2015 OAC Regionals & States Discussion

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2015 OAC Regionals & States Discussion

Postby swwFC » Sat Apr 18, 2015 4:11 pm

Hello all,

With the various Regionals (presumably) having been completed, I would be happy to receive feedback that any of the coaches, players, etc. have about this year’s question set. For those who do not know, the questions were written by myself, Ike Jose, and Jasper Lee (with me serving as the “head editor”). First, I would like to thank Ike and Jasper for teaming up with me and providing excellent questions that required very little editing. It was great to have their skill and experience involved in the production of the set.

Overall, I was very happy with how the set turned out when I submitted it. Throughout the day I was made aware of a few errors in the set, which, while I strived hard to avoid, will happen with any question set (I just hope that none of those errors caused issues in any of the matches!). Balancing difficulty in the Category Rounds (between both Team A/B questions and across all categories) always seems to be the toughest part of writing this set, but I think we did a decent job there. Apparently there is a plan to tabulate conversion data for the questions, so it will be interesting to see that data if and when it comes out.

The categories were divided as follows:

Steven
All History
American Government
Geography
Fine Arts - Painting
Christian Religion
Greco-Roman Mythology

Ike
All Literature
Physics
Other Science (including Mathematics)
Social Science (including Economics)
Other Fine Arts (i.e. not Painting or Classical Music)
Non-Christian Religion
Philosophy
Current Events

Jasper
Chemistry
Biology
Non-Greco-Roman Mythology
Fine Arts - Classical Music

So with that said, please feel free to give your thoughts on and/or ask any questions you had about the set. I am not averse to criticism, so there is no need to hold anything back, although it will be appreciated if any criticism comes in the constructive variety. Anyways, I hope everybody enjoyed the set, and I look forward to seeing the rest of it played at States in two weeks!
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Re: 2015 OAC Regionals & States Discussion

Postby Djones » Sat Apr 18, 2015 4:38 pm

Steven,
I thought that the questions were excellent, and a vast improvement over what HSAPQ provided the past couple of years. It was nice not having to worry about things in the wrong category, and the questions overall were incredibly well written. A few little things will always sneak through, but there was absolutely nothing of concern in the set.

The one thing I noticed, and this may have been intentional, is that the alphabet rounds seemed considerably harder than the rest of the set. While we got 15-19 on them, there were a lot of 4s and 5s at our site, even in the later rounds among teams like Dublin Jerome and Centerville. Given that WC was probably one of the more competitive sites this year, I would bet there were scores way worse than that in places like the NW or SW. I saw Greg had an 8-6 alphabet round in the consolation final in NW. Compare that to the category round questions, which I thought were generally very, very easy. This is not a complaint about the set at all, I thought it was a great way to differentiate between teams. I just wanted to see if that was an intentional thing the writers did, or if it just happened to work out that way. I ask because I may want to do that in the OAC sets I write next year if it fits the theme of regionals and state.

Again, congratulations on a great set, and I look forward to playing some more rounds in Columbus in two weeks.
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Re: 2015 OAC Regionals & States Discussion

Postby Get Lynned » Sat Apr 18, 2015 4:47 pm

I thought "implied powers" and then "535 (voting members in congress)" for Am Gov't/Econ in round 1 was somewhat out of balance. I think implied powers is considerably hard to get.

On a more positive note, I really liked this set as a whole. It appeared to be very reasonable and accessible for all teams, especially the religion questions. The Christianity questions were well-written; I particularly liked the RCIA clue for Lent. Nice, refreshing clue!
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Re: 2015 OAC Regionals & States Discussion

Postby swwFC » Sat Apr 18, 2015 5:19 pm

Djones wrote:Steven,
The one thing I noticed, and this may have been intentional, is that the alphabet rounds seemed considerably harder than the rest of the set. While we got 15-19 on them, there were a lot of 4s and 5s at our site, even in the later rounds among teams like Dublin Jerome and Centerville. Given that WC was probably one of the more competitive sites this year, I would bet there were scores way worse than that in places like the NW or SW. I saw Greg had an 8-6 alphabet round in the consolation final in NW. Compare that to the category round questions, which I thought were generally very, very easy. This is not a complaint about the set at all, I thought it was a great way to differentiate between teams. I just wanted to see if that was an intentional thing the writers did, or if it just happened to work out that way. I ask because I may want to do that in the OAC sets I write next year if it fits the theme of regionals and state.


Yeah, this was noticed and commented upon at our site as well. There was no intended target difficulty for the alphabet rounds. I literally just told Ike and Jasper to write a good mix of easy/medium/hard questions for each specific round (varying by category and across rounds), and then after everything was written, I came up with an overall difficulty for each alphabet round (by noting whether each question would be an "easy", "medium," or "hard" part in an NAQT IS set), and then ordered the rounds from easiest to hardest. My thought was that this random way of doing things would result in some easier rounds (which could be used at Regionals) and some harder rounds (which could be used at States), but it seems like they skewed harder than what would be ideal. Maybe this method of alphabet round production isn't the best way to do things (there was some discussion about this between Ike and I before starting), but I was more concerned with difficulty control on the category and lightning round questions, based on criticisms from previous years which noted that the Regionals questions were too hard for many of the teams.

