Compute This B

[The_Beast]

I was just put in to this event about a week from the first competition. What is the most important info?

[zyzzyva980]

The Compute This Wiki has some good information

[EpicFailure]

Is practicing a lot the best way to prepare for this event?

Also, what are some tips while putting in search terms? Copy the whole phrase, chop the question up etc.

[Skink]

Practicing generally helps for all events, doesn't it?

What I've found is that it isn't so much butchering the phrase so much as inputting the phrase and then knowing what to do with the search results. When people write these things, you almost NEVER pick the first couple hits. I'd go for the full phrase but then scroll down a ways when looking for what link contains the information you're after.

[Sherry Berry]

What I've found is that it isn't so much butchering the phrase so much as inputting the phrase and then knowing what to do with the search results. When people write these things, you almost NEVER pick the first couple hits. I'd go for the full phrase but then scroll down a ways when looking for what link contains the information you're after.

Really? We always copy and paste the quote, add the website name at the end (so for this year it'd be CDC.gov) and the results are almost always in the first five links.

[Skink]

Alright, like anything else in Science Olympiad, it's supervisor-dependent since hundreds of supervisors nationwide will write tests differently. The State supervisor in Illinois said he writes that way. I guess consider yourself lucky? The reason it it's too easy otherwise...

[EpicFailure]

What's a good way to split up the work for this event? What we've tried to do is to have one person (Person A) read the rubric (introduction + graph stuff) while the other person (Person B) is doing the short answer questions first, and then Person A helps the Person B with the short answer questions. After the questions, Person B then reads the rubric while Person A starts on the graph. Person B then helps Person A with the graph. It was kind of hard with two people at one computer, so any suggestions on strategies?

[AlphaTauri]

What my partner and I did when I competed in this (back in the good ol' days), we would always start with finding the data and doing the graphing - our reasoning being that there was a fair chunk of points for the data/graph alone, and that on average, we'd earn more points from having the data/graph and maybe not answering 1-2 short response than answering all the short response and not having the data/graph.

After that, we'd go for the short answer. Just go through them one by one; if there was one we couldn't find within a minute or two, we'd skip it and come back to it later. If we still had time left after we'd answered them all, we'd double check all of our work (including data/graph).

Of course, our plan got shot to pieces by the 2010 PA States test...hardly anyone could even find the data, so we went for the short response first. (We did manage to find it about 2 minutes from the end, but it was too late to graph by that point!)

We didn't really divide up the work that much, because...well, as you said, there's only one computer. It does help time-wise on short response if you/your partner can speed-read, though.

[Tine]

What my partner and I did when I competed in this (back in the good ol' days), we would always start with finding the data and doing the graphing - our reasoning being that there was a fair chunk of points for the data/graph alone, and that on average, we'd earn more points from having the data/graph and maybe not answering 1-2 short response than answering all the short response and not having the data/graph.

After that, we'd go for the short answer. Just go through them one by one; if there was one we couldn't find within a minute or two, we'd skip it and come back to it later. If we still had time left after we'd answered them all, we'd double check all of our work (including data/graph).

Of course, our plan got shot to pieces by the 2010 PA States test...hardly anyone could even find the data, so we went for the short response first. (We did manage to find it about 2 minutes from the end, but it was too late to graph by that point!)

We didn't really divide up the work that much, because...well, as you said, there's only one computer. It does help time-wise on short response if you/your partner can speed-read, though.

At an invitational, my partner and I also did this, and we did pretty well (2nd place out of 26 teams at our first competition). The challenge is that we then only had about 10 minutes for six short-answer questions. It is a trade-off: you can either hope to get maximum points from the graph and do it first, or decide to do the short-answer questions first. You have a little less time to do the graph, but you can be sure of getting the short-answer questions correct. The problem with the latter approach is that sometimes you can use your graph to answer some of the short-answer questions, so you would be finding the same information twice.

[AlphaTauri]

I would think that a good middle ground would be to decide to go for the data/graph first (unless the data or graph seems to be excessively complicated), and if you can't find it in ~5 minutes, do the short answer first instead.

Although I do see your point in going for the short answer first, since those are typically easier to find than the data. The only problem is that there are 5 of them, so you have to find all 5 to get full credit for that part (and there's no guarantee you'll be able to find all 5 with enough time left to do the data/graph) while there's only one chunk of data.