MIT Invitational 2018

[Unome]

- Materials Science... ugh. It was fine on difficulty and all, but it was very heavy on national topics (like IR spectroscopy and creep) even though MIT explicitly stated that events would be limited to regional rules.

MIT posted on the website that they would be following nationals rules. I also believe (not sure) that they sent out email to the coaches warning them that it would include nationals material.

There was definitely no email, I just searched. Now that I look, I don't see the regional rules thing on the website anymore, though I know for sure it was there the last three years, and I think I saw it earlier this year.

[ScottMaurer19]

- Materials Science... ugh. It was fine on difficulty and all, but it was very heavy on national topics (like IR spectroscopy and creep) even though MIT explicitly stated that events would be limited to regional rules.

MIT posted on the website that they would be following nationals rules. I also believe (not sure) that they sent out email to the coaches warning them that it would include nationals material.

There was definitely no email, I just searched. Now that I look, I don't see the regional rules thing on the website anymore, though I know for sure it was there the last three years, and I think I saw it earlier this year.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pnrkcx ... sp=sharing

They definitely posted it. Here is a screen-shot. It was not in the most conspicuous place, but it was there.

[JonB]

Speaking of the opening ceremony...the admissions guy who stalled by telling stories. That was fairly entertaining. XD

Not sure I agree with that- for obvious reasons. He actually left a very bad impression on some of our competitors and parents that were there. One joke about Florida last year was funny. Asking why Florida teams decided to come back this year pushed the line but still had some humor, but telling Florida teams "you did your best" (I can't remember if that is an exact quote but it's very close) crossed the line (in my opinion). Some would say that we should "toughen up" but there is always a limit when you are the singling out groups of students who also work exceptionally hard. Some would say "he was completely kidding" but not all students read humor the same way.

[nicholasmaurer]

- Materials Science... ugh. It was fine on difficulty and all, but it was very heavy on national topics (like IR spectroscopy and creep) even though MIT explicitly stated that events would be limited to regional rules.

MIT posted on the website that they would be following nationals rules. I also believe (not sure) that they sent out email to the coaches warning them that it would include nationals material.

There was definitely no email, I just searched. Now that I look, I don't see the regional rules thing on the website anymore, though I know for sure it was there the last three years, and I think I saw it earlier this year.

Their intent to run national's rules was announced to coaches via email in advance, although it could've been made much clearer. There WAS a typo buried on their website that said regional's rules that was only fixed a couple of weeks ago.

[Unome]

MIT posted on the website that they would be following nationals rules. I also believe (not sure) that they sent out email to the coaches warning them that it would include nationals material.

There was definitely no email, I just searched. Now that I look, I don't see the regional rules thing on the website anymore, though I know for sure it was there the last three years, and I think I saw it earlier this year.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pnrkcx ... sp=sharing

They definitely posted it. Here is a screen-shot. It was not in the most conspicuous place, but it was there.

Yeah, just found it. I must have skimmed that part and assumed it would be the same as in previous years. My fault for the inaccurate information then...

Their intent to run national's rules was announced to coaches via email in advance. There WAS a typo buried on their website that said regional's rules that was only fixed a couple of weeks ago.

That would explain it - I must have seen the original but never seen the update. Do you remember when the email was sent out? I've received every email after the schedule release in December, and so far haven't found anything.

[nicholasmaurer]

Their intent to run national's rules was announced to coaches via email in advance. There WAS a typo buried on their website that said regional's rules that was only fixed a couple of weeks ago.

That would explain it - I must have seen the original but never seen the update. Do you remember when the email was sent out? I've received every email after the schedule release in December, and so far haven't found anything.

I don't believe it was in the text of the email itself, I think it was in a link to some form or information page.

[Unome]

Their intent to run national's rules was announced to coaches via email in advance. There WAS a typo buried on their website that said regional's rules that was only fixed a couple of weeks ago.

That would explain it - I must have seen the original but never seen the update. Do you remember when the email was sent out? I've received every email after the schedule release in December, and so far haven't found anything.

I don't believe it was in the text of the email itself, I think it was in a link to some form or information page.

Hm... I don't see any links to the policies and rules page anywhere. It definitely could have been more clear, especially since it was initially regional rules.

[nicholasmaurer]

That would explain it - I must have seen the original but never seen the update. Do you remember when the email was sent out? I've received every email after the schedule release in December, and so far haven't found anything.

I don't believe it was in the text of the email itself, I think it was in a link to some form or information page.

Hm... I don't see any links to the policies and rules page anywhere. It definitely could have been more clear, especially since it was initially regional rules.

Agreed - it should have been made much more clear.

[Unome]

On a different note - I'd like to comment on the fact that MIT has made their tournament so well-run that we can nitpick about every minor problem without writing pages of stuff. It's nice to see that kind of advancement in quality.

[birdylayaduck08]

I thought MIT had mostly the same quality as last year, with a few exceptions. They should have clarified the level they would use; I thought it was regionals-level as well, but that's an easy fix for next year. I also thought this year was much more competitive than previous years, but that's definitely something good for the amount of distance we flew to get here.

Picture This (4): Pretty good. Proctors were nice with letting us go early since one of my partners had WIDI the same time slot. I always do this event for fun and it was a great time. The words were good too; not too difficult or easy, and doesn't include stuff like 'pineapple' (from last year)

Herpetology (4): The test was pretty difficult but definitely good. I thought a few things were a bit obscure, though we get a whole binder for the event so it's fine. Pretty long and fast paced; if you want to finish the station, it requires both partners and having things memorized, instead of flipping through the binder a ton. Overall a great test and will help our binder a lot.

Dynamic Planet (2): Also a great test, I had a lot of fun taking it. Was long (~26 pages), but I really liked the long paragraphs that made you think rather than regurgitate information. I just wish we had more time to do it, instead of blowing through and answering everything we knew immediately for times sake. Nonetheless it was my favorite event to do and I'll look forward to going through the test again. This is random but the desks were really small and there were so many pages in the test and answer sheet, so half our things were sprawled on the ground a lot of the time (we didn't have time to care to clean it up). It's picky to mention but it would be great to have more room next year

Game On (55): I want to start out with saying it isn't fair to blame the proctors and ES for how poorly it was run. They made a good effort with the disastrous situation they had, with running Scratch on Linux (which makes games crash), having a ton of teams from the first few time slots having to come back and redo their game, saving problems, having to pull random people who had no experience with the event to grade, etc. The prompt was great and a nice one to do, but I don't understand how teams can be tiered for 'not understanding two player racing' when it isn't expanded on in the rules manual or anywhere that I know of. I personally thought this was the event that I did the best on, regardless of our placing, and MIT needs to improve on grading, etc., next year. Having to pull random people who know nothing about game on to grade is bad, and extremely biased with so many different graders. Finding rooms, grading so many games, etc. can be difficult, which I understand, but what happened is something that is way below the quality of MIT, and it feels almost robbed to spend so much time on a game to have it graded by someone who doesn't know what's going on.