31st Ohio Academic Competition State Tournament

[QuizBoss]

Congratulations to Northmont for winning their third consecutive OAC state title and, once again, completing the double of NAQT and OAC crowns.

Scores, standings, and some stats --

Red Group: Northmont, Walnut Hills, Westlake, Brecksville-Broadview Heights, St. Charles, Green
Blue Group: Solon, Fisher Catholic, Copley, Sidney, Elder, Ashland

Round 1

Northmont 71-24 Walnut Hills
Brecksville 38-37 St. Charles
Westlake 36-28 Green
Copley 61-15 Ashland
Sidney 55-30 Elder
Fisher Catholic 50-48 Solon

Round 2

Westlake 43-31 St. Charles
Northmont 67-16 Green
Brecksville 48-32 Walnut Hills
Fisher Catholic 49-48 Sidney
Solon 46-28 Ashland
Copley 55-21 Elder

Round 3

Brecksville 37-35 Green
Northmont 59-32 Westlake
Walnut Hills 39-24 St. Charles
Fisher Catholic 58-22 Elder
Solon 50-39 Copley
Sidney 64-28 Ashland

Round 4

Walnut Hills 40-34 Westlake
Northmont 63-28 Brecksville
St. Charles 44-36 Green
Sidney 53-43 Copley
Solon 61-21 Elder
Fisher Catholic 51-26 Ashland

Round 5

Walnut Hills 41-28 Green
Northmont 61-37 St. Charles
Westlake 43-36 Brecksville
Elder 31-30 Ashland
Sidney 63-36 Solon
Copley 49-43 Fisher Catholic

Red Group Standings
1. Northmont, 5-0
2. Westlake, 3-2, 188 pts
-------
3. Brecksville, 3-2, 187 pts
4. Walnut Hills, 3-2, 176 pts
5. St. Charles, 1-4
6. Green, 0-5

Blue Group Standings
1. Sidney, 4-1, 283 pts
2. Fisher Catholic, 4-1, 251 pts
-------
3. Copley, 3-2, 247 pts
4. Solon, 3-2, 241 pts
5. Elder, 1-4
6. Ashland, 0-5

Page Playoff
Round 6
1 v 2: Northmont 55-42 Sidney
3 v 4: Fisher Catholic 54-33 Westlake

Westlake eliminated in fourth place.

Round 7
Semifinal: Sidney 45-41 Fisher Catholic

Fisher Catholic eliminated in third place.

Round 8
Final: Northmont 50-46 Sidney

Conversion stats are being compiled and will be posted soon.

[jrbellas]

Totally called this.

Congrats to both Northmont and Sidney. West Central, represent!

[QuizBoss]

Total scores by category in the first five rounds...
Max possible = 25
Getting team question and tossup every round = 20

American Lit
1. Northmont, 21
2. Sidney, 18
3. Elder, 14
t4. Solon, Green, and Walnut Hills, 12
7. Copley, 11
t8. BBH and Fisher Catholic, 10
10. Westlake, 5
11. St. Charles, 4
12. Ashland, 2

Mathematics
t1. Copley and Northmont, 16
3. Solon, 14
4. BBH, 13
t5. Elder and Fisher Catholic, 10
7. Ashland, 9
t8. Green, Westlake, and Sidney, 8
11. St. Charles, 6
12. Walnut Hills, 4

World History
1. Fisher Catholic, 19
2. Sidney, 18
3. Westlake, 17
4. Northmont, 16
5. Solon, 15
6. Walnut Hills, 12
7. BBH, 11
8. St. Charles, 10
9. Copley, 9
10. Ashland, 4
t11. Elder and Green, 2

Fine Arts
1. Northmont, 21
t2. Solon and Sidney, 16
4. Fisher Catholic, 15
5. Copley, 13
6. St. Charles, 12
7. Green, 9
8. BBH, 5
9. Elder, 4
10. Walnut Hills, 2
11. Westlake, 1
12. Ashland, 0

Life Science
1. Northmont, 17
2. Copley, 15
3. Sidney, 14
t4. Westlake and Fisher Catholic, 13
6. Solon, 11
t7. BBH and Ashland, 10
9. St. Charles, 8
10. Walnut Hills, 5
t11. Elder and Green, 4

