Pennsylvania 2017

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EastStroudsburg13
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Re: Pennsylvania 2017

Post by EastStroudsburg13 »

Avogadro wrote:I have to say that I, too, am a bit disappointed that the scoring problems that from what I've heard are likely not going to be addressed at all. For a team that made a huge climb this year it would be nice to see how well we actually did without any sort of scoring malfunction (ED in particular is disappointing, since we did exactly the same experiment as the top teams...). Sadly, there's not much that can be done past what our team has already tried, so I suppose I'll just have to live with it.
Were there any scoring problems other than Ecology? ED, while it had some odd ranks, didn't seem to me to be on the level of "scoring malfunction". There are lots of review processes in place for states, so while the scoring might be odd, it can likely just be chalked up to a sub-optimal running of an event (which happens at almost every single state tournament in the country), as opposed to a legitimate malfunction. Aside from Ecology and EV (perhaps we just shouldn't have events that start with E anymore), I'm not sure anything is a "scoring problem" as much as just a typical variance in the quality of the events themselves.
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Re: Pennsylvania 2017

Post by StogaJdan »

Hey y'all, I'm on Conestoga's SciOly team. What happened at States this year was that we received a NS in ecology, and later found out that the ES didn't have our test. However, to test our pair's claim that they had competed, PASO (PA SciOly) asked for multiple witnesses to confirm. Upon providing those witnesses, they further claimed that one of our students had taken a test home, which wasn't something we could disprove...

We needed about 8th place in Eco or better to reach Nationals for the first time in our 13 year history, and I'm reasonably confident that that would've happened. The pair that competed at States also placed 2nd at MIT, and was confident that they had done well at states as well.

At the end, after two days of appealing and discussion, the state board decided that they would "take no action", and keep our score as a NS (+37). Personally, I don't see this as a "neutral" position, since giving +37 as a NS seems more like arbitrary punishment, but ultimately that's not what the board decided.

Not much we can do at this point, but 'Stoga's coming back next year with a vengeance. :x :)
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Re: Pennsylvania 2017

Post by EastStroudsburg13 »

StogaJdan wrote: At the end, after two days of appealing and discussion, the state board decided that they would "take no action", and keep our score as a NS (+37). Personally, I don't see this as a "neutral" position, since giving +37 as a NS seems more like arbitrary punishment, but ultimately that's not what the board decided.
The problem is that due to the fact that they could not prove any wrongdoing by either the participants or the supervisor, there is no punishment or plan of action that is not arbitrary. In fact, the least arbitrary position probably is giving a P (+36), as they obviously did not have a test to grade, so they could not rank the team. In the end, this does not really solve the problem all that much.

The only other plan of action I could reasonably see one taking is providing the team with an "average score", in this case 18. This would have moved Conestoga up to 3rd overall, but not enough to move them up to 2nd. Again, it's unfortunate that the test was lost somewhere, and I do think the supervisor likely could have done a better job keeping track of the tests, but in the end, there's not a lot they can do; it is also partially the participants' responsibility to ensure that their test makes its way, in full, to the supervisor, or to a grader under the supervisor's discretion.

I am not trying to make light of the situation or to say that all events were run well. However, I don't really feel good about implications that PASO isn't "neutral" or that they don't really care. Having been involved with the state tournament closer this year, I can assure you that the board does deeply care about maintaining the integrity of the system, and that they don't take these sorts of decisions lightly. In the end, there's really not a ton they can do with the cards they're given, unfortunate as they may be.
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Re: Pennsylvania 2017

Post by maxxxxx »

