Scioly.org

Uber wrote:.......Ecology is an extremely variable event where almost every tournament has a different style and focus. Yes, the style is somewhat different from other tournaments, but the content it tested was overly basic, with some random sections mixed in. The random sections involved guessing what the proctor wanted. Since most of the test was too easy, the series of fill in the blank biodiversity and random vocab was what determined most of the final rankings, and we ended up on the wrong end. When 25% of the teams score within 3% of each other, there's something wrong with the test.

Just wanted to chime in with one minor thing to contribute to this conversation. But I'd like to preempt any detailed questions about specifics to the Ecology event. I don't know any details of how the event was run or specific team answers, nor do I have easy access to them. I'm also not likely going to share scoring information beyond what's already publicly available.

One of the numerous checks and balances we have as part of the scoring process is a cross-correlation between each events rankings and the overall team rankings. This is built into my Excel scoring system and primarily used to catch major errors like having low score wins instead of high score wins. The math involved is pretty simple, and anyone with a copy of the final score sheet that is posted on the website could generate these correlation coefficient numbers.

However, it's trivial easy for me to just share these with you for a bit of perspective (note these include ONLY the competition events, not the trial events):

Max event correlation: 0.52
Average event correlation: 0.39
Standard deviation: 0.09
Min event correlation: 0.20

Ecology had a correlation coefficient of 0.28. This means it was about 1 standard deviation below the average correlation for events. There were several events with lower correlations.

In essence, what this means is that statistically, the resulting ranks in Ecology are reasonably well aligned across all teams with the overall team ranks.

chalker wrote: However, it's trivial easy for me to just share these with you for a bit of perspective (note these include ONLY the competition events, not the trial events):

Max event correlation: 0.52
Average event correlation: 0.39
Standard deviation: 0.09
Min event correlation: 0.20

Would you be willing to share how many events were over and under the mean and which events had the max and min correlation, or is that secret committee info?

The48thYoshi wrote:

efeng wrote:

KoolKalvin wrote: That's true, but those types of questions don't show up much on nationals tests.

Yeah; I've never seen a trivia question on a nationals disease test.

I believe they asked about spot maps on 2012 at UCF?

Yeah, I remember doing that test. That's why I remembered it.

Tailsfan101 wrote:
Ouch! I feel so sorry for you, lastTime! My team's best finish was 16th in Disease Detectives. (Which me and Nerd_Bunny competed in )

+1, +1, (I described it as hectic mayhem) and +∞∞∞∞∞∞infinity! (I was backstage at the time, I was doing the student pledge! )

Thanks. Congrats on making top 20, that certainly is an achievement.

And yeah, I was expecting it to be more organized, like a table for each state or something. Then again, we only had pins to trade, which was certainly not great.

It just seems like the professor didn't realize how unexciting his lecture was. At MIT, the speaker was really passionate about what she did and threw a few jokes in, and at UPenn, there was engagement from both speakers. However, here, there was no mention of application and seemed to flit from topic to topic.

lastTime wrote:

Tailsfan101 wrote:
Ouch! I feel so sorry for you, lastTime! My team's best finish was 16th in Disease Detectives. (Which me and Nerd_Bunny competed in )

+1, +1, (I described it as hectic mayhem) and +∞∞∞∞∞∞infinity! (I was backstage at the time, I was doing the student pledge! )

Thanks. Congrats on making top 20, that certainly is an achievement.

And yeah, I was expecting it to be more organized, like a table for each state or something. Then again, we only had pins to trade, which was certainly not great.

It just seems like the professor didn't realize how unexciting his lecture was. At MIT, the speaker was really passionate about what she did and threw a few jokes in, and at UPenn, there was engagement from both speakers. However, here, there was no mention of application and seemed to flit from topic to topic.

Hm personally I found the MIT speaker to be very dull as well. As for Nationals I'm sure anyone who hasn't done Astro or Remote would be rather confused as to what he was talking about.

Unome wrote:

lastTime wrote:

Tailsfan101 wrote:
Ouch! I feel so sorry for you, lastTime! My team's best finish was 16th in Disease Detectives. (Which me and Nerd_Bunny competed in )

+1, +1, (I described it as hectic mayhem) and +∞∞∞∞∞∞infinity! (I was backstage at the time, I was doing the student pledge! )

Thanks. Congrats on making top 20, that certainly is an achievement.

And yeah, I was expecting it to be more organized, like a table for each state or something. Then again, we only had pins to trade, which was certainly not great.

It just seems like the professor didn't realize how unexciting his lecture was. At MIT, the speaker was really passionate about what she did and threw a few jokes in, and at UPenn, there was engagement from both speakers. However, here, there was no mention of application and seemed to flit from topic to topic.

Hm personally I found the MIT speaker to be very dull as well. As for Nationals I'm sure anyone who hasn't done Astro or Remote would be rather confused as to what he was talking about.

Don't forget to mention the spelling errors...*cough* Adeninie *cough*

Anybody know when the awards ceremony and opening ceremony videos will be up? and where will they be on to find?

maxxxxx wrote:

chalker wrote: However, it's trivial easy for me to just share these with you for a bit of perspective (note these include ONLY the competition events, not the trial events):

Max event correlation: 0.52
Average event correlation: 0.39
Standard deviation: 0.09
Min event correlation: 0.20

Would you be willing to share how many events were over and under the mean and which events had the max and min correlation, or is that secret committee info?

You can calculate this yourself lol.... all the data is there for you

Here's some data you can play with. I've included the Pearson correlation coefficient comparing each event to overall team rank. This can be done for any tournament's results.

bernard wrote:Here's some data you can play with. I've included the Pearson correlation coefficient comparing each event to overall team rank. This can be done for any tournament's results.

Based on these results how is WIDI still an event (only partially joking)