BirdSO Invitational 2021

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builderguy135
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Re: BirdSO Invitational 2021

Post by builderguy135 »

And Science Quiz Bowl C results have been sent out!

The top 6 teams will be heading to the buzzer round, which is held over Discord on March 19th, 5 PM PT. In alphabetical order, here are the teams who have qualified:

C120 - Acton-Boxborough Regional High School - A (Massachusetts)
C026 - Chattahoochee High School - A (Georgia)
C062 - Langley High School - A (Virginia)
C075 - Mountain View High School - Piplup (California)
C101 - The Bronx School of Science - B (New York)
C107 - Troy High School - Chachalacas (California)


Congratulations to all teams that made the buzzer round! We will be reaching out to your coaches shortly with more information.
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Re: BirdSO Invitational 2021

Post by sciolyperson1 »

Test discussion is now open! Feel free to leave your feedback in a post below!
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Re: BirdSO Invitational 2021

Post by jimmy-bond »

Ngl Dynamic Planet and Water Quality made my brain feel like mush. That said, the writers did a real good job of emphasizing explanation over recitation across the board.
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Re: BirdSO Invitational 2021

Post by sciolyperson1 »

Hi all!

The live buzzer round for Science Quiz Bowl C will be occurring tonight at 5:00 PST. We will be streaming the buzzer round over Zoom so that students who are not competing can watch. The meeting can be accessed at this link: https://virginia.zoom.us/j/91610537877? ... RTbWJ0UT09. If it prompts for a password, the password is 535522.

The top six teams are:
C120 - Acton-Boxborough Regional High School - A (Massachusetts)
C026 - Chattahoochee High School - A (Georgia)
C062 - Langley High School - A (Virginia)
C075 - Mountain View High School - Piplup (California)
C101 - The Bronx School of Science - B (New York)
C107 - Troy High School - Chachalacas (California)

We will not hesitate to remove any participants who are behaving inappropriately. In order to maintain video and audio quality of the Zoom, we also ask that participants refrain from turning video on (we have disabled this, but just in case!).
Thank you!

Hope to see you there,
Your Science Quiz Bowl Buzzer Round Moderators
Sophia Jang & Jason Chang
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Re: BirdSO Invitational 2021

Post by YeagerTheCat »

Hey - does anyone have a link/channel for the awards stream ceremony this evening? (6pst, 9est)
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Re: BirdSO Invitational 2021

Post by sciolyperson1 »

Hi all!

We’re excited to bring to you the first annual BirdSO Awards Ceremony, premiering at 6 PM PT (9 PM ET)! We’ve put together an awards program, found here, for your students and parents who want to watch with us!

The awards ceremony link will be embedded and linked on the scilympiad main page, https://scilympiad.com/birdso. We will send a follow-up email when the link is up on the page!

In division B, medals will be awarded to the top 6 teams in each event and top 6 schools overall. In division C, medals will be awarded to the top 12 teams in each event and top 8 schools overall.

Scoring appeals due March 21st, 2021 11:59 PM PST, and must be submitted through the form linked here: bit.ly/birdsoappeals2021.

Tests, keys, and histograms released March 22nd, 2021 3:00 PM PST.

For any feedback, our general forms and event forms can be found here: bit.ly/birdsofeedback2021.

Sincerely,
Jason Chang
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Re: BirdSO Invitational 2021

Post by will0416 »

Codebusters

Hey everybody! Andrew and I wrote and supervised Code at BirdSO. One thing we tried to do was devalue the timed question slightly by bumping up other point values by 1.5x. We didn’t want to do any funky business with the individual questions and make anything unsolvable, but we did try to make the test long enough that there likely wouldn’t be any finishers.

Before I get into the statistics, please take a close look at this next part.

The wide majority of teams had out-of-browser time. This should not be happening on a Codebusters test. And yes, we can clearly differentiate between accidental 1 second mouse-slips and a 1 minute trip someone takes to Google search a quote, but the point remains that you bring suspicion upon yourself and your team by leaving the Scilympiad tab frequently or for long periods of time.

If you’re out of the browser for 20 minutes, what are you doing? If you leave the browser 100 times during the test, what are you doing?

Just to be clear, these values aren’t even the highest we saw.