English and World Literature
1. Northmont, 22
2. Sidney, 17
3. Copley, 15
4. Fisher Catholic, 14
5. Walnut Hills, 13
6. St. Charles, 12
7. Elder, 10
8. Solon, 9
9. Westlake, 8
10. BBH, 6
t11. Green and Ashland, 5

Government and Economics
1. Solon, 22
2. Sidney, 15
3. Northmont, 13
4. Copley, 12
5. Ashland, 11
6. Green, 10
t7. Westlake and Walnut Hills, 9
9. BBH, 8
10. Fisher Catholic, 6
11. St. Charles, 3
12. Elder, 0

Physical Science
1. Sidney, 19
2. St. Charles, 16
3. Fisher Catholic, 15
4. Northmont, 14
5. Copley, 13
6. BBH, 12
7. Westlake, 11
8. Solon, 10
9. Walnut Hills, 9
t10. Green and Ashland, 6
12. Elder, 0

Geography
1. Westlake, 25 (and they swept their playoff geo category, too!)
2. Sidney, 18
3. Northmont, 11
4. BBH, 10
t5. Green and Fisher Catholic, 9
t7. Solon, Walnut Hills, and St. Charles, 6
t10. Ashland and Elder, 4
12. Copley, 2

U.S. History
1. Walnut Hills, 21
2. Northmont, 19
3. Copley, 18
4. Fisher Catholic, 16
5. Solon, 14
6. Ashland, 13
7. Westlake, 12
t8. Green and Sidney, 11
10. BBH, 10
11. Elder, 4
12. St. Charles, 2

Alphabet Round (max 100)
1. Northmont, 74
2. Sidney, 68
3. Fisher Catholic, 66
4. Copley, 61
5. Solon, 55
t6. BBH and St. Charles, 52
8. Elder, 45
9. Westlake, 44
t10. Ashland and Walnut Hills, 39
12. Green, 35

Lightning Round (max 200)
1. Northmont, 77
2. Sidney, 61
t3. Solon, Copley, and Fisher Catholic, 58
6. Walnut Hills, 44
7. St. Charles, 42
8. BBH, 40
9. Westlake, 35
10. Green, 32
11. Elder, 28
12. Ashland, 22

[QuizBoss]

Conversion by round and category
Max possible = 36 (both teams getting 2 on team question and the tossup is answered correctly)

Round 1
American Lit, 23
Math, 19
World History, 34
Fine Arts, 28
Life Science, 20
Eng/Wld Lit, 32
Gov/Econ, 24
Physical Science, 26
Geography, 21
US History, 25
Alphabet Round (out of 240), 129 [high: 17, low: 6, mean: 10.75, median: 11.5]
Final Round (out of 120), 111 [high: 16, low: 3, mean: 9.25, median: 9]

Round 2
American Lit, 29
Math, 29
World History, 16
Fine Arts, 16
Life Science, 26
Eng/Wld Lit, 31
Gov/Econ, 23
Physical Sci, 24
Geography, 16
US History, 32
Alphabet Round, 126 [high: 16, low: 6, mean: 10.5, median: 10]
Final Round, 114 [high: 15, low: 4, mean: 9.5, median: 10]

Round 3
American Lit, 32
Math, 27
World History, 25
Fine Arts, 24
Life Science, 14
Eng/Wld Lit, 25
Gov/Econ, 21
Phys Sci, 31
Geo, 23
US History, 33
Alphabet Round, 120 [high: 15, low: 6, mean: 10, median: 10]
Final Round, 112 [high: 16, low: 3, mean: 9.33, median: 8.5]

Round 4
American Lit, 26
Math, 12
World History, 33
Fine Arts, 24
Life Sci, 36
Eng/Wld, 27
Gov/Econ, 28
Phys Sci, 19
Geo, 28
US Hist, 36
Alphabet Round, 123 [high: 13, low: 7, mean: 10.25, median: 10]
Final Round, 108 [high: 17, low: 3, mean: 9, median: 9.5]

Round 5
American Lit, 21
Math, 35
World History, 27
Fine Arts, 22
Life Sci, 28
Eng/Wld Lit, 21
Gov/Econ, 22
US History, 25
Alphabet Round, 132 [high: 15, low: 7, mean: 11, median: 11.5]
Final Round, 110 [high: 17, low: 3, mean: 9.17, median: 8]

[BobKilner]

Is there any point to compiling this data other than seeing who did what and where? I'm just curious - I don't mean that in a harsh, negative way like it might sound, I'm just wondering if it will drive anything in future question writing or something.

