National test discussion

[syo_astro]

Haha, few questions came from me (I am mostly a checker, and I am still working on my question style). The questions that were most directly mine were on the Herbig Ae/Be star thing on Part A, and the spectral energy distribution question on Part C (I say most directly because it got edited a ton by the sups mutually). I was trying to come up with that blackbody curve question on Part C and trying to come up with a question that would show various effects of transit light curves like on Part A, but Tad (I believe) pulled those together faster than I could (though, I did try to throw some ideas over about that). I actually had a bunch of other questions in mind...perhaps if they let me you will get a few tough things from me .

Also noting off what chalker said. Often at most scores may be close (eg. literally always there's a dang tie), but almost never do people get a 100 on the test. I attribute this mostly because the test really could be anything, and even if you finish, if you hand it in early, don't check the right thing, don't write the right thing, then those all lead to EXTREMELY easy point loss.

[asdfqwerzzz2]

.... Probably all of the top 30 teams and some others aced the test, and thus the top teams were those who spent the most time with their beam......

Looking at the raw scores I have, only 8 teams aced that test, and several teams in the top 10 did NOT ace it. The low score was 18 points, and the average 40. So yes, it might have been a little easy, but by no means a slam dunk.

Hey Chalker, I'm unsure if you even have access to this or the ability to disclose this, but what was the point distribution among the top 6 astronomy teams?

[asdfqwerzzz2]

Haha, few questions came from me (I am mostly a checker, and I am still working on my question style). The questions that were most directly mine were on the Herbig Ae/Be star thing on Part A, and the spectral energy distribution question on Part C (I say most directly because it got edited a ton by the sups mutually). I was trying to come up with that blackbody curve question on Part C and trying to come up with a question that would show various effects of transit light curves like on Part A, but Tad (I believe) pulled those together faster than I could (though, I did try to throw some ideas over about that). I actually had a bunch of other questions in mind...perhaps if they let me you will get a few tough things from me .

Also noting off what chalker said. Often at most scores may be close (eg. literally always there's a dang tie), but almost never do people get a 100 on the test. I attribute this mostly because the test really could be anything, and even if you finish, if you hand it in early, don't check the right thing, don't write the right thing, then those all lead to EXTREMELY easy point loss.

Sorry in advance for the double post, but I must thank you again for your awesome test writing! I thought the questions you wrote were quite solid, but I would've liked to see a less obvious answer to the SED problem. When one the questions was "which circumstellar disk is seen in the SED," followed up with "what circumstellar disk does the disk in part (b) evolve into," it can be quite obvious, as the order is always protoplanetary -> debris. Personally, I wouldn't have known known for sure the answer to that question if it weren't for the followup. In terms of the Herbig questions, I thought they were all great! Regarding your last statement about ties, do you happen to know the point values of the top teams? I'm curious to see how close we were to getting those top 3 medals!

[dragonslikepi]

Entomology: I believe that the test was a little too simple. There were far too many questions asking about metamorphosis and whether the insect was Apterygota or Pterygota . If you got the metamorphosis, you would have gotten the latter question. Additionally, there was only one question regarding the anatomy of the insect. (The one about which system the Malpighian tubules belonged to.) I studied so much about anatomy and sadly there was only one question about it on the test. There was also too much time on our hands. In fact, I correctly guessed what the next station's insects would be by just reading the question. In the end, I think the test came down to who could identify the insects better.

[syo_astro]

I won't reveal how exactly just in case, but in the original question I actually made it longer and tried to make a few parts a fair bit more difficult. Donna/Tad do a good job balancing it out. Sadly not many people can appreciate (or know about...?) the beauty of SEDs! Also, if that was your assumption you're a bit off (right about debris disk...but if you mean just "protoplanetary" in this case). The disk I referred to was actually a transitional disk, which is a bit more specific than just "protoplanetary disk" (as there is the truly primordial full disk, the pre-transitional disk, and the transitional disk). What made it really hard was that part b forced you to EXPLAIN why, which was basically the main, if I may say simple but important, aspect. I get you may find it "easy", but there's always a trick . Things can always get harder though from me, don't you worry...