Keep in mind that Scioly is not an individual effort. Don’t let a moment’s temptation be what brings embarrassment to your team and school. Event supervisors will see when you make dubious choices, even if they lack clear evidence for a DQ.

On a lighter note, let’s get into the two tests!

Div C was 28 questions (including the TQ). The scores were actually quite close near the top, which was surprising given that code usually has a couple runaway teams. Congrats to Mountain View Piplup for prevailing with a maximum score of 12619.
Screen Shot 2021-03-20 at 8.59.59 PM.png
Screen Shot 2021-03-20 at 8.59.59 PM.png (83.72 KiB) Viewed 5123 times
Screen Shot 2021-03-20 at 9.00.31 PM.png
Screen Shot 2021-03-20 at 9.00.31 PM.png (237.15 KiB) Viewed 5123 times
Only 2 teams managed to solve the first Baconian (congrats if that applies to you!). If you were curious, the single-digit prime numbers (2, 3, 5, 7) mapped to A, and the other single digit numbers mapped to B.

Even more surprising was that only 1 team solved the Hill cipher at the end of the test! I’ll chalk this up to time management issues more than anything else, but there were also quite a lot of wrong answers. Remember that the rules state that the event supervisor will give you the decryption matrix. I said this pretty clearly in the prompt, but there were still many teams that tried to encode with a decryption matrix.

Div B was of a similar length (27 questions). Overall, teams fared a bit worse (and the scatterplot is kinda yucky), but that makes sense since Code is a trial event. Kennedy Purple Gallinule managed to eke out the victory here, with a maximum score of 10995. Congrats!
Screen Shot 2021-03-20 at 9.03.30 PM.png
Screen Shot 2021-03-20 at 9.03.30 PM.png (275.54 KiB) Viewed 5123 times
For some reason, the div B histogram isn't uploading directly to here, but you can view here.

To me, the most interesting (but understandable) question statistics arose from the Xenocrypts. Only 2 teams solved the first, and nobody got the second. Makes sense given that many people start learning foreign languages in middle school (or even high school).

Overall, teams did really well! Keep on practicing, and remember to represent your school with pride and integrity.
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Re: BirdSO Invitational 2021

Post by sophisSyo »

Hey guys!
We are so honored we got to write for Ornithology for BirdSO, and we hope that you guys had as much fun taking our test as we did writing it. We were happy to see that although no one completed exams (as intended), there was a pretty normal distribution of scores across the board for Division C. Below are some statistics for both the Division B and Division C Ornithology exams. And a special congratulations to the first place team in Division B, the Jeffrey Trail Jets, for their impressive score of 115.2/153, and to the first place team in Division C, the Troy Chachalacas, for their impressive score of 139.24/234!!
Ornithology B - BirdSO.png
Ornithology B - BirdSO.png (161.99 KiB) Viewed 5063 times
Mean: 44.61
Median: 45.36
Max: Std. Dev.: 24.08
Ornithology C - BirdSO.png
Ornithology C - BirdSO.png (160.62 KiB) Viewed 5063 times
Mean: 63.53
Median: 64.22
Std. Dev.: 31.41

Save for some exams that were not taken for an adequate amount of time, we were also very happy to see that the majority of teams did not score as low as we have noticed with other competitions this year, and that teams were sufficiently differentiated (in fact, no ties!!). We really enjoyed reading some of your responses – humorous and well-thought-out alike – and were impressed by some spot-on responses to our more difficult questions. A special shoutout to teams that got some of the harder audio calls correct in the last station – several calls were correctly identified by fewer than 5-10 teams.
We also really appreciate your feedback (so much of it yay!!) and all of us are keeping your advice in mind for future exams we write (some advice including more stations with fewer questions per station, easier IDs, etc).
Good job to all teams who competed!! We hope you had some fun on this exam, and good luck with the rest of your season!!
Cheep cheep <3 ,
Your Ornithology ESes,
Alisa, Bhavna, and Sophia

___________________________
CONTACT:
Alisa: axolotl#5248 (Discord), [email protected]
Bhavna: american woodglock#8685 (Discord), [email protected]
Sophia: scacacia#0319 (Discord), [email protected]
Last edited by sophisSyo on March 20th, 2021, 8:25 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: BirdSO Invitational 2021

Post by sciolyperson1 »

Hello everyone,
Froggie (Miyu) and I were the event supervisors for Write It CAD It B/C! Run with Onshape, we aimed to have an even score distribution with as less ties as possible.