This was probably one of the bigger issues with the set, but in the whole scheme of things, if there is an issue in the set, I don't this was a very bad one to have (as you alluded). I just hope it didn't take away too much of the enjoyment from those less experienced teams.
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Re: 2015 OAC Regionals & States Discussion

Postby jtimmer_jm » Sat Apr 18, 2015 8:20 pm

I noticed the same about the alphabet round and being more difficult than alphabet rounds in previous OAC tournaments. Not that I think it's a bad thing, or the difficulty wasn't appropriate. The high score that I'm aware of was Solon getting 17 in the final game. But most games that I read the teams were in a 10-13 range.

The lightning round was definitely easier this year, most rounds I read 19 or 20 went answered. There was one round where 18 were answered, but I think that was the lowest total. I saw a lot more first sentence buzzes in the lightning round today. (This might be skewed because most of the day I read for the stronger teams...Solon, Beachwood, Brunswick were scoring 55+)
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Re: 2015 OAC Regionals & States Discussion

Postby swwFC » Sat Apr 18, 2015 8:52 pm

Thomas Moore wrote:I thought "implied powers" and then "535 (voting members in congress)" for Am Gov't/Econ in round 1 was somewhat out of balance. I think implied powers is considerably hard to get.


Yeah, in my room implied powers was missed as well (by Fisher Catholic), while 535 was quickly answered. This could very well have been me just thinking something was more well known than what it actually is.
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Re: 2015 OAC Regionals & States Discussion

Postby AlexConnor » Sat Apr 18, 2015 9:40 pm

jtimmer_jm wrote:I noticed the same about the alphabet round and being more difficult than alphabet rounds in previous OAC tournaments. Not that I think it's a bad thing, or the difficulty wasn't appropriate. The high score that I'm aware of was Solon getting 17 in the final game. But most games that I read the teams were in a 10-13 range.

The lightning round was definitely easier this year, most rounds I read 19 or 20 went answered. There was one round where 18 were answered, but I think that was the lowest total. I saw a lot more first sentence buzzes in the lightning round today. (This might be skewed because most of the day I read for the stronger teams...Solon, Beachwood, Brunswick were scoring 55+)



10-13 was about what I saw today. I think that's perfectly fine, honestly. I hope they're as difficult (or more so) for states. I remember last year in the regional final Fisher got 19 and St. Charles got 20 on an alphabet round. That doesn't do much to separate them. A round where more questions will go dead - even by good teams - will make it a better test.

I thought the difficulty of the final round questions was just right. The giveaway clues were easy so no questions went dead, even with less experienced teams. That's fine. But I thought the pyramidal structure was mostly well done so the better teams could buzz early.
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Re: 2015 OAC Regionals & States Discussion

Postby Djones » Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:48 am

Couldn't agree more Alex. I just posted something in the NE forum in response to Greg's stats about separation. Since the category round questions were fairly easy (which did a good job accommodating ALL teams in the field), the alphabet round questions provided separation between the top teams and the next tier. I think that having alphabet round questions where both teams get 19 right does nothing to separate and is essentially a waste of four minutes. Having scenarios such as those we had this year are perfect in my opinion.
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Re: 2015 OAC Regionals & States Discussion

Postby Bluejay » Sun Apr 19, 2015 11:37 pm

I'll have a lot more to say about the writing process in a few weeks, but I'm happy that the set (well, the Regionals part of it, at least) was well-received. This was a challenge to write, but my goals were to keep all of the tossups accessible to all teams while keeping questions pyramidal within the restraints of the format. Maybe the leadins to the lightning round questions were easy for top teams, but I'd expect them to get those tossups early often - I, at least, didn't make them any harder than they would have been in a regular set. (I did, however, dig a little deeper than I usually would on category round tossups, given that they tended to be a bit longer than the standard one you'd see in something like HSAPQ).

If conversion statistics are being tabulated, I'd very much like to look at them too whenever they're available, too. Balancing category rounds was, as usual, one of the most difficult parts of putting this together, but I'm also interested in seeing the conversion rates of alphabet rounds if possible as well - when writing them, I always find it hard to tell how much easier (or harder, perhaps) a question is if you know the first letter and how many words are in the answer.
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Re: 2015 OAC Regionals & States Discussion

Postby QuizBoss » Wed Apr 22, 2015 9:54 pm

Just started punching numbers into the spreadsheet. First stat that jumped out at me...

Fairless HS, Round 1, Alphabet Round = 0.

Ben, wherever you are, come back and save your alma mater...
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Re: 2015 OAC Regionals & States Discussion

Postby QuizBoss » Thu Apr 23, 2015 1:21 pm

4 of the 6 regions have had their conversion data entered.

