Results:
1st: Abhishek Nagaraj and Aditya Gadre
2nd: Suvajit Chakraborty and Yash Marathe
3rd: Aniket Khasgiwale and Yasho Tamaskar
4th:Rohit Khaladkar and Aditya Kulkarni
5th: Swanand Gadgil and Abhishek Khandelwal
6th: Bharat Marathe and Samir Deshpande
The quiz started with a 40 question ,fairly simple elim. This time however there were no ridiculously easy questions and the elims were quite good . The cut off was 20.
The quiz was quite enjoyable and well set. The main quiz consisted of 60 questions , seamless IR. The quiz had quite a few very easy questions , some chestnuts and some good questions. The quiz setters cannot be blamed for the chestnuts since their effort with making the quiz was apparent. It all evened out in the end so no complaints about the questions as such. They were better than what we see in most college quizzes.
There was a bit of confusion and indecision with regards to part marking for some of the questions , but thankfully it did not affect the result. Next time we hope the QMs take care to decide prior to the quiz which answers they are going to accept and which they are not.
The only major crib about this quiz was the organisation. The elims started at 11am and ended at noon. The final of the quiz started at 4pm. So basically we had to wait doing nothing for 4 hours.
13 comments:
It never affects the result as long as you win :D
QMs cannot be blamed for delayed start of finals cuz they cant do anything when a guy from mangospring (a sponsor) starts the seminar after the time when the seminar was scheduled to end!!!
The same thing happened last time too. Next time make sure you have the quiz BEFORE the seminar.
BTW, I will be more effusive in my praise for this quiz than Aditya. What I liked most was that, questions were not re-phrasings or rehashed old fundaes. The QMs managed to cover new ground, even if that meant we go into poodle genealogies.
Apart from that, the quiz was "unbalanced" in the sense that it was (western) ent-heavy. This is an off-hand observation, and we would be well served to have some statistical data in this regard. However, IMHO it's often best to stick to familiar stuff, rather than try to make the quiz balanced and get it wrong.
Apart from that, the elims were perfect. Good to see a long elims. Though it tended to favoud "experienced" teams, since the level of repeats were on the higher side.
Since QMs are not BCQC members we didnt know exactly which were chestnuts. we avoided very recent common questions on vikram pandit,IPL, mahesh yogi etc which were in every quiz. for the benefit of non-bcqc QMs, i request experienced bcqc ppl to put a list of chestnuts on the site (like abhishek has posted a post about led zepp naming!)
Hi Amit,
I am not in favour of having a 'banned' :-) list of chestnuts! Like Harish says, we should be worried about unnecessarily indoctrinating newcomers about how others (some under the banner of the BC) may want things done. I am uneasy about the experienced guys imposing their opinions on you guys, or you letting them do so.
Anyway, instead of a list of what to avoid, would prefer you attending more quizzes (BC and otherwise) to learn about what is and what is not 'known'. You will develop this sense yourself with experience. Of course, we can make available old quizzes to newcomers (something that we haven't done well so far) and help you with understanding the wisdom of the crowds. For some to classify certain facts as 'chestnuts' may sometimes turn out to be arbitrary and is avoidable, IMO.
As long as you have independently and by your own imagination come up with these questions without plucking them off sites or books, I think you have every right to ask chestnuts if you didn't know they were too simple just because many have asked them before. Don't let the others hustle you! :-)
Maybe the difference between a chestnut, a repeat/peter and a direct lift should be clarified.
A chestnut, according to me is a funda which has been rehashed, rearranged, retwisted, etc. for many years because it comes from a pet topic of many.
A repeat is sometimes unavoidable. I could come up with a question without knowing someone has framed a question on the same lines. Often happens with current affairs trivia.
A direct lift or copy is so blatantly a repeat that you cant blame coincidence. I've been to quizzes where some of my questions were present exactly as in their original form - the exact words and framing.
(I know this is the wrong thread, shouldve commented in ramanand's post on chestnuts.)
As for college quizzes go, like Prahelika and the previous ones, I think most (usually all) tend towards interests of the QMs or otherwise try to cater to the ones who win most college quizzes. Currently it is the COEPians and some others all who happen to be BCQC regulars. IMHO, an attempt should be made to make questions that are interesting, not necessarily belong to interests of some. In case the question based on a new funda fails, let it. We learn from experience. At the end of the day, quizzers are cribbers - no quiz is free from complaints.
Another note to the report-writers. As far as possible, pls try to get the names of participants. Its not always great to see familiar names in the results with a few +1s thrown in. Btw, the team that came 4th was Rohit Khaladkar and Aditya Kulkarni from VIT.
Chestnuts are actually crutches (unfair? not really) for experienced quizzers and not something QMs should be overtly worried about, unless of course they know that similar questions have popped up in recent quizzes, in which case it becomes a cardinal sin. What they should try to avoid is plagiarism which gives an unfair advantage to people who set/participated in the quiz or know about the source.
@Aditya:
Bharat's partner was Samir Deshpande. Please include his name as I don't think he wants to be known as a statistic.
Changes made. Does anyone remember the name of Swanand's partner?
Abhishek Khandelwal
I dont want to blow my own trumpet here but i think 1 small but important point aditya missed out in his report was that i distributed a score-sheet to every team in the finals so that they can keep every team's score. the score sheet was formatted according to the rounds' structure. i would like all the QMs to take up this activity while conducting quizzes to make the scoring process transparent. i think this is wat everyone should take from prahelika 2008.
Amit: I do agree that scoring should be transparent, but I dont think that giving teams score sheets will help it. If at all, it will only add to confusion and there could be disputes - this is from personal experience, once when we had more than one person (some of them, the finalists) doing the scores.
The best way to go would be to update the scores on-screen after every answer. It is slightly cumbersome if you're using powerpoint, but we've seen good results by integrating scores with questions on a flash presentation.
Amit - nice to see you had given teams scoresheets in the interests of transparency. Some of us have already given such sheets before (at least I have :-), in my quiz in Nov). But IMHO, these are just part of those small things that make life easier for finalists, such as blank sheets to scribble on. Most teams will anyway keep scores, so you can only help them do it easier/
I don't fully agree with Salil that this may lead to further confusions, because the teams are anyway keeping scores. Having an official (and sane!) scorekeeper and tallying scores periodically will help avoid problems anyway, irrespective of how the scores are maintained. Even online scoring can lead to problems - ultimately, to settle 'scores' (:-)) if needed, you just need to know which qn was answered by whom and you can recompute the scores to validate.
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