Scioly.org Monthly Event Challenges: May 2021

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Scioly.org Monthly Event Challenges: May 2021

Post by sciolyperson1 »

We are announcing Scioly.org's ninth Scioly.org Monthly Event Challenges, running from Sunday, May 23rd to Sunday, June 6th, opening and closing at the same time: 3:00 PM ET / 12:00 PM PT.

We will be running 16 total events! You will need to register in advance in order to participate.

The events that will be run, as well as the modifications, are here. The selection includes some of our favorite standard events such as Sounds of Music, along with a few fun events, such as HugoTroop and Jaspattack's Edit Where Edit Is Due!

The SMEC Scilympiad page can be found here.

Timeline: All times on days will be 3:00 PM ET / 12:00 PM PT.
  • May 15 - Registration opens! Registration is through Google Forms, and you will login through Scilympiad later (instructions will be provided)
  • May 21 - Registration for SMEC closes. We will not be accepting late registrations for Scilympiad.
  • May 22 - Emails will be sent out containing instructions for Scilympiad logins.
  • May 23 - Event starts!
  • June 6 - Event ends!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Registration has started!
Link: https://forms.gle/uUuEFsmWCYEXMW3K9
----------------------------------------------------------------------------



SMEC FAQs
  • May students in college compete?
    Yes. Students must be 13 years of age or older, and must be in middle school, high school or college. Post-collegiate students MAY compete. Only participants located in the United States may register for this event.
  • Will there be prizes?
    As of the date of this posting, there will not be any prizes for this month's Scioly.org Monthly Event Challenges.
  • What do I do if I have trouble accessing the Scilympiad system, before or during my test?
    Contact sciolyperson1 via message on the Forums or by email. If you have questions about the event as a whole, contact bernard on Forums or by email.
  • What events will be held in future SMECs?
    Future SMECs will include an event rotation consisting of present and past events. Stay tuned to find out!
If you want to volunteer to write any event, feel free to reach out!
  • Do I have to participate in Science Olympiad at my own school/homeschool in order to participate in this event?
    No! The only requirement is a Scioly.org account.
Disclaimer: By signing up, you are confirming that you are of 13 years of age or older. We reserve the right to remove underage participants from the event. Moreover, by signing up, your personal information such as your Username, School, and state may be shared with members beyond the Scioly.org staff team for the purposes of scoring and running the event. Your username, school, state, and grade may also be shared to the public for results. We reserve the right to disqualify any participant due to suspicion of ineligibility including, but not limited to age restrictions or suspicion of academic dishonesty. Data submitted through Scilympiad will be stored through Scilympiad. Only participants located in the United States may register for this event.
Last edited by sciolyperson1 on May 16th, 2021, 11:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Scioly.org Monthly Event Challenges: May 2021

Post by sciolyperson1 »

HI all,

The SMEC dates have been changed from May 22 - June 5th to May 23 - June 6th, to accomodate for nationals on the 22nd. No other dates, such as signups, will be changed.
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Re: Scioly.org Monthly Event Challenges: May 2021

Post by builderguy135 »

Event Feedback
For each event, I'll be ranking it based on difficulty (with higher being more difficult), length (with higher being longer), and overall (with higher being better). Difficulty and length are more of my personal opinions about the event, and they don't necessarily reflect the overall quality of the test - I prefer long and difficult tests, but that does not mean that easier and shorter tests cannot be good quality.

Next, I'd like to note that I only seriously took 6 of these tests - I obviously don't have any experience with most events on the event slate. Thus, I'll be including these events at the bottom, and I won't be rating them, as I can't reliably tell the difficulty and quality of the test.

With that being said, here are my event reviews:

Circuit Lab:
Difficulty: 2, Length: 8, Overall: 4
I used this test to study/prepare for the AP Physics tests. While I obviously don't have a lot of circuit knowledge, I could tell that many questions were somewhat unoriginal, and the questions were all surface-level in terms of the depth of understanding needed to answer the questions correctly. An extremely large portion was a history portion (name the scientist, etc.), and two questions that stood out to me were questions near the end of this portion. These questions asked about your (the competitor's) opinion about which scientist from a list was the most influential based off of their developments in a certain area, and to include specific examples to back up your reasoning. Not only were these questions extremely overweighted (10 points), but they were also completely subjective, which is not what you want in a good test. Questions must be clear and to the point. Asking the competitor to write a paragraph about history in a science exam isn't what we want to be doing. I would personally change this test by making point values more even (no 1 and 50 point questions in the same test please!) and remove all subjectivity from questions to make sure they are clear. This test has a lot of potential, but the glaring issues in point values and unclear questions make the test somewhat frustrating to take.

Codebusters:
Difficulty: 5, Length: 8, Overall: 6
I wrote the bot that made this test, so obviously I'm slightly biased, but I thought this test was slightly above average. The lack of aristocrats, coupled with the easy patristocrats, are what made me give this test a 6/10. I believe this test had 4 aristocrats and 3 patristocrats - last time I checked, this is not a good balance. There should be at least double, if not triple the amount of aristocrats than patristocrats. For a one-person test, 3 patristocrats are far too many, since the test Codebuilder generates are made for three people at a national level. Overall, I would want make the question balance better (more aristocrats, less patristocrats), and much shorter (15 questions are more reasonable).

Edit: It turns out that the person who generated the test used preset 1, which is meant as a debugging preset…

Cybersecurity:
Difficulty: 3, Length: 6, Overall: 6
I thought this test was great in terms of topics covered, although some of the question quality could do some work. With this test being open-internet, I was expecting many questions to be more difficult, and I thought this test was better suited for