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I heard at states that something with a fire involved happened in the Mystery Architecture building, and apparenly had to cancel a part of the event.

MoMoney$$$;)0) wrote:I heard at states that something with a fire involved happened in the Mystery Architecture building, and apparenly had to cancel a part of the event.

Yeah, according to another Ohio person I know there was a fire on top of the building, so they couldn't hold any more events inside of the building and they ended up trialing Mystery because the last couple of time slots literally couldn't do the event.

Most of the tests at Michigan States were too easy, there were 1st place meadals down to 30th place, and placings down to 50th.

TheCowboyandhisArk wrote:Most of the tests at Michigan States were too easy, there were 1st place meadals down to 30th place, and placings down to 50th.

If they were so easy, how come the team overall didn't do better? (insert shrug emoji)

John Richardsim wrote:

TheCowboyandhisArk wrote:Most of the tests at Michigan States were too easy, there were 1st place meadals down to 30th place, and placings down to 50th.

If they were so easy, how come the team overall didn't do better? (insert shrug emoji)

Probably because less well prepared teams were able to do equally as well or perhaps better than the well prepared teams.

MadCow2357 wrote: Probably because less well prepared teams were able to do equally as well or perhaps better than the well prepared teams.

But how well-prepared teams are is judged by the competition, so as far as anyone's concerned, the "less prepared" teams are actually better prepared than the "more prepared" teams, so there's really no objectivity to it.

It also seems like the top teams were able to do very well in almost all events, which kind of refutes that claim as well.

John Richardsim wrote:

MadCow2357 wrote: Probably because less well prepared teams were able to do equally as well or perhaps better than the well prepared teams.

But how well-prepared teams are is judged by the competition, so as far as anyone's concerned, the "less prepared" teams are actually better prepared than the "more prepared" teams, so there's really no objectivity to it.

It also seems like the top teams were able to do very well in almost all events, which kind of refutes that claim as well.

+1 (I know I'm not supposed to, but I can't help it)

To MadCow and Cowboy: ...c'mon. You know outright you're saying teams that place lower are less well prepared *at every event* (or at least on average)???...without judgement, you should know that's going to be a tough argument to make either way. Adding to John, this has zero to do with individual events (pairs). There are plenty of users here that would (and have) demolished competition at their events though their team didn't do as well. Even if you come back with statistics confirming that, yes, teams that placed lower overall did well at individual events....so what?

A note: We're not saying there may not have been individual event issues or things that were really too easy...but you have to come back with a bit better of an explanation then or rather just point to specific events:P.

TheCowboyandhisArk wrote:Most of the tests at Michigan States were too easy, there were 1st place meadals down to 30th place, and placings down to 50th.

What do you mean? I was there, so I know that the tests were NOT easy, at least for B. How does a school that placed 30th getting 1st in one event indicate easy tests? If the tests were easy, everyone would be at an advantage, not just low placing teams. Maybe they just had a really good team for an event or two. If it's just a personal opinion, then why didn't your school place better? Sorry if I seem overly critical, I just don't understand your thought process. Also, please spell medals correct next time.

I think Illinois States has a great example for how easy tests can lead to poor placements for better teams. First place in Astronomy won by a double tiebreaker and there was a 15-20 way tie for second place after all tiebreakers were used. I’m pretty sure they just ranked teams randomly because there was absolutely no other method they had to break this tie. Apparently this happens pretty much every year in Astro for IL. We got lucky this year but it added 20 points to our score last year.

While I’m posting here, I might as well explain why the test was so bad. The test was divided into 5 parts, and 3 of them were exactly identical to last year’s regional test, including the numbers. The only difference is that they gave us a wooden ruler this time instead of a paper cutout. The DSO section asked about the first fact you would have learned about for each one after researching for a single minute. The entire test was extremely easy and short, leading to the 15-20 way tie. When the score distribution is literally a horizontal line at the top, you know something is wrong with the way a test is written.

So yeah, easy tests can, in fact, lead to teams that may not be as well prepared to place much higher than teams that have poured several hours more into an event. I can’t speak for MI States, but I know that this kind of thing can definitely happen and skew results. Hopefully, this didn’t affect a significant number of events.

Selundar wrote:So yeah, easy tests can, in fact, lead to teams that may not be as well prepared to place much higher than teams that have poured several hours more into an event. I can’t speak for MI States, but I know that this kind of thing can definitely happen and skew results. Hopefully, this didn’t affect a significant number of events.

Yeah, I agree with what you're saying. I think it's just the last bit that we're emphasizing and that's hard to exactly explain without details. There have been plenty of times where low-overall placing teams still do well at individual events, so I'm just saying correlation (well, some correlation seemed to be implied) =/= causation or implies converse or etc.