I sadly don't know point values off the top of my head (didn't have time to get to NE, so I couldn't grade >.>), and I think I'll leave that up to Donna/Tad/Chalker to say.

[asdfqwerzzz2]

I won't reveal how exactly just in case, but in the original question I actually made it longer and tried to make a few parts a fair bit more difficult. Donna/Tad do a good job balancing it out. Sadly not many people can appreciate (or know about...?) the beauty of SEDs! Also, if that was your assumption you're a bit off (right about debris disk...but if you mean just "protoplanetary" in this case). The disk I referred to was actually a transitional disk, which is a bit more specific than just "protoplanetary disk" (as there is the truly primordial full disk, the pre-transitional disk, and the transitional disk). Nice try . What made it really hard was that part b forced you to EXPLAIN why, which is an extremely simple but important aspect of the question/understanding surrounding what I wanted in that question.

I sadly don't know point values off the top of my head (didn't have time to get to NE, so I couldn't grade >.>), and I think I'll leave that up to Donna/Tad/Chalker to say.

Well dang! Thought I caught the loophole in your question, but I guess I was wrong! Maybe that's what separated me from top 3!

[jkang]

Chemistry Lab (24): Mixed feelings about this event. We had 8 stations that we rotated through, with ~15-20 questions per station. The length of the test definitely made it more difficult, and only using one calculator between me and my partner definitely caused some struggles. Thought the length alone definitely contributed to making the test more challenging. Also, in between each station the proctor gave us time to wipe our goggles, which was definitely a plus since mine were fogging up constantly. However, several questions from this year's test were taken from last year's, which was pretty disappointing. In addition, the proctors constantly had a ton of lab equipment and supplies out; however, my partner and I only ran into one station that required lab material which led to a lot of confusion between the two of us. Overall, I would give this event a B+.

Compound Machines (7): Again, the proctors here were really nice. When my partner and I couldn't get our device to balance correctly in equilibrium when we were setting up our device, they allowed us to set it up on the floor without intruding our 4 minute testing time. The test, however, we thought was not the most difficult. My partner and I opened our binder not even once during the entire test, and we managed to finish the test after checking it 2-3 times with around 10-20 minutes to spare in the block. However, I think possibly one screw-up that we had in our device portion could have been what costed us a medal at nats, which is unfortunate. Also, having to constantly go through significant figures and getting certain clarifications on certain questions about those were really annoying (although I can understand the reason some people would use sig figs, I just personally greatly dislike them). Overall, I would also give this event a B+.

Experimental Design (23): One of the most frustrating things about this event was that we were not allowed to use additional paper. With around 4 or so sections printed out on a page, and certain conflicts between my partner's sections and my sections being on the same page, we ran into a lot of frustration and timing issues. Especially considering certain sections such as procedure and analysis, this was probably one of the worst parts of this event. Furthermore, the way the proctor expressed her feelings about this event goes clearly against the rubric, which may have costed our team a couple of points. For example, the lab was geared towards something that we had to personally go against the proctor's "recommendation" in order to have a graph that can have a line of best fit, and when she came over to talk to us, she even stated how much she disliked regressions and how dumb she thought the rubric was. Furthermore, the fact that Seven Lakes, last year's winners in the event, got 34th in this event makes me think the grading was a little sketchy, despite the fact that some seniors may have graduated that participated in the event last year. Overall, probably a C+/B- or so is appropriate for this event.

It's About Time (1): Not much to say about the device section of this event, I feel that this is pretty standardized throughout all of SciO tournaments. For the test portion, my partner and I walked into the event expecting Chalker to be the national proctor for this event (as he was the past two times that it was run), so we were a little surprised when we found out that it was a different proctor and test-writer this year. The test was a little surprising in that there was a lot more of physics concepts than normally expected (a ton of questions that involved relativity, finally a use for my modern physics class), but besides that there were some obvious questions such as the definition of a second and unit conversion questions. Some of the questions were a little weirdly worded, but most of them my partner and I were able to reason through. Glad that there weren't any derpy questions on the test, such as quotes or pop culture references. My partner was sad that there was only one or so calendar-related questions, but that seems to be an unfortunate trend throughout a majority of IAT tests. Overall, I'd say this event deserves an A.