[Get Lynned]

Is there any point to compiling this data other than seeing who did what and where? I'm just curious - I don't mean that in a harsh, negative way like it might sound, I'm just wondering if it will drive anything in future question writing or something.

Perhaps this can be used as an assessment for canonical knowledge in the less-active pockets of QUIZ BALL in Ohio.

[QuizBoss]

I hope the data is useful to the writers. For the teams, it's up to them how they use it. For me, I think it shows that the alphabet rounds were pretty much dead-on in terms of difficulty and that the final rounds were pyramidal enough to distinguish between teams at the top, bottom, and in the middle while still being largely answerable.

[swwFC]

Some of what Greg posted is definitely useful. It's nice to see alphabet round conversion data to make sure things didn't skew too hard or too easy (my "method", if that's what you want to call it, of alphabet round compilation seems to have worked fine), and the lightning round tossup conversion data is also useful to see if we kept most of the questions accessible to all teams by the end (we appear to have largely succeeded here, with 90%+ conversion in every round). The category round data also can be useful in letting us know questions that played too easy or hard for the field (for instance, the temperance/labor union team questions in Round 4 U.S. History were swept by everyone, so they were obviously too easy, while in the same round the Math team questions appeared to be too hard - with 12 total points scored - and would probably have best been saved for the finals matches).

I'm not sure if this is something currently being done by Greg, but I think the most useful type of data would be the tossup questions that had the lowest conversion rates, and also the team questions that had the largest balance issues and individual team questions that had very high or very low conversion rates. I got some of this data from Sedlack for the SE regional and can most definitely be of use to gauge difficulty for future writing endeavors, whether or not they are OAC.

[BobKilner]

Makes sense.

Greg, I think this is the same type of data you compile for NAQT except I assume the computer does it for you as long as the questions are correctly scored on the scoresheets right? Is there any thought for NAQT to publish the data per-team/per-category like this for the sake of helping teams attack their weak areas too or do they just use it to rank their sets/questions by difficulty and whatnot? I'm just curious because I'm completely in the dark when it comes to how they do it on their end and it always interested me.

[QuizBoss]

There was a question on the survey distributed at this year's SSNCT about something like that -- would a team be willing to pay $20 to get a subject-by-subject report after the tournament? I suggested this some time ago, once I started giving category awards to the teams in the Mahoning League in the NAQT era.

Re: this OAC set, the spreadsheet I use was created by Ben Gutscher back in about 2008. As long as the scoresheets are accurate, I just punch in the total score for each category and the alphabet/final rounds into the column for a specific team. The formulas take care of summing up the total score and summing across to find the points scored/points possible in a category. Conditional formatting highlights the teams that sweep a category and the leaders for each category overall. The step that we tried, briefly, to initiate (and failed) is to create a form that resembles the scoresheet so that the data can be sifted by question.

Speaking of a question by question breakdown, I can do that for the categories, but not for the alphabet or final rounds. Though the scoresheets did have questions 1-20 listed on them for the final round, some scorekeepers did not use those markings as intended.

[Bluejay]

Yeah, this has been some interesting data. For example, it tells me that perhaps the Round 4 Life Science (zebra mussels/kudzu/Australia) was likely more suited for the Regionals portion of the set since it had perfect conversion, while the team rounds in Round 3's Life Science (vasodilation/edema) could have been toned down or moved to the finals. (I'm assuming every room converted "kidneys.") Like Steven, I'm glad the lightning round tossups had very high conversion rates, which shows that we did a pretty good job of hitting difficulty there.

Is there any point to compiling this data other than seeing who did what and where? I'm just curious - I don't mean that in a harsh, negative way like it might sound, I'm just wondering if it will drive anything in future question writing or something.

Perhaps this can be used as an assessment for canonical knowledge in the less-active pockets of QUIZ BALL in Ohio.

This post alludes to my mindset whenever I'm writing questions. Questions that are too hard will go dead for most teams, and that's not fun for weaker teams, and also makes it less likely that the better/more deserving team wins the match if there are too many of them. Being able to judge the difficulty of a question is something even good question writers can struggle with, and having this data helps with determining that.

Thanks for putting this together, Greg.