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Re: Experimental Design B/C
Posted: March 24th, 2010, 6:48 pm
by zyzzyva980
Wow... just wow... Helix, that's a total rip-off. They should be more prepared for an important competition like regionals.
Re: Experimental Design B/C
Posted: March 24th, 2010, 6:51 pm
by 2win
Yeah, I agree. Something like that should have caused the event to be cancelled or something...
Oh, as for study methods, we have other team members and S.O. coaches come up with a topic and materials, and then we practice.... xD Simple enough
Re: Experimental Design B/C
Posted: March 25th, 2010, 3:29 pm
by Avis_de-Incendia
And most of the time you shouldn't write up the entire report when practicing, but rather just practice brainstorming...that's the most important part of this event
Re: Experimental Design B/C
Posted: March 25th, 2010, 4:09 pm
by Helix_Nebula_Freak
I feel simalarly in that brain-storming's the most important part of the event. When we practice, we often won't do the whole write-up. In this event, we work best under pressure...
Re: Experimental Design B/C
Posted: March 25th, 2010, 7:09 pm
by zyzzyva980
Brainstorming is important, but I feel the most important thing is specifics and writing a very good report. If you can have a good idea of what to do when you get in there, you don't need to brainstorm very much. In fact, we hardly needed to do any brainstorming at regionals for this event because everything was the same as last year. Instead we focused on specifics and it paid off - 1st place.
Re: Experimental Design B/C
Posted: March 25th, 2010, 8:00 pm
by Helix_Nebula_Freak
Good Job!!!! You do make a valid point. I think this event's very team-specific in what you need to practice. It just depends on what aspects of it you excel and lack in.
Re: Experimental Design B/C
Posted: March 25th, 2010, 10:07 pm
by lllazar
zyzzyva98 wrote:Brainstorming is important, but I feel the most important thing is specifics and writing a very good report. If you can have a good idea of what to do when you get in there, you don't need to brainstorm very much. In fact, we hardly needed to do any brainstorming at regionals for this event because everything was the same as last year. Instead we focused on specifics and it paid off - 1st place.
This man speaks the truth.
We hardly even talked at regionals because the experiment was so straight forward...."hand me the flashlight" or "pass me the pencil" was pretty much all we said...we got 2nd place but that was because our graph was screwed up
Re: Experimental Design B/C
Posted: March 26th, 2010, 5:40 am
by Flavorflav
Helix_Nebula_Freak wrote:I was at Regionals today and had the MOST UNFAIR, IMPROPER Experimental design.
Okay, so first of all, they gave us an experiment to do, which they really shouldn't have, but I could deal with that. Then, I look at the experiment and realize that IT'S NOT EVEN AN EXPERIMENT!!!!!! It was "design an object to prevent an egg from breaking when dropped from a height of 8 feet." WHERE IS THE EXPERIMENT THERE????
Then, on the packet to write in, we don't see anywhere to do a graph, so I ask where we should do a graph. And the proctor's like, "Don't do a graph, because you're not doing multiple trials."
At this point we're all like "
" anyway, but then we realize that the proctor gave us definitions within the packet. Fine. Until we realize that the definition for Independant Variable is 100% wrong!!!!!! It said: "The Variable that does not affect the other variables..."
We still had to do the rest of the rubrick, but needless to say, we didn't do very well....
For some reason, some people confuse Experimental Design with Mystery Architecture. They are really not very closely related.
The tournament coordinator needs to be made aware of this situation. The individual responsible should not be asked to run an event again.
Re: Experimental Design B/C
Posted: March 31st, 2010, 3:54 pm
by Big_Platypus
Flavorflav wrote:Helix_Nebula_Freak wrote:I was at Regionals today and had the MOST UNFAIR, IMPROPER Experimental design.
Okay, so first of all, they gave us an experiment to do, which they really shouldn't have, but I could deal with that. Then, I look at the experiment and realize that IT'S NOT EVEN AN EXPERIMENT!!!!!! It was "design an object to prevent an egg from breaking when dropped from a height of 8 feet." WHERE IS THE EXPERIMENT THERE????
Then, on the packet to write in, we don't see anywhere to do a graph, so I ask where we should do a graph. And the proctor's like, "Don't do a graph, because you're not doing multiple trials."
At this point we're all like "
" anyway, but then we realize that the proctor gave us definitions within the packet. Fine. Until we realize that the definition for Independant Variable is 100% wrong!!!!!! It said: "The Variable that does not affect the other variables..."
We still had to do the rest of the rubrick, but needless to say, we didn't do very well....
For some reason, some people confuse Experimental Design with Mystery Architecture. They are really not very closely related.
The tournament coordinator needs to be made aware of this situation. The individual responsible should not be asked to run an event again.
Wow..that is a very unfair event! That makes no sense!
My event wasn't as bad but it was sorta like that where there really wasn't a dependant variable. It was trying to make something float, and it either sank or floated :\. So our graph was a phail and we probably got 16th because of that.
Re: Experimental Design B/C
Posted: March 31st, 2010, 5:37 pm
by Helix_Nebula_Freak
Big_Platypus wrote:Flavorflav wrote:Helix_Nebula_Freak wrote:I was at Regionals today and had the MOST UNFAIR, IMPROPER Experimental design.
Okay, so first of all, they gave us an experiment to do, which they really shouldn't have, but I could deal with that. Then, I look at the experiment and realize that IT'S NOT EVEN AN EXPERIMENT!!!!!! It was "design an object to prevent an egg from breaking when dropped from a height of 8 feet." WHERE IS THE EXPERIMENT THERE????
Then, on the packet to write in, we don't see anywhere to do a graph, so I ask where we should do a graph. And the proctor's like, "Don't do a graph, because you're not doing multiple trials."
At this point we're all like "
" anyway, but then we realize that the proctor gave us definitions within the packet. Fine. Until we realize that the definition for Independant Variable is 100% wrong!!!!!! It said: "The Variable that does not affect the other variables..."
We still had to do the rest of the rubrick, but needless to say, we didn't do very well....
For some reason, some people confuse Experimental Design with Mystery Architecture. They are really not very closely related.
The tournament coordinator needs to be made aware of this situation. The individual responsible should not be asked to run an event again.
Wow..that is a very unfair event! That makes no sense!
My event wasn't as bad but it was sorta like that where there really wasn't a dependant variable. It was trying to make something float, and it either sank or floated :\. So our graph was a phail and we probably got 16th because of that.
What you could have done in that situation is a DV of "Time it takes to sink" or something of the sort. Just ensure that you have a high enough IV range that at every level it will eventually sink.