EastStroudsburg13 wrote:
Avogadro wrote:I have to say that I, too, am a bit disappointed that the scoring problems that from what I've heard are likely not going to be addressed at all. For a team that made a huge climb this year it would be nice to see how well we actually did without any sort of scoring malfunction (ED in particular is disappointing, since we did exactly the same experiment as the top teams...). Sadly, there's not much that can be done past what our team has already tried, so I suppose I'll just have to live with it.
Were there any scoring problems other than Ecology? ED, while it had some odd ranks, didn't seem to me to be on the level of "scoring malfunction". There are lots of review processes in place for states, so while the scoring might be odd, it can likely just be chalked up to a sub-optimal running of an event (which happens at almost every single state tournament in the country), as opposed to a legitimate malfunction. Aside from Ecology and EV (perhaps we just shouldn't have events that start with E anymore), I'm not sure anything is a "scoring problem" as much as just a typical variance in the quality of the events themselves.
Since there seems to be some miscommunications(some of my own fault included), I will clear up the sentiments about Experimental Design.

First, you are correct in saying that the event was poorly run. Each team was given 4 pieces of lined paper and one sheet of graph paper to use for the writeup. This alone is not a problem, but the supervisor made each competitor write in pen, and the team running the event was very reluctant to give out extra paper. Science is not about perfection on the first try, it is about failing and trying again, and by removing our ability to erase mistakes and withholding an opportunity to start anew, they limited our ability to truly act as scientists, and I might go so far as to say they undermined the very principles and the mission of Science Olympiad. They expected us to follow the rubric from soinc.org, but did not provide an outline as mandated under rule 3.c., which is absolutely unfair to the teams that had not memorized the rubric before entering the competition. If I had realized this then, I absolutely would have appealed the event then and there. About 15 minutes into the event, the ES vaguely implied that he would take off points if some sections were out of order, but by then it was too late to change anything because of the reasons outlined above. Because of this, our variables section was on a separate piece of paper than the two sections surrounding it on either side, but I do not see how that could or should warrant such a low place, with all things considered.

Secondly, I exaggerated by telling my teammates that we had the exact same experiment as the top teams, but ours was indeed very similar(and I might say more scientific and closer to the given topic) to the high placing teams with whom I have spoken. The proctors provided 5 rubberbands, a 1-kilogram hanging mass, and a spring scale, with the topic of Materials Science. Many other teams were very thrown off by this, as it is indeed a very odd topic with which many people will not have experience. The interesting thing, however, is that we happened to practice a very similar experiment the night before, and had discussed how we would improve it with better materials, which just happened to be some of the ones provided at the competition. Our experiment was composed of attaching 3 rubberbands in parallel to the end of the spring scale, attaching the hanging mass to the other end of the rubber bands, and measuring the strain of the rubberbands as a proportion of the increase of their initial length, or (final length - initial length)/initial length. We then measured again with 4 rubberbands and then 5 rubberbands used in parallel, as our levels of the independent variable. If this is not on topic, then I, among with every other member of my team including the person we had discussed this topic with the night before who did a materials science summer program at a local university, must be seriously misunderstanding what materials science entails.

I have competed in Experimental Design several times at the Invitational, Regional, and State levels, and the worst place I have ever received is 8th. That is not to say that a worse score must be out of the picture, but I truly believe this was the best lab report I have ever written, and I think my partners would agree. It just doesn't make sense to me that our experiment would produce the worst place our school has received in this event as far back as the results on the wiki go(bar 2014, when some weird stuff was going on with Experimental), including last year, when the trio doing this event wrote an off-topic experiment.

While it would take a top 3 placing in this event for my team to make it to Nationals, I do not think this is out of the picture given the circumstances surrounding our lab report and our performance, but I accept that scores are more are less final and this would still be very unlikely(you can never guarantee a medal in anything), but this is not why I am angry about this event.

Let me say it one more time: I do not blame this event for holding us back from Nationals, but I also do not find it plausible that we could have actually deserved a 19th place in this event. Our coach has emailed the ES asking for feedback and maybe an explanation of our placing, but until he responds, I refuse to accept that we deserved 19th place. I know you cannot appeal an event or ask for the scores to be checked again off of "I thought I did better", and I honestly don't believe this will change at all in the scores, but that will not prevent me from voicing my concerns with this event.