I will also compile a sheet for the 12 teams going to State and one for each team eliminated after Round 2 so that we can draw some comparisons within each group, if we can.
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Re: 2015 OAC Regionals & States Discussion

Postby swwFC » Sat May 02, 2015 4:05 pm

Since it doesn't appear to have been posted elsewhere, Northmont completed the three-peat by beating Sidney in the first game of the advantaged finals. Fisher Catholic finished 3rd, while Westlake finished 4th (Solon and Copley were with Sidney and Fisher in the dreaded "bracket of death"). Congratulations to Northmont on their awesome accomplishment and the other top contenders for their finishes behind the impressive Northmont team. I'm sure someone will post full results shortly.

With that said, if anybody out there has criticisms (good or bad) about the questions, please do not hesitate to post here (or PM/email me directly if preferred). Not to toot my own horn, but (beyond a few minor issues) I've heard pretty much all good things from everyone I have talked to; however, I am very much interested in hearing any perceived issues with the set so I can keep them in mind for future writing endeavors (OAC or otherwise). Thanks for everyone who has given feedback thus far, and I hope to see more comments in the following days/weeks.
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Re: 2015 OAC Regionals & States Discussion

Postby BobKilner » Sat May 02, 2015 5:33 pm

I haven't seen the set or heard anything other than what's been posted here, but from having worked with Steven on previous sets, I will say you are one of the few people I would trust to produce a fantastic set -- having played the format for four years and having written in it. Its not easy for someone not experienced with the format to produce a quality set, so having guys like Steven, Jasper, Ike, etc to work on it is a huge plus.
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Re: 2015 OAC Regionals & States Discussion

Postby AlexConnor » Sat May 02, 2015 10:16 pm

I thought the questions were a clear step up in difficult from regionals. That's not a complaint. The best teams still put up big numbers, and they earned it.

If there was any problem, it would be that there a number of cases of misbalanced team questions in the category round. I know that's something that's very hard to do. At least it was consistently the second part that was easier.
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Re: 2015 OAC Regionals & States Discussion

Postby Bluejay » Sun May 03, 2015 12:37 pm

It's nice to hear that the set was well-received. I put in a lot of effort into making my categories as good as they could, and from what I've heard the set met its goal of being difficulty appropriate, which is great news. To shed a bit of background on how difficulty was arranged, Steven set the difficulties for Regionals and States based on IS-set and HSNCT-set levels, respectively (with the Regional Finals denoted as "IS+" and the Final Four at States to be "HSNCT+", so if anyone noticed a slight increase in difficulty there, it was intentional).

The entire set comprised twenty packets plus several sets of tiebreaker questions, which was a lot, and was the biggest factor in the challenge of writing the set for me. Two of my categories, music and especially chemistry, are difficult to write well for high school given that there isn't a whole lot of (difficulty-appropriate) material there to write on compared to, say, biology/life science, which made it really hard to fill out those subcategories. Counting the category round, I wrote 32 chemistry tossups, which has to be a record for a high school set. The difficulty in writing the music was more self-given, though, in that I tried to write as few tossups on "name this composer" as possible. I do hope some people appreciated the few especially creative ideas I had for some of the category rounds, in any case.

If significant misbalance of category rounds occurred in my questions, please let me know. I wasn't able to see any of my questions get played, so all I can get is statistical data (whenever that's done).
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Re: 2015 OAC Regionals & States Discussion

Postby BobKilner » Sun May 03, 2015 2:29 pm

Two of my categories, music and especially chemistry, are difficult to write well for high school given that there isn't a whole lot of (difficulty-appropriate) material there to write on compared to, say, biology/life science, which made it really hard to fill out those subcategories.


What's really weird is that I feel completely the opposite here - I can crank out questions on chemistry like they're nothing and absolutely hate writing life science stuff for OAC. I finished all my OAC stuff for next year in about two weeks in February except I'm only about half done with the life science, and dreading having to go back to it soon here.
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Re: 2015 OAC Regionals & States Discussion

Postby Bluejay » Sun May 03, 2015 6:25 pm

BobKilner wrote:
Two of my categories, music and especially chemistry, are difficult to write well for high school given that there isn't a whole lot of (difficulty-appropriate) material there to write on compared to, say, biology/life science, which made it really hard to fill out those subcategories.


What's really weird is that I feel completely the opposite here - I can crank out questions on chemistry like they're nothing and absolutely hate writing life science stuff for OAC. I finished all my OAC stuff for next year in about two weeks in February except I'm only about half done with the life science, and dreading having to go back to it soon here.

Oh, I wasn't saying that writing chemistry is difficult for me (I can do it fine for pretty much any difficulty level up to ACF Nationals, given that I was always the person writing them when submitting packets for OSU). My point was that, given that the amount of chemistry through both Regionals and States is more than any other high school set I've worked on, it was a challenge to make it all difficulty appropriate, without repeats, and without too much of things I hate doing when writing chemistry (having too many questions on elements, including organic chemistry clues when it's at high school level). So basically, a lot of planning went into writing the chemistry before the writing even started.
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Re: 2015 OAC Regionals & States Discussion

Postby BobKilner » Sun May 03, 2015 7:47 pm

That makes sense.
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