Symbiosis Law wins Pune Nobel Quiz Round

Suvajit Chakraborty, Sachin Ravi and Raghav Chakravarthy won Pune's Nobel Quiz Round. All the details in this TOI article.

Texas Instruments Science and Technology Quiz 2009 - Pune round

The 2009 edition of the Texas Instruments Science and Technology Quiz 2009 is back in Pune.

Date : 7th November 2009
Venue : Nehru Memorial Hall, No. 4, Ambedkar Road, PUNE
Time : 930 AM
Teams of two
Classes 8, 9, 10
Register online at http://www.tiif.org or send mail to tistquiz-query@list.ti.com or call 080-40065005
Max of 6 teams per school
Grand prizes

There is a detailed document with entry forms and procedures - if you want this, please write to ochintya[at]yahoo[dot]com or leave a comment on this blog (could be a slower option)

Chakravyuuh 2009

Chakravyuh 2009 was a part of COEP's technical event MindSpark.

Set by: Aniket Khasgiwale, Aditya Gadre , Kaustubh Bhat , Mohit Karve , Aadinath Harihar

Conducted by: Kaustubh Bhat and Mohit Karve

The quiz had 54 questions on seamless IR.

Results:
1st: Anand Sivashankar and Amit Garde: 95 pts
2nd: Niranjan Pednekar and Meghashyam Shirodkar: 90 pts
3rd: Yasho Tamaskar and Suraj Menon: 85 pts
4th: Yash Marathe and Vinay: 65 pts
5th: Nikhil Motlag and Tejas Kulkarni: 40 pts
6th: Raghav Chakravathy and Vikram: 30 pts

__________________________________________________________________________________ Particpants views- report by Suraj Mennon

Chakravyuh certainly lived up to its billing..... A well put together elim set with a fair mix of classical quizzing and pop culture fundae saw a tough fight for places on stage... Honourable mention to harish and Navya who scored 14..... Cant recollect who won best college team and the other honourable mention so if someone could fill in the details would be grateful

The finals were a close run affair what with only a 10 point spread between the top 3 teams. could have been a close run thing, but Amit and Anand made their early lead count and kept up the momentum with some cracking answers. Meghshyam and NP pushed them close in the end only to miss out. As for the quiz itself, fabulous set of questions, bar one or two that werent framed well.

Positives
- Good balanced elims set with something for everyone. Some brilliant questions there
-Quiz was ably conducted by Kaustubh bar one incident refer below
- 54 questions meant that the length of the quiz was just about right giving all teams a fair shot and not too many obvious sitters/peters
- The lack of production value was more than compensated by the quality of the questions themselves
- Full clarity on part points, meant the quiz was dispute free and we avoided unpleasant situations where the person asking the questions didn't know enough about the answer, (often seen when you arent asking your own questions). Kudos to Bhat Mohit and Adinath for that
- Some cracker questions

Negatives
- the quiz started late, but then what quiz starts on time
- the Dreaded finger of God made one appearance inspite of two safety slides (Another entry to the record books for Kaustubh Bhat)
But then again these were minor glitches on what was unarguably one of the best quizzes that has happened in recent times, take a bow Gadre, Khasgi, Kaustubh, Adinath and Mohit.

Congratulations to the winners and all the finalists.

Any comments , bouquets/brickbats are welcome.

Chakravyuuh 2009 and other events

Announcement by the organisers of Mindspark and Chakravyuuh, COEP's annual quiz

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Quizzing @ Mindspark ‘09

The College of Engineering, Pune is back with the city’s Premier Technical Festival MINDSPARK, and its bigger and better than ever. As a part of this technical extravaganza, we will be hosting three quizzes in our module ENCYCLOPAEDIA GALACTICA for all quizzing enthusiasts.

Torquest (9th October 2009)
We wouldn't really be an institute of excellence in technical education unless our students were sound in their technical knowledge and fundas. Pit your love for technology against ours. Brush up your theory and find out how much you could actually apply it when you go out into the mad, mad world. Science and technology are inseparable, and this is a quiz where the passion for both would find a home.

Status: College Quiz

Chakravyuh (10th October 2009)
Chakravyuh has been one of Pune's best known open quizzes for many years now. A general quiz that is literally based on anything and everything under the sun, the participants of this quiz can range from college students to software professionals. Chakravyuh has gone on to produce quizzers who would later perform exceptionally well at national level quizzes like BBC Mastermind INDIA and University Challenge. Previous years have elicited fantastic participation and the prize money remains as sweet as ever.

Status: Open Quiz

Full Throttle (11th October 2009)
Have your fingers always itched to pull apart an engine to pieces and check how it works than just admiring the beauty of the bike and riding it? Then test your automobile wisdom in this adrenaline pumping quiz. Cars, bikes, and everything capable of clocking some serious revs- get ready to experience the rush! Turn up your collars, and roll up your sleeves, for only the sharpest can keep pace with Full Throttle.

Status: Open Quiz

Venue for all quizzes: The Auditorium, College of Engineering, Pune
Team size: 2
Registration fees: Rs. 30/- per team for every quiz
Instructions:
1) All school and college teams must possess valid I-cards. All the open quizzes have special prizes for the best school and best college teams.
2) Participation in Torquest will be confirmed only against a valid I-card.
3) Certificates will be given to all finalists. Prizes for all winners.

BCQC in Mid-Day Pune

We were featured in a recent edition of Mid-Day Pune. Read the article here.

The other BCQC

While ego-searching for the BCQC, I chanced upon the "BCQC Ride for the Children" expedition. Having ensured that this was nothing to do with Salil (cycles + social causes!), I went to read more about this.

