Most competitive state

[chalker]

At least in Ohio, I know that these three teams are fiercely competitive because they know nothing is guaranteed, and it's an arms race to the top at states.

Interesting discussion here. Since I've been in charge of scoring at the Ohio State tournament for many years, I thought I'd give some data points related to this. Here a list of the point totals for the top 4 teams in each division going back several years:

2011
C: 76, 92, 131, 169
B: 69, 98, 117, 175

2010
C: 78, 107, 116, 196
B: 89, 128, 145, 183

2009
C: 100, 126, 135, 235
B: 73, 164, 174, 192

2008
C: 91, 93, 171, 207
B: 102, 128, 169, 170

2007:
C: 82, 107, 119, 219
B: 92, 92, 113, 183

[Luo]

I've been in charge of scoring at the Ohio State tournament for many years

Mr. Chalker, since you'll be working scoring in Orlando this year, I have a few questions about the planned scoring process at the 2012 national tournament:

1. Will you be using Avogadro to score the tournament, or will you be using the Chalker Excel Macro scoring system? If you are using the Chalker system at nationals for the first time, how will this affect the scoring/reporting process, if at all?

2. In 2011, did nationals take advantage of Avogadro's online event supervisor score entering capability, or did event supervisors hand-deliver all scores to be inputted in the scoring room? With the Chalker system, would multiple people be able to enter scores simultaneously, or would there be one "master computer" in which all scores would be entered?

3. In 2011, it was great that the results were posted online immediately at the conclusion of the awards ceremony. This helped alleviate some of the chaos of coaches grabbing the printouts, and it allowed students to see the results immediately (using laptop wifi) without having to clamor for the printout. Will this immediate score posting be reprised in 2012?

4. How will event sign-up work? The 2011 system, an all-at-once quasi-free-for-all that occurred the moment sign-ups were opened at 4:00 pm CDT on May 11, seemed to work pretty well, but might an even better system be devised?

Thanks for your time if you answer my questions! I'm a bit unfamiliar with the Science Olympiad scoring process in general, and I'd like to learn more. The magnitude of the task of scoring nationals must be absolutely monumental, especially with such little room for error.

[tornado guy]

Interesting discussion here. Since I've been in charge of scoring at the Ohio State tournament for many years, I thought I'd give some data points related to this. Here a list of the point totals for the top 4 teams in each division going back several years:

2011
C: 76, 92, 131, 169
B: 69, 98, 117, 175

2010
C: 78, 107, 116, 196
B: 89, 128, 145, 183

2009
C: 100, 126, 135, 235
B: 73, 164, 174, 192

2008
C: 91, 93, 171, 207
B: 102, 128, 169, 170

2007:
C: 82, 107, 119, 219
B: 92, 92, 113, 183

Other then C division 2008 and B division 2007 there is quite a gap in both divisions between first and second place.

[chalker7]

I'm not my brother, but I'll answer the one question I can directly address below.

2. In 2011, did nationals take advantage of Avogadro's online event supervisor score entering capability, or did event supervisors hand-deliver all scores to be inputted in the scoring room? With the Chalker system, would multiple people be able to enter scores simultaneously, or would there be one "master computer" in which all scores would be entered?

I did, and I think my brother did. Beyond that only a couple people entered them in remotely. Most brought their scores to score counseling to manually enter them. Even after entering them in remotely, we still had to go to score counseling to review our score sheets or tests with officials at headquarters, so there wasn't a huge benefit to submitting things remotely via Avogadro (although it was nice to enter scores directly into my laptop throughout the day.)

[chalker]

Other then C division 2008 and B division 2007 there is quite a gap in both divisions between first and second place.

Keep in mind we send 2 teams to nationals. So the more important gap to look at is between 2nd and 3rd places. While of course it's always nice to win the State tournament, I think most everybody is just targeting to try to get in the top 2.

[chalker]

1. Will you be using Avogadro to score the tournament, or will you be using the Chalker Excel Macro scoring system? If you are using the Chalker system at nationals for the first time, how will this affect the scoring/reporting process, if at all?

First, thanks for bringing up my system. For those of you not aware of it, it's freely available here (along with an overview, screen shots and some basic help files): http://sourceforge.net/projects/soscoring/

I significantly revised it this year in anticipation of Nationals this year and next. In the past you basically had to 'be in the know' to get a copy of it, now anybody can grab a copy from that website (as well as provide feedback / suggestions). It's already been used at a handful of invitationals this year (with rave results!;) and I'll be personally giving it a thorough testing next Saturday at the Wright State Invitational.

And also please note that in my humble opinion both Avogadro and my system have their own sets of strengths and weaknesses, as well as somewhat different functionality and uses. I've actively used both and have even provided input / advice regarding improvements to Avogadro (although obviously I prefer my own system;). I won't get into the reasons, but the decision to use my system this year was not made by me (however I fully encouraged and support the decision)... I did make the decision regarding next year though;).

Regarding how this will affect the process, I think the biggest emphasis is we are going to push for it to be more electronic from start to finish. Right now there is a lot of 'paper shuffling' that occurs right up until almost the last minute. I also hope that it will expedite the finalizing of the results since I've put a lot of effort into error detection and the general overall tournament workflow.