First off, congrats to South Brunswick and Jeffrey Trail for winning the event in their respective divisions!

Statistics:

Division B:
Mean: 148.3636364
Median: 130
Range: 348
Min: 0
Max: 348
Max Possible: 395

Image
Image

Division C:
Mean: 106.04
Median: 95.5
Range: 306
Min: 3
Max: 309
Max Possible: 550
Image
Image

Across all teams that participated, we had one team that was tiered due to drawing a subsection of their model. Numerous teams were DQed due to cheating, and we hope to minimize this in the future.

Division B Comments: The model was made to be finishable for teams that had practiced before - with around 15-20 pieces, some teams finished, but the top teams were still separated by the accuracy of the pieces. Many pieces were similar but easily distinguishable - a circular ring, circular ring cut in half, and a circular ring cut in half (but the other way) were easily distinguished by teams that practiced, but could not be easily distinguished by teams that were inexperienced.


Division C Comments: This model had some pieces that were easier to describe and position--for example, a majority of teams were able to place the large cylinder in the middle of the rectangle. Others were harder, such as the small teardrop-shaped cylinders. One piece of advice I have for teams is to put all the pieces on the design, whether you know where the pieces go or not. As with in-person Write It Do It tests, teams receive points for just using the pieces, which can be beneficial. Many of the top teams used all or most of their pieces.

If you have any feedback, please fill out our feedback form here!

Thanks for competing with us!
Jason | Sciolyperson1 | JC#4757
Miyu | Froggie | Froggie#8805
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Re: BirdSO Invitational 2021

Post by ArchdragoonKaela »

Hi everyone!

The48thYoshi (Greycen) and I had the honor of being Event Supervisors for Heredity.

First of all, congrats to everyone who competed in this event! It is not often that event supervisors get to have so many teams take their test! Overall, we wrote the Heredity test intending for teams to not finish, with a total of 80 content questions (and one bonus), with most questions being free response. Knowing that it is hard to prevent cheating in an online environment, we wrote questions that were more application-based than recall-based to really distinguish the top teams. Our test ended up totaling 200 possible points.

Section 1: This section was not themed and tested general topics regarding cell division, karyotypes, pedigrees, DNA replication, transcription, translation, and a little bit of biotech. Many teams missed Question 1, which is a karyotype of a cancer cell. No teams correctly answered Question 39, which asked for the first codons to be discovered (UUU, then AAA, CCC, and GGG).

Section 2 (Pokemon-themed!): This section was very inheritance-heavy, with all questions being application-based. We chose a Pokemon theme to hopefully make it fun for test takers and force students to utilize critical thinking to answer the questions in this section. Many inheritance problems required attentive reading for all the information. Most questions were monohybrid, dihybrid, and trihybrid crosses, but not all of those crosses followed a Mendelian pattern of inheritance. No team was awarded full points on Question 67, which was a math problem that tested epistasis. Also, some of the responses to the bonus question at the end really made our day!

We wanted to expose competitors to more in-depth genetics concepts for the various topics mentioned in the rules, and we understand some of the topics may have felt unfamiliar because of that. Hopefully, you were able to gain some good exposure from our test!

If you have any feedback for our test, fill out this form! We would appreciate any feedback, as it helps us improve future tests! If you want to contact us directly, our contact information can also be found in the form.

Statistics and Graphs:
Mean: 64.3 (32.2%)
Median: 63.0 (31.5%)
Standard Deviation: 36.9

Image

Image


Congrats to Jeffrey Trail Middle School on their first-place finish!


Final Thoughts:
It was an amazing experience to supervise an event at BirdSO! We had a blast supervising and being able to communicate so easily with the BirdSO team!

Huge thanks to the tournament directors for putting together such a well-run tournament! It is no easy feat to put together and run an invitational of this size and caliber.

We also want to thank F1shy and Zsg11 for reviewing our test! This event would not have run so smoothly without your feedback!

Thank you for competing at BirdSO!
Kayla and Greycen
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