Technical Problem Solving (16): Ugh. I've been doing this event since sophomore year (currently a senior), and to be honest this might have been one of my least favorite topics to date. Especially the use of the case files from the Vernier website. These, particularly the footprint and blood splatter lab, were first used when we attended the CyFalls Invitational, but that was to be expected from a fall invitational. However, on the way to Wright State this year, when I heard that the nationals proctor was hosting the event at the invitational, I was looking forward to a great test that would challenge me. But hey, guess what: more case files, with again the blood splatter lab, the footprint lab, and the cooling dead body lab. But I got beyond that, thinking it was just another invitational for the local teams. Walking into nationals, I expected something more. But hey, guess what? Exactly the same case files as Wright State, virtually copy pasted from the Vernier website, and the materials used were hella sketchy. Can't describe how disappointed I was with this event this year. The best tests I've ever seen this year were those from the MIT and Troy Invitationals, and those were wayyy back in January/February. Flat out F for this event.

[sciolyboy123]

Fossils: This was a very good test; there were 19 stations covering a broad range of material from the rules, good pacing so that to do well you had to be fast, and a variety of questions, from easyish to difficult, so that some stations we finished with some (~20 seconds) time left over, and others we didn't finish at all (as said above, dinosaurs )

5/5

Simple Machines: As said in the above post, this test was too easy. It required very superficial knowledge and basic calculations; we only had to reference the binder twice throughout the whole test, and finished early even after thoroughly checking it. Most likely we got 2-3 questions wrong, so as RontgensWallaby said above, the placings came down to how well teams did on the lever portion (which was the reason we managed to do well on easy tests at all; our lever method has been strong enough to score 45-48 out of 50 for even the most inexperienced competitors since last January). However, I would add that the rest of the event was run very well; the supervisors gave specific instructions for everything, so I never had to ask how to write the ratios, how many significant figures to use (or whether to use them at all), how to stop the lever portion timer, etc, which I would normally have to ask at most other competitions.

4/5

Bio-Process Lab: This was a superb test, directly to the rules (of course, since it was written by the Biology Rules Committee Chair), well paced, and very good difficulty (we only answered about 80% of the questions, yet we still got 4th). This shows exactly what a Bio-Process Lab test should be, since as most of you know, this event is rarely run well.

5/5

Meteorology: I'm not sure how a difficult Meteorology test should be written, so I'm not sure what to say, but my impression of the test was that it was too easy (although not necessarily for me, since that's one of my weaker events); it was the length of our state test, except with less multiple-choice, and no questions that I can remember were very difficult.

4/5

Anatomy: This test was a good example of how not to write (or more specifically, how to not write) a test. The test was the Division C Nebraska state test, printed out of order and recycled from an answer key. Most of the answers were blanked out, but badly, leaving much of the section for the Integumentary short answer questions too dark to write in; additionally, some answers were not blanked out, some questions were blanked out, and some questions referenced a diagram that did not exist, so the proctors said those would be thrown out. However, the end of the test was not printed, including half of a matching section, and for those questions which were missing the correct answers in the matching section, they just told us to "do our best," which to me appears to say that they graded that part.

2/5

Wait, in Bio, you only anwered 80% of the questions? My partner and I answered 89% of the test and got 14th. We probably did something wrong, but the test was a good test.

I competed in the following events on Saturday:
Disease Detectives (43rd)- I thought the test was good and hard, but I haven't done Disease long enough to make an extremely educated statement about it. It seemed to follow the topic and have logical questions. (I was the one who pointed out the typo on the multiple choice question that had A and C as the same thing)

Experimental (23rd)- Much easier than last year, but they didn't let us use the rubric this time (which, in my opinion, was a good thing).