In all honesty, I have completely lost faith in PA to ever run Experimental Design well. Out of 6 times competing in ED at an official(non-invitational) PA tournament, only two of them have been run well, the most recent being 2015 Regionals. On the contrary, all alumni-run invitationals that I've competed at have been run very well. If States were not in the middle of my college's spring quarter, I would already be in contact with PASO about running this event next year. And even if the board took another look and decided there was a problem, and removed this event from the final scores, we would still be 3 points away from Nationals, so please do not think that is why I am expressing my displeasure with this event.

My concerns with this event do not imply that any high placing team does not deserve their place, but that our placing is not accurate.

On a somewhat unrelated note: I talked to a friend whose mother is on the board, and he doesn't know when an updated scoresheet will be uploaded, so it could be a while before we get closure on EV.
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Re: Pennsylvania 2017

Post by EastStroudsburg13 »

I do appreciate everything you've mentioned. I definitely wanted to make sure that I know everyone competing is coming from a good place. It does seem as though the proliferation of high quality invitationals has raised the bar somewhat on expected quality of events, since while events were always expected to be run well, more teams are being shown how an exemplary event is run. This is not a bad thing; I think we all should be demanding excellence. However, sometimes certain events do get left behind, and now they stick out like even more of a sore thumb, because teams can identify it from a mile away just because they have so much data in their arsenal.
maxxxxx wrote: In all honesty, I have completely lost faith in PA to ever run Experimental Design well. Out of 6 times competing in ED at an official(non-invitational) PA tournament, only two of them have been run well, the most recent being 2015 Regionals. On the contrary, all alumni-run invitationals that I've competed at have been run very well. If States were not in the middle of my college's spring quarter, I would already be in contact with PASO about running this event next year. And even if the board took another look and decided there was a problem, and removed this event from the final scores, we would still be 3 points away from Nationals, so please do not think that is why I am expressing my displeasure with this event.
So that brings me to ED. In all honestly I wouldn't be surprised if this was an event that PA struggles with simply because there isn't an ED expert in the state. It was the last event to get a state supervisor, at least judging by the spreadsheet online, and at a point you just have to get someone willing to run the event, or drop the event entirely. Dropping an event is never ideal, but sometimes it results in cases like what we're discussing.

Now, as for the alumni-run invitationals, I expect PASO is very acutely aware of the success of these events. However, it's sometimes difficult to keep track of all the alumni and figure out ways to get people from lots of different places to come back for a specific weekend in spring that, as you said, may be in the middle of a class period for those in school. I wouldn't be surprised if they'll brainstorm ways to keep alumni in the loop a little bit better over the summer, when planning for tournaments is less immediately urgent.
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Re: Pennsylvania 2017

Post by what a beauty »

So Good luck for the teams going to Nationals. You guys accomplished amazing stuff. We were so close. So me and kendreaditya are from Eagle Vie
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Re: Pennsylvania 2017

Post by EastStroudsburg13 »

By the way, I am refraining on posting results until we get some sort of update on the scoresheet to reflect the place swaps that are listed on the website. If they're not updated by the Monday before nationals, I'm just going to post the results.
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Re: Pennsylvania 2017

Post by Ionizer »

EastStroudsburg13 wrote:By the way, I am refraining on posting results until we get some sort of update on the scoresheet to reflect the place swaps that are listed on the website. If they're not updated by the Monday before nationals, I'm just going to post the results.
Well, it looks like it wasn't updated.
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Re: Pennsylvania 2017

Post by EastStroudsburg13 »

Alright, well, since the scores have yet to be updated, here are the prediction results! The top half is listed for both divisions.

