Monday, April 24, 2006

April Open Quiz - Results

Details:
* April BCQC Open Quiz on 23 April, 2006
* Set by Sarika Chuni and Gaurav Sabnis; conducted by Gaurav
* Scoring: Infinite Rebounds (2 pts); Pole Position bonuses (3/2/1)

Results (54 questions in the Final):

1st: Dhoomketu and Naveen Unni (17 pts)
Jt. 2nd: B.V. Harishkumar and Samrat Sengupta (16)
Jt. 2nd: Salil Bijur and J. Ramanand (16)
4th: Shivaji Marella and Ganesh Hegde (14)
5th: Arnold D'Souza and Shamanth Rao (super-sub for Kunal S :-)) (13)
6th: Kunal Thakar and Anupam Akolkar (12)

Elims results (35 questions):

1st: Harish and Samrat (18*)
2nd: Salil and Ramanand (18)
3rd: Dhoomketu and Naveen(?)
Cutoff: 14.5

Comments/Criticisms:

* Participation numbers seem to be going up - many more new faces this time. More visitors from Bombay, two of whom won the quiz!
* Personally felt that the questions weren't completely upto the usual standards of the quiz-setters. Close to half the questions were entertainment related. Fewer connects (was expecting some of Gaurav's patented bizarro connects, but none materialised :-)) and very little sports. Uncharacteristic pitch. A lot more history and politics this time.
* Also felt that though some of the questions had some interesting trivia as their basis, the framing did not do justice to it. For instance, the questions on "What was Operation Wrath of God?" or on Norman, the NZ athlete were like Alicia Silverstone i.e. clueless.
* A slightly rushed affair which led to some questions not being done justice too; one of the more tougher elims I have taken.
* Couple of rough decisions going against H & S :-)
* Another super-sub: Shamanth replaced Kunal S for the finals as the latter is in the middle of exams.
* Since this is likely to be Gaurav's last formal quiz in Pune for a while - taking the opportunity to wish him well and thank him for the entertainment in the past.
* Next quiz: Niranjan's in May

Unseeded quiz results
For the first time, we held an unseeded 25 questions-written quiz for some of the lesser experienced quizzers. About 20 of them took part. Conducted by Shamanth, here are the results:

1st: Chinmay
2nd: Aniket Khasgiwale
3rd: Akshat Vyas
4th: Mithun Srivatsa, Arun Mirpuri, Gaurav Singh (Tied)

Please leave comments on this post if you have anything to say about yesterday's quiz. Also note that from this time, due to initiatives from Salil and Abhishek, we're recording more info about the quizzes in our report. I don't have my notes, so have left some info blank. Please do help complete

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

How about posting the Questions? Here or on Gautav's Blog. Do you guys have a policy of discussing everything inane except posting the Questions?

* Amused Bystander *

J Ramanand said...

Yup, that's right - this blog is for exactly all things inane - it never has had questions - you can check the archives.

Now, if we only knew how to reach you, we could tell you where the questions are being posted. But sadly, you choose to remain amused. Until then, enjoy the silliness! :-)

Sudarshan said...

AB Baby, it was Gaurav who conducted the quiz - Not Gautav or Gautam...

Abhishek said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Salil said...

About the quiz...
I felt there were too many cricket trivia or cricket inspired questions.
The elims itself had about 5.
And there were some peters too...

Ganesh Hegde said...

I personally enjoyed the quiz.
Yes, there were many FAQ's, as Gaurav would say.Also, i disagree with the concept of pole position, since i feel that the elims and the finals are two different things.Once the teams are in the finals,its a level playing field.Its like giving a person extra marks in the mains of IIT-JEE,because he performed well in the screening test.(i know that the screening test has been done away with [:)])

J Ramanand said...

Ganesh, I have swung like a pendulum on the pole position bonus - I'm not completely able to make up my mind about this. However, I remain in favour of providing a minor advantage of some form to the elims topper. So far we've tried:
* Points to 1 or more of the toppers (I personally prefer 1 answer-worth and 1/2 answer-worth points to the top 2 and no more)
* Allow the team to decide seating position (controversial, works only if teams are very familiar with each other)
* Start the quiz with the topper (and perhaps round reversal starts with them as well? - v. minor - I tried this at SCIT too, if you remember)

Or we could use them to break ties at the end of the finals if normal tie-breakers did not separate them.

I like the idea of having an adv. so that there is some incentive to top the elims. IMO, it works best if the elims are somewhat reflective of the finals - the adv. should be more of the order of the serving advantage or choosing the side of the court or playing with whites, not a lot more.

Plus it's fun to debate about :-) I think it's best for individual organisers to think what they want to do.

Abhishek said...

I personally prefer : Use elims scores if there is a tie. The reason is simple -

Since both teams have answered the same number of questions in the finals, the team which answered more number of questions 'on the day' should win.

Abhishek said...

and another idea springs up after seeing Anand's post. If there is a tie, why not prefer the team with the lesser number of attempts. Me and Shamanth got 2 less Qs to attempt than K+N, that might have been decisive in such a close affair.

J Ramanand said...

I don't quite agree with that - you may have got 2 qns to attempt but the difference in the number in the qns you got wrong and right is much higher than the margin or the difference in number of qns (it is always so). So you could have theoretically easily have won if you had answered even 1 of those 13 qns you missed.
See, we know that optimal fairness will never be achieved in finals if there is no simultaneous attempt. So you cannot technically compare those qns which fall in the (union of qns both teams got to attempt minus the interesection) - so nice try! :-)

Kunal said...

And anyway, we didn't finish that quiz tied, so the question does not arise at all. Although I must agree with Ramanand when he says nice try!

Abhishek said...

yes, i know we didn't finish tied, so the question does not arise - i'm just saying that the idea sprang up from there.

As for JR's comment :

"union of qns both teams got to attempt minus the interesection"

that somehow does not make sense. Isn't the intersection the questions noth teams got to attempt. Pls to define sets more clearly.

J Ramanand said...

Oh, I had intended to mean that technically, since teams don't attempt exactly the same questions in a final, one could even counter-claim that number of questions is also immaterial in a final - same implication arising from lack of optimal fairness.

As for the sets, they were:
Q_a: questions team A gets to answer
Q_b: questions team B gets to answer
I was talking about questions that fall in (Q_a union Q_b) - (Q_a intersection Q_b) (i.e the "symmetric difference" - a term I couldn't remember earlier :-))

so one could say that even if number of attempts is identical, to truly separate teams, we should look at only those questions both have attempted - but we know that doesn't really lead us anywhere.

(apologies to others for vague wanderings - calling an end to this strand!)

FifthBeatle said...

i think the sitters were too easy and the toughies too specific...

anyways. here's the lighter side of the quiz.. (or rather the post-quiz)