Also please note that technically this won't be the 'first time' this is used at Nationals, since we used an early version of it back in 2003 when nationals was at Ohio State, and we also used parts of it in 2009 at Augusta State.

2. In 2011, did nationals take advantage of Avogadro's online event supervisor score entering capability, or did event supervisors hand-deliver all scores to be inputted in the scoring room? With the Chalker system, would multiple people be able to enter scores simultaneously, or would there be one "master computer" in which all scores would be entered?

My brother already answered this somewhat above. But let me clarify, even though 2-3 of us did enter scores online, we still had to come into the scoring room and go through the same verification process.. we just were able to shorten it a bit by skipping the initial manual data entry step.

With my system, there is still 1 Master spreadsheet someone needs to be actively in charge of, but the process of transferring data from individual event supervisors spreadsheets into the master is literally 2 clicks of the mouse in most cases. I've deliberately avoided relying on network connectivity with my system, although we will probably use something like Dropbox to internally transfer files so we don't have to utilize a ton of thumbdrives.

3. In 2011, it was great that the results were posted online immediately at the conclusion of the awards ceremony. This helped alleviate some of the chaos of coaches grabbing the printouts, and it allowed students to see the results immediately (using laptop wifi) without having to clamor for the printout. Will this immediate score posting be reprised in 2012?

I hope so. I'll have the PDF's available way before the ceremony is even completed. However I don't control the website, so I'll have to coordinate with someone else regarding getting them up online.

4. How will event sign-up work? The 2011 system, an all-at-once quasi-free-for-all that occurred the moment sign-ups were opened at 4:00 pm CDT on May 11, seemed to work pretty well, but might an even better system be devised?

I actually don't know. Unlike in the Avogadro system, we are breaking the registration and scoring into 2 different sets of people. I only handle the scoring. I haven't heard yet the approach they are taking for signups, but I would assume it'll be pretty much the same. Personally, thinking about it a bit I'd like to see some sort of 'staggered priority' assignment system setup. Something like this:

Say you have 5 events that need signups. You spread the process out over 5 days. On day 1 teams can signup for any 1 (and only 1) event of their choosing. Then on day 2 they get to signup for a 2nd event (obviously not as many time slots will be available for that event due to the day 1 signups).. rinse and repeat. This lets teams individually prioritize which events they want to signup for, without resulting in 1 'all-at-once' free for all. However implementing this might be a bit challenging.

Thanks for your time if you answer my questions! I'm a bit unfamiliar with the Science Olympiad scoring process in general, and I'd like to learn more. The magnitude of the task of scoring nationals must be absolutely monumental, especially with such little room for error.

You'd be amazed at how much the process varies. I've seen all manner of approaches, both at very small regional tournaments and at Nationals. The fundamental process is the same though: supervisors tally results somehow, bring them to the scoring room where some sort of check in happens (with varying levels of actual checking the presented results match the 'event documentation') and then the results from all the events are somehow combined into an overall list. Of course there are lots of places where errors can creep in, so typically there are various checks and balances built in to help detect those. The bottom line though is there is typically lot and lots of paper being printed on and passed around... something I'm hoping to help minimize with my system.

You'd also be amazed at some of the 'special requests' I get regarding specific changes to my system. These have included recently: allowing for non-sequential team numbers, giving a flat 10 team points to anyone scoring above 10th place, and allowing for a total of 30 events offered, where each team picks 23 that 'count') - FYI I was able to provide rather reasonable ways to handle all of these situations with only minor tweaking of the spreadsheet.

I've also found that scoring at nationals can actually be a bit easier than at the State level. While the stakes are 'higher', there are a TON of human resources available the day of to help out. Particularly towards the end of the day a lot of the more experienced 'veterans' tend to congregate around the scoring room and are available to help with any issue that comes up. I've found almost the opposite to be true at the State level.

[Luo]

1. Will you be using Avogadro to score the tournament, or will you be using the Chalker Excel Macro scoring system? If you are using the Chalker system at nationals for the first time, how will this affect the scoring/reporting process, if at all?

First, thanks for bringing up my system. For those of you not aware of it, it's freely available here (along with an overview, screen shots and some basic help files): http://sourceforge.net/projects/soscoring/

I significantly revised it this year in anticipation of Nationals this year and next. In the past you basically had to 'be in the know' to get a copy of it, now anybody can grab a copy from that website (as well as provide feedback / suggestions). It's already been used at a handful of invitationals this year (with rave results!;) and I'll be personally giving it a thorough testing next Saturday at the Wright State Invitational.

And also please note that in my humble opinion both Avogadro and my system have their own sets of strengths and weaknesses, as well as somewhat different functionality and uses. I've actively used both and have even provided input / advice regarding improvements to Avogadro (although obviously I prefer my own system;). I won't get into the reasons, but the decision to use my system this year was not made by me (however I fully encouraged and support the decision)... I did make the decision regarding next year though;).

