Scioly.org

chalker wrote:

MoolaSmoola wrote:I really wish the keynote speaker knew what scioly was. and wasn't weird, outdated, and patronizing towards women and female people; I think we all knew that women could do science before he got up on that stage and blew our minds

I'm really quite surprised by this statement and wonder if you can elaborate? While we've come a long way in recent years, there is still an unfortunate disparity with regards to gender ratios in STEM fields compared to to the general population. Middle school aged girls in particular still face a lot of pressure and 'burn-out' of interest in STEM at too high of rates. Thus any opportunity to highlight positive female STEM-related role models should be applauded in my opinion, which is exactly what he was encouraged to do as part of his keynote.

I also don't know why you'd think Grant is 'outdated'. The final episode of Mythbusters first aired only 3 years ago, and the re-runs are still incredibly popular. For most of the current demographic age group of Science Olympiad participants, Mythbusters was one of the hit shows they watched over the past few years. This was evident by the reaction of the audience to him coming on stage - I can't recall a reaction like that to any other keynote speaker in recent history.

Finally, while we all eat / drink / breath Science Olympiad, it's relatively unknown to the general population. It's EXTREMELY rare for us to get a keynote speaker at a National Tournament that knows beforehand about SO. Anyone that we could get it likely to have limited broad base appeal since they probably are focused on a very specific field or domain.

Pastaman202 wrote:

chalker wrote:

MoolaSmoola wrote:I really wish the keynote speaker knew what scioly was. and wasn't weird, outdated, and patronizing towards women and female people; I think we all knew that women could do science before he got up on that stage and blew our minds

I'm really quite surprised by this statement and wonder if you can elaborate? While we've come a long way in recent years, there is still an unfortunate disparity with regards to gender ratios in STEM fields compared to to the general population. Middle school aged girls in particular still face a lot of pressure and 'burn-out' of interest in STEM at too high of rates. Thus any opportunity to highlight positive female STEM-related role models should be applauded in my opinion, which is exactly what he was encouraged to do as part of his keynote.

I also don't know why you'd think Grant is 'outdated'. The final episode of Mythbusters first aired only 3 years ago, and the re-runs are still incredibly popular. For most of the current demographic age group of Science Olympiad participants, Mythbusters was one of the hit shows they watched over the past few years. This was evident by the reaction of the audience to him coming on stage - I can't recall a reaction like that to any other keynote speaker in recent history.

Finally, while we all eat / drink / breath Science Olympiad, it's relatively unknown to the general population. It's EXTREMELY rare for us to get a keynote speaker at a National Tournament that knows beforehand about SO. Anyone that we could get it likely to have limited broad base appeal since they probably are focused on a very specific field or domain.

I don’t know about y’all but on our team, the girls collectively have wayyyyyy more medals than the guys, so our whole team was not fond of his speech. Also a celebrity for the keynote speaker could be Mark Rober. Idk if he’s like expensive or anything but he is pretty smart (worked for NASA) and does know about scioly (he went to nats 2016 I think).

MoolaSmoola wrote:[ Thank you for responding, I appreciated the chance to clarify my statements and I hope I did so adequately.

Pastaman202 wrote:

chalker wrote:

MoolaSmoola wrote:I really wish the keynote speaker knew what scioly was. and wasn't weird, outdated, and patronizing towards women and female people; I think we all knew that women could do science before he got up on that stage and blew our minds

I'm really quite surprised by this statement and wonder if you can elaborate? While we've come a long way in recent years, there is still an unfortunate disparity with regards to gender ratios in STEM fields compared to to the general population. Middle school aged girls in particular still face a lot of pressure and 'burn-out' of interest in STEM at too high of rates. Thus any opportunity to highlight positive female STEM-related role models should be applauded in my opinion, which is exactly what he was encouraged to do as part of his keynote.

I also don't know why you'd think Grant is 'outdated'. The final episode of Mythbusters first aired only 3 years ago, and the re-runs are still incredibly popular. For most of the current demographic age group of Science Olympiad participants, Mythbusters was one of the hit shows they watched over the past few years. This was evident by the reaction of the audience to him coming on stage - I can't recall a reaction like that to any other keynote speaker in recent history.

Finally, while we all eat / drink / breath Science Olympiad, it's relatively unknown to the general population. It's EXTREMELY rare for us to get a keynote speaker at a National Tournament that knows beforehand about SO. Anyone that we could get it likely to have limited broad base appeal since they probably are focused on a very specific field or domain.

I don’t know about y’all but on our team, the girls collectively have wayyyyyy more medals than the guys, so our whole team was not fond of his speech. Also a celebrity for the keynote speaker could be Mark Rober. Idk if he’s like expensive or anything but he is pretty smart (worked for NASA) and does know about scioly (he went to nats 2016 I think).

Unome wrote:

pepperonipi wrote:

RestingDoll wrote:
I think CS events can definitely be implemented without the use of computers. From my experience, exams for CS classes in college are entirely handwritten. For Scioly, the same thing applies; one written section devoted to data structures, another to asymptotics, another to coding problems (eg interview problems), another to algorithms, and another to discrete math, with each section containing 2 problems or something. Realistically, the only scenario that requires computers would be if there was a software engineering event, as the aforementioned topics could be learned simply with access to the internet.

The "What the Function" trial event at MIT (aka Python 3) was done using a pencil-and-paper test and I didn't notice any major problems. I think the event's only challenge I noticed was that it appeared some teams came into the event already having amazing Python skills, since many kids learn Python outside of the classroom on their own or in a class.

The other problem is the name