2015 National Tournament: University of Nebraska

[bernard]

Oh yes, I remember that. Good times at Gainesville, where everyone obviously had studied Nobel Prize winners instead of their actual events.

Wow, you guys studied? Everyone around me was playing QuizUp and Trivia Crack on their phones.

Studied for what? The events or the Science Bowl?

I believe that Nobel Prize winners was a topic covered in the Science Bowl so people studied that rather than their actual events.

[Unome]

Wow, you guys studied? Everyone around me was playing QuizUp and Trivia Crack on their phones.

Studied for what? The events or the Science Bowl?

I believe that Nobel Prize winners was a topic covered in the Science Bowl so people studied that rather than their actual events.

As far as I know, they only announced the topic right at the competition.

[bernard]

Studied for what? The events or the Science Bowl?

I believe that Nobel Prize winners was a topic covered in the Science Bowl so people studied that rather than their actual events.

As far as I know, they only announced the topic right at the competition.

Maybe that was a topic covered in previous years so students decided to study it. I'm not familiar with how Science Bowl works so I could be entirely wrong...

[samlan16]

I believe that Nobel Prize winners was a topic covered in the Science Bowl so people studied that rather than their actual events.

As far as I know, they only announced the topic right at the competition.

Maybe that was a topic covered in previous years so students decided to study it. I'm not familiar with how Science Bowl works so I could be entirely wrong...

In GA, Science Bowl is run as a trial event at certain B division regionals, and the way it normally works is they announce a topic a week before the tournament and expect people to study; no one knows what to expect, and the topic changes every year. We joked that it was meant to keep the weaker teams away from real medals.

[boomvroomshroom]

SciBowl at our regionals is just like regular SciBowl in that they can ask you anything. There are ~5(?) main topics, like Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Astronomy, Geology, plus some wildcard ones like Math or Compsci which show up rarely. It's literally just general trivia; there's no way to study for it except cram your brain with a ton of facts.

[Verdigris]

I can affirm from studying for Science Bowl that a lot of it is just association or figuring answers out through their prefixes/suffixes/roots. There's some psychology at play, too.

[rfscoach]

As far as I know, they only announced the topic right at the competition.

We get the rules and topic for the Gainesville Science Bowl a week or two before regionals. We just don't tell any of you because we would rather have you studying your real events.

[samlan16]

As far as I know, they only announced the topic right at the competition.

We get the rules and topic for the Gainesville Science Bowl a week or two before regionals. We just don't tell any of you because we would rather have you studying your real events.

Hence it weeds out the weak teams even further.

[boomvroomshroom]

As far as I know, they only announced the topic right at the competition.

We get the rules and topic for the Gainesville Science Bowl a week or two before regionals. We just don't tell any of you because we would rather have you studying your real events.

Hence it weeds out the weak teams even further.

I don't see how it would "weed" anyone out if it's just a fun thing to stall for time (like at our regionals) or a trial event (which doesn't count toward the final scoring). Anyway, from my experience, the "weak" teams have some smart kids, it's just that their schools don't have lots of experience with scioly, so their kids either don't try or just don't compete in many events. (I came from a not-so-good team in middle school, and we literally studied our butts off for all the wrong things. We didn't even realize that there were "rules", and that the "rules" outlined exactly what you had to study, haha!) Anyway, these schools that no one's heard of tend to do well in these random wild card events.

[bernard]

Hence it weeds out the weak teams even further.

I don't see how it would "weed" anyone out if it's just a fun thing to stall for time (like at our regionals) or a trial event (which doesn't count toward the final scoring). Anyway, from my experience, the "weak" teams have some smart kids, it's just that their schools don't have lots of experience with scioly, so their kids either don't try or just don't compete in many events. (I came from a not-so-good team in middle school, and we literally studied our butts off for all the wrong things. We didn't even realize that there were "rules", and that the "rules" outlined exactly what you had to study, haha!) Anyway, these schools that no one's heard of tend to do well in these random wild card events.

I definitely agree that the tournament directors and supervisors have no intention of "weeding out" teams with the Science Bowl activities, but I also think samlan16 didn't have any intention of insinuating that, rather it seemed like a more lighthearted, humorous comment.