Regarding how this will affect the process, I think the biggest emphasis is we are going to push for it to be more electronic from start to finish. Right now there is a lot of 'paper shuffling' that occurs right up until almost the last minute. I also hope that it will expedite the finalizing of the results since I've put a lot of effort into error detection and the general overall tournament workflow.

Also please note that technically this won't be the 'first time' this is used at Nationals, since we used an early version of it back in 2003 when nationals was at Ohio State, and we also used parts of it in 2009 at Augusta State.

2. In 2011, did nationals take advantage of Avogadro's online event supervisor score entering capability, or did event supervisors hand-deliver all scores to be inputted in the scoring room? With the Chalker system, would multiple people be able to enter scores simultaneously, or would there be one "master computer" in which all scores would be entered?

My brother already answered this somewhat above. But let me clarify, even though 2-3 of us did enter scores online, we still had to come into the scoring room and go through the same verification process.. we just were able to shorten it a bit by skipping the initial manual data entry step.

With my system, there is still 1 Master spreadsheet someone needs to be actively in charge of, but the process of transferring data from individual event supervisors spreadsheets into the master is literally 2 clicks of the mouse in most cases. I've deliberately avoided relying on network connectivity with my system, although we will probably use something like Dropbox to internally transfer files so we don't have to utilize a ton of thumbdrives.

3. In 2011, it was great that the results were posted online immediately at the conclusion of the awards ceremony. This helped alleviate some of the chaos of coaches grabbing the printouts, and it allowed students to see the results immediately (using laptop wifi) without having to clamor for the printout. Will this immediate score posting be reprised in 2012?

I hope so. I'll have the PDF's available way before the ceremony is even completed. However I don't control the website, so I'll have to coordinate with someone else regarding getting them up online.

4. How will event sign-up work? The 2011 system, an all-at-once quasi-free-for-all that occurred the moment sign-ups were opened at 4:00 pm CDT on May 11, seemed to work pretty well, but might an even better system be devised?

I actually don't know. Unlike in the Avogadro system, we are breaking the registration and scoring into 2 different sets of people. I only handle the scoring. I haven't heard yet the approach they are taking for signups, but I would assume it'll be pretty much the same. Personally, thinking about it a bit I'd like to see some sort of 'staggered priority' assignment system setup. Something like this:

Say you have 5 events that need signups. You spread the process out over 5 days. On day 1 teams can signup for any 1 (and only 1) event of their choosing. Then on day 2 they get to signup for a 2nd event (obviously not as many time slots will be available for that event due to the day 1 signups).. rinse and repeat. This lets teams individually prioritize which events they want to signup for, without resulting in 1 'all-at-once' free for all. However implementing this might be a bit challenging.

Thanks for your time if you answer my questions! I'm a bit unfamiliar with the Science Olympiad scoring process in general, and I'd like to learn more. The magnitude of the task of scoring nationals must be absolutely monumental, especially with such little room for error.

You'd be amazed at how much the process varies. I've seen all manner of approaches, both at very small regional tournaments and at Nationals. The fundamental process is the same though: supervisors tally results somehow, bring them to the scoring room where some sort of check in happens (with varying levels of actual checking the presented results match the 'event documentation') and then the results from all the events are somehow combined into an overall list. Of course there are lots of places where errors can creep in, so typically there are various checks and balances built in to help detect those. The bottom line though is there is typically lot and lots of paper being printed on and passed around... something I'm hoping to help minimize with my system.

You'd also be amazed at some of the 'special requests' I get regarding specific changes to my system. These have included recently: allowing for non-sequential team numbers, giving a flat 10 team points to anyone scoring above 10th place, and allowing for a total of 30 events offered, where each team picks 23 that 'count') - FYI I was able to provide rather reasonable ways to handle all of these situations with only minor tweaking of the spreadsheet.

I've also found that scoring at nationals can actually be a bit easier than at the State level. While the stakes are 'higher', there are a TON of human resources available the day of to help out. Particularly towards the end of the day a lot of the more experienced 'veterans' tend to congregate around the scoring room and are available to help with any issue that comes up. I've found almost the opposite to be true at the State level.

Thank you for such a thorough response! Also, thank you for your work on behalf of Science Olympiad. It really means a lot to us participants.

[Littleboy]

http://scioly.org/wiki/State_Champion_Statistics
Based off the information I collected this weekend, New York is the most competitive state in B and Michigan is the third most competitive. I will try to finish it by next weekend.
What do you think?

[RandomPerson]

http://scioly.org/wiki/State_Champion_Statistics
Based off the information I collected this weekend, New York is the most competitive state in B and Michigan is the third most competitive. I will try to finish it by next weekend.
What do you think?

Dunno, New York seems to do the best in B division, but that could just mean we have had one powerhouse team (which is mostly true, RC Murphy was a powerhouse up until relatively recently, then Gelinas took up the mantle). I believe last year was the first year (at least, the first year in a long time) that NY had two top 10 teams.

This means that its mostly been one team sweeping, which isn't really competition.

[Littleboy]

I used the average number of years each champion wins in each state (state ranking) for how competitive states are inside their state (low score is the best) and avererage nats score for how competitive each state is compared to other states. Each is weighted the same.