Division B
1. Anomaly - 39
2. maxxxxx - 32
3. kendreaditya - 32
4. EastStroudsburg13 - 31
5. 19sawickin - 30
6. OrigamiFlask - 30
7. Unome - 29
8. Ionizer - 28
9. Jonboyage - 27
10. RMA - 27
11. John Richardsim - 26

Anomaly was an anomaly (lol) in B division, blowing everyone else out of the water. They only missed one out of the top ten, and their picks of Hershey and Orefield at the end of the top ten really made a huge difference. Nobody picked the top 3 entirely correctly; while two placed Eagle View at 1st and four placed them at 4th, nobody had them 3rd. Congrats to Ionizer for being the only one who got Springhouse's score exactly correct. Also of note: my computer would have placed second with 33 points. This possibly confirms my suspicion that my computer is smarter than me.

Division C
1. Tom_MS - 40
2. finagle29 - 39
3. rs11 - 38
4. maxxxxx - 37
5. Unome - 37
6. hmcginny - 36
7. Goldenknight1 - 36
8. Techsam - 36
9. 19sawickin - 36
10. Lumosityfan - 35
11. allopathie - 34
12. Jonboyage - 34
13. RestingDoll - 34
14. Flyingfish - 34
15. jonpao523 - 34

Tom_MS did something quite remarkable, and predicted every single team in the top 10. Although only 3 were in the correct positions, enough of them were close that they were able to squeak out victory over finagle29, who predicted five of the top 10 exactly right. If they had replaced Central Bucks South with North Pocono, they'd have the 2-point victory. The maximum correct consecutive places at the top was 3, as finagle29, rs11, and maxxxxx all achieved this. However, all three had Conestoga at 4th, and no matter how unfortunate the scoring may have been, they still counted as 5th for predictions.

Also, nobody got the score right. The tiebreaker ended up being "who put the lowest number". JShap did correctly guess 23 medals for first place, so good job there!

And finally, what I consider the main prize for prediction superiority in Pennsylvania:

Combined
1. maxxxxx - 69
2. Unome - 66
3. 19sawickin - 66
4. EastStroudsburg13 - 64
5. rs11 - 61
6. Jonboyage - 61
7. Lumosityfan - 60
8. finagle29 - 60
9. Goldenknight1 - 56
10. Flyingfish - 55
11. Apple_Nut - 55
12. John Richardsim - 54
13. Ionizer - 54
14. Ckssv07 - 53
15. BDake - 53
16. ak12 - 51
17. RMA - 50
18. LittyWap - 41
19. Tom_MS - 40
20. Anomaly - 39

Luckily this year we had a champion who was actually from PA, as maxxxxx rode top 5 finishes in both divisions to finish first. Unome's infinite SO digestion capabilities landed him second, winning over 19sawickin on the combined first tiebreak. I came in at 4th, but my C division brought me down; despite picking 9 of the top 10 right, I messed up the order of the top 6 quite a bit. My computer was much more accurate in the top 8, but it also left off Perkiomen Valley at 10th, so that's kind of a wash there. Incidentally, my computer would have gotten 65 points in total predictions; again, I'm pretty sure it's smarter than me. rs11, Jonboyage, Lumosityfan, and finagle29 all finished in a tight pack, and then Goldenknight1 and Flyingfish snuck into the top 10, narrowly beating out Apple_Nut, Ionizer, and last year's champion John Richardsim.

Interestingly, Tom_MS and Anomaly, the champions of the two divisions, managed to sneak into the top 20 without predicting the other division; if they had just thrown in last year's top 10, Tom_MS would have placed second with 71 points and Anomaly would have placed first with 72 points, assuming they replaced Strath Haven with a team that didn't place top 10. So like I say, there is literally no risk in giving the other division a shot. ;)

I also did some analyses about if I had awarded points for near-misses: 11th, 12th, etc. I can post these in a later post so this one isn't longer than it already is.
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Re: Pennsylvania 2017

Post by Unome »

EastStroudsburg13 wrote:2. Unome - 66
Looks like Stoga in 5th plus the 8th-10th B teams threw me off a lot. Better than last year though.

Now I just have to do well on the National Prediction Contest...

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