonus
parts. Tossing answers out there which you can't
necessarily rule out gives you points.

There are
several levels of knowledge, which cannot necessarily be
put into a simple hierarchy: pure academic knowledge,
list memorization, educated guessing, imperfect
knowledge which suggests one still knows something about
the object of contemplation (even something as simple
as mispronunciation), random guessing from a
self-generated list of stock answers which come up.

I
think that the ability to make good educated guesses
when still uncertain as to the answer is a skill of
the top players.

I think the unexplored
question so far is, if memorization of certain lists out
there _did_ make one much better at ACF as compared to
other styles of question writing, then are there any
normative statements one can say about ACF or other styles.
What do we say about how one ought to acquire
knowledge? About how one ought to acquire knowledge for the
purpose of quizbowl? 

I believe Eric Hilleman is
the attributed author of the quote about how quizbowl
merely tests ones ability to play quizbowl. It'll be
interesting to see what will happen more often, players who
start to take up the practice of list memorization on
the basis of Cam's testimony as to their "virtue," or
question writers who analyze their questions and try to
purge them of the quintessentially fake knowledge that
is list knowledge. Or will anything even change?