The Blog of the Boat Club Quiz Club, Pune
Standings
1st: Infosys (C): Pratyush and Mehul
3rd: ZS Associates (D): Prabhakar and Jaipal
3rd: Advinus Therapeutics (A): Suraj & Shariq
Other finalists: ZS Associates (Bharat and Anand), Indira School of Business (names not announced), TCS (Abhishek and Suchir)
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On the difference between data mining and data compression
Or, to compress the question, the various differences between data compression. I hate having to answering such school-type questions1, but I guess we're always ready to pawn our soul for 10 points :-). So we defined it as being techniques "for reducing the size of data for transmission/storage etc" (paraphrasing), but were ruled wrong. I'm not sure what the correct answer was, but I think it was to the effect of "extracting only that info from data that is needed" (memory fails me, as I was still reeling from the surprise). Without going deeply into data compression, there are different kinds: lossy (like in MP3s where you say that some data/info is unimportant enough to be thrown away) or lossless (such as in file compression, where you have a different, smaller form of your data to cheaply store or transmit). I'm not sure what was needed here.
The quizmaster did assert that he knew what he was looking for, he knew it would be one of this tricky ones, and he had sources who helped him "nail this one". He also did apologise a couple of times later, saying that he knew it was one of those borderline ones (i.e. for the inherent ambiguity, not that he was wrong about it), which was kind of him, I suppose.
However:
I don't have much of a problem with big quizzes being designed to appeal to non-quizzing audiences, but why must they mess with the fairness of the rounds? The use of D&P over Infinite Rebounds (Infinite Bounce to non-Pune quizzers) is a menace that everyone in the game knows about. Most (and all good) quizzes use the IR system for their regular rounds because it guarantees one thing : between two shots at questions for any team, all other teams will have had a chance to attempt a question. IR does not smooth the fairness of the content or the fortune of receiving an easy question. But unlike D&P, you can be assured that your team will not twiddle its thumbs while the rest get to answer. Think of it as all teams receiving (almost) the same number of deliveries to bat to, at any given interval in time.
Yet another illustration of this from the other day: after 2 rounds of passing (one forward, one reverse), the number of attempts (out of 12 questions): two: A, B, F; three: E; five: C, D. Five vs. Two - that kind of imbalance would never happen in IR.
(This is no reflection on the qualities of the other teams, esp. the winners - just a commentary on why a quiz format shouldn't be so uneven. Let luck of the draw play its role in the content and team placement, but not the number of attempts.)
So why do big quizzes still employ an outdated and inferior system? Makes no sense at all.
Standings
1st: Infosys (C): Ajay & Jayakumar (95)
2nd: Advinus Therapeutics (A): Suraj & Siddharth (58)
3rd: Cognizant (B): Niranjan & Ramanand (55)
4th: Neo Green (D): Shubhodeep & Sandeep (40)
5th: RBI (F): Mohana & Priyam Bhattacharya (35)
6th: QED Baton (E): Nikhil & Tejas (10)
(IBM - Vishwajeet & Ramanathan just missed out)
Report
The theme of the year was 'social networking', so much so that it also was the answer to a question. This was one of the few really good questions in an otherwise routine Brand Equity quiz round. The finals began with a round of direct multiple-choice questions (no passing), went on to a round of 'dry' questions, followed by a 'identify' visual round (reversed passing) and another 'dry' round. The fifth round was an audio-video round, at the end of which the last team dropped out (there was a two-way tie for the 5th place). In the final buzzer round, 3 teams left the stage after 4 questions, and 2 questions later, the quiz ended as Infosys took an unassailable lead. However, the quiz had been decided in the 'identify' round thanks to a hat-trick of answers from the winners, who scooped up 35 points to leapfrog to the top, which they never relinquished since.