This is a cause espoused by two Canadians Goran Matic and Iavor Boev who are currently undertaking "a 4,800 km bicycle journey across the heart of Canada which will take them "from Richmond Vancouver in British Columbia to Montreal Quebec.".

Thus I inferred that "BCQC" seems to stand for "British Columbia-Quebec".

Matic and Boev are raising money to buy a Cerebral/Somatic Oximeter for the Montreal Children's Hospital. More details can be seen here.

Here's one BCQC wishing the other the best of luck in their endeavour.

An article about the BCQC at Punekar.in

Punekar.in, a website that covers Pune, featured an article about the BCQC last month. Read it here.

(Please treat my utterances with the usual intake of salt.)

Pounce and Bounce

A guest post by old BC alumnus Hirak Parikh, who now quizzes in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The original appeared on his blog here.

A veteran quizzer once told me that quizzing was not so much about knowing stuff, but was more about entertainment and having fun. I disagreed at that point thinking that such a remark was an act of high treason. Over the years, I have realised that quizzing is not a knowledge test. If it were so then quizzes would be like exams - timed and written. A written and timed test is the fairest way to judge who knows the most. All teams get the same questions, no question of order or luck. The team/person that got the highest number of correct answers would walk home with the prize. That's not the point, is it? The point is to have fun.

Over the years, people have obsessed over the best format that minimizes luck and ensures that the team that knows the most (read: best) wins. Quizzing innovations is an activity which has almost become a kind of cottage industry among quizzers with time on their hands. I am about to add more to that body of literature. That being said IMHO, my experience suggests that there is no point looking for the Holy Grail of a perfect format. A good quiz depends on ensuring three simple things in order of importance:

a) The format should be the 'modified infinite bounds with a midway reversal'. All questions have equal points, the next question to the team to the left/right of the team that answered it. If the question is unanswered then the original teams gets the next question. Order reverses halfway during the quiz.

b) A long quiz.
I think for 5-6 teams there should be at least >40 questions. A factor of 10 is ideal. Even the old system of rounds with pass-direct questions (full points for direct, and half for a pass question) would be okay provided the quiz was long enough. c) Questions, questions, questions.
The greatest evil is not the format, or the order, or marking scheme -- but bad questions. If questions are set correctly, spread over different topics evenly, and are of similar difficulty then the quiz will be fair and the best team 'should' win.

In practice, luck and order does play somewhat of a role even in the modified infinite bounds format, though b) should take care of it to some extent. The critical issue is to normalize questions in some fashion. Why normalize? Each quizmaster (QM) has his/her own personal strength (read: fetish) and quizzes as a result tend towards personal idiosyncrasies. The good QM is diligent about this and goes about setting questions keeping in mind those biases (knowing the QM and his/her strengths can help you work out the answer, cause you can guess what he/she knows, and how he/she sets questions). One way to do it, as is usually done for big quizzes, is to have two or more question-setters with divergent interests.

Despite the best intentions of the QM(s): all questions are not equal, some are more equal than others. A QM may think that a question is reasonably difficult, but may turn out to be a sitter. On the other hand, some questions are way too tough and end up being unanswered. Personally, if more than 10-15% of questions end up this way then the QM did a bad job. You cannot go about an weigh each question for difficulty.

The other aspect is that there should be some drama, some element of excitement in a quiz. I am a fan of 'buzzer-rounds' which have fallen out of favour in recent times. It provided that adrenalin-rush and rewarded quick recall and reflexes which are sadly missing from the current slow-cooking style. The current trend is away from the fireworks and some quizzes have written components at the start. This is bad, bad, bad.

Long story short. I tried out two innovations at the quizclub. Each team was given two wildcards to allow them to Pounce or Bounce a question.

Pounce: You can attempt a question out of turn. The team has to write down the question or tell the quizmaster before the question is attempted by any of the other teams in regular fashion. There are no negatives and a correct answer get full points.

Bounce: You can bounce a question to the team of your choice. If team doesn't answer it correctly they get -(full points), and if they do answer it correctly they get the full points. Regardless of the outcome, the team bouncing gets the next question.

The rationale behind the Pounce rule was to ensure that sitters can attempted by all. In the past, with great difficulty I have resisted urges to destroy the chair I was sitting on, or strangling the person who smirks when handed a sitter as a direct while I was left wringing my hands in despair. Often, close quizzes are decided on the basis of which team got slightly easier questions. This is where the Pounce comes in. Jump in on question out-of-queue. Grab a sitter. Of course, a team can misjudge the opponents knowledge and would end up with the question in the regular course of events.

The rationale behind the Bounce rule is to induce some excitement and additionally serves as a handicap for the obviously better team(s). There are always going to be a few questions that seem so unreasonable and tough that no one can answer them and a weaker team can either direct it towards the strongest team, or to their closest rival to level the playing field. Of course, if a team is really good and they can actually answer the question that seemed 'too tough' then all the better for them.

Innovations in practice:
This weekend when I tried these out and found the results mixed. No one team used the Bounce rule. They all played too nice, perhaps fearing retribution. The Pounce rule was used by all teams to good effect. Only once out of six times did a team not answer the question correctly. In all six cases, the team would not have got the question in the regular order and judged the moment of 'pouncing' correctly.

This was the casual Saturday quiz and not the best testing ground when there were only three teams and no one was too worried about winning or losing as there was nothing at stake. I curious to see how this works out in a longer, larger quiz more at stake. These rules do favour teams that can fake emotions of knowing or not knowing answers depending on the situation. A tight quiz can almost be like a poker game.
You can sometimes work out the answer being seeing who knows it.