Entomology (3rd)- The test was very easy, much too easy to be a National level test. There were no problems with the way the test was run or written, and it would have worked fine as a Regional or State test. I thought 5 minutes was way too long for a station with ~6 questions, especially when said questions were not particularly difficult. If a team did not know what an ootheca was or how to tell the difference between a male/female grasshopper and praying mantis, they could have placed significantly lower than other teams of very similar ability level. The specimens we got to see were nice (none were live though ) and in tact (not broken), which was a plus. Sadly, the last Ento test I will ever take

Dynamic Planet (27th)- I kind of zoned out for the whole time while taking this test, but it didn't seem to me like there were any big problems with it. Of course, since I didn't prepare for it as much as my other events, I am in no position to make a judgement about it. I was expecting to see more about topographic features, but it was overall an okay test.

Fossils (12th)- Great test, very well-run and well-written. I enjoyed taking it and felt adequately prepared for it. It was probably the test that I was most pleased with throughout the day.

EDIT- yep, it was 43rd

Hey, I remember you from Disease. I expected it to be someone from SciOly.org, the test overall was pretty easy if you were experienced enough, but there were some questions that separated everyone from the top players.

[varunscs11]

Green Generation (2): This test was so hard. The general ecology section was fiendishly hard. A lot of this section was reading charts and graphs. Section 2 was a little bit easier and was the standard pollution section. The final section was very easy. I enjoyed matching myco, phyto, and bacterial remediation to the situation an evaluating fishing methods by their sustainability. The test was in stations and I think the time limit made it even harder. The tie-breakers were too easy and the laws were cut and paste from the national event resources page. This test was definitely the better of the proctors tests because the 2013 Water Quality test was full of wrong answers and bad questions. I would give this an A/A-.

Fossils (6): Specimens were gorgeous and easy to identify. As you moved from Station 1 to 20, the stations got longer. Also the multiple choice made it kinda annoying. There were very little modes of preservation and time ranges which is good. But I wish there was more trivia and anatomy questions. I wouldn't say its the best test I've taken in difficulty but leagues better than the previous nationals tests. I would give it an A-.

[DShen]

Chemistry Lab (12th):

I did the event at nationals last year, and the proctor was the same. The style of the test (stations that mix data collection and paper problems) was also the same. That being said, I definitely do not agree with the proctor's idea of a "hard" test (after the event ended last year, he was extolling the difficulty of his test and how his undergrad students thought it was challenging; I would have to disagree with that assessment). To me, chemistry knowledge should not be assessed by ones ability to do 20 mundane problems and take experimental data quickly but rather by questions which actually require one to think critically. In the end, the test really came down to your ability to punch in numbers on a calculator really fast and read a colorimeter, which I think is a really terrible way to run an event. It was also all multiple choice (except for drawing in a couple of reaction profiles and a graph), which I also think makes it a terrible test.

Also, as somebody earlier pointed out, there was a repeat problem from last year regarding some yttrium reaction which would be impossible to balance in the time given unless you had already memorized it beforehand and copied it down to your binder.

1/10, would not compete again. Please get a better proctor who doesn't think that chemistry is just speed and rote memorization.


Forensics (19th):

Also did this event last year. Test is impossible to finish in time, but that's the point. I really love the lady who runs it and the effort she puts into it. Also, in my block somebody accidentally set fire to the base of one of the bunsen burners and the assistant needed to put it out with baking soda, which was funny. 9/10 would compete in again (but won't because I'm a senior).


Astronomy (9th):

Didn't do this event last year, but the test was okay. I thought it could have been longer (and even harder), especially part C which seemed almost too easy (many gravitational acceleration and planetary density calculations). I guess there's only a limited amount of math one can expect a high school student to do which relates to properties of exoplanets though. Also, what was the answer to the "puffed up" disk question?

Regards,
Daniel Shen