The questions zig-zagged from the immensely ordinary (such as identifying the poster of 'Kati Patang') to the slightly controversial ("the difference between data compression and data mining") and a couple of excellent ones (especially well-answered by Advinus). Last year's venue (the amphitheatre in the same location) had a better ambience than the banquet hall thingy for this time. For the quizzing geek, there was yet more evidence of the iniquities of not using Infinite Rebounds (Bounce), but quizzing philosophy has always been secondary in such events. The idea of asking audience members to ask prelims questions was more than off-putting. However, overall, the quiz was a lot less annoying than some other business quizzes, and the audience seemed to enjoy the show.
Standings
1st: Savoir Faire (E): Rajiv & Harsh
2nd: Cognizant Tech. Solutions (A): Harish & Ramanand
3rd: Kotak (B): Ashit + Samrat
4th: ZS Associates (F): Prasanna & Mihir
5th: QEDbaton (D): Nikhil & Tejas
6th: Mahindra (C): Sanjay & Amol
Report
Savoir Faire once again prevailed in a seemingly tight Brand Equity regional round held in Pune. About 30 teams took part, a far cry from previous years when the R-word was a distant galaxy away. The little venue only underscored the current economic climate, but surprisingly turned out to be a compact little place with enough atmosphere for a quiz.
The questions themselves were of the usual BEQ nature: some rank sitters (being asked identify to identify films such as HAHK based merely on a song being played), some strange, hard-to-verify ones ("what does taxod(o?)us mean?") and some good questions ("fans of which brand are associated with the term BrickCon"). The prize-to-question-quality ratio is reminiscent of the economic values of the IPL. This blogger was attending a BEQ event after 4 years and sees that except for the questions becoming even more general in nature, not much had changed.
On the positive side, the quiz master was restrained in his humour and even excellent in repartee and audience-engagement. The "fight against blindness" theme was well-received and made a welcome change from the frivolity of past BEQs.
The national final play out next Sunday at Bombay.
Questions & Answers from the quiz are available at this blog post.
Another entertaining event by Derek O Brien. The finalists on stage (in alphabetical order) were from BMC Software, Honeywell, Infosys, Savoir Faire, TCS, and ZS Associates. Savoir Faire from Goa had been winning the Pune round of BEQ for the last two years and were hot favourites to win again. The team from TCS, Ramanathan and Abha (Did I get the names right?) did well to pip them on the tie-breaker question by answering Roshogollas to "What is K C Das credited with inventing?".
The theme of this year was how quizzing has evolved in India over the years. There were mentions of Siddharth basu and even the cover of Mastermind 5 (but sadly, no mention of the winner of Mastermind 5 who hails from Pune) The rounds and the representation of the scores were also in line with the year that was being commemorated. The highlight for me was to listen to the audio clip of Ameen Sayani hosting the BQC on Radio. Jug and Bunny Suraiya were also present. TCS, the leaders after the first two rounds were presented with two bottles of Kingfisher beer and a chicken each - apparently that's how the prizes were way back in the late 60's. The elims were simple and interesting. Lot of teams felt they missed out on Dollies. The finals consisted of seven rounds. The bottom two teams (ZS Associates and BMC Software) got 'relegated' after the first five rounds. The scoring was 10 points for all correct answers (direct or pass); no infinite (re)bounds format of passing. Some teams did suffer because of the varying level of toughness of questions. After the Buzzer round in which all teams tried to play safe, the third and fourth placed teams (Infosys and Honeywell) were asked to leave.
TCS and Savoir Faire didn't want to take too many risks in the last round and Derek had to pull out couple of extra questions to resolve the tie.
Final scores
TCS: 80
Savoir Faire: 75
Infosys: 30
Honeywell: 25
BMC Software: 25
ZS Associates: 20
BCQC highlights
Abhishek Nagaraj answered the English Lit. question on what are called Gamps after a character Mrs. Gamp in a Dickens story, while Vasu answered the question on who gave his voice to the obituary video of Art Buchwald.
Report by Harish, who was one of the finalists.
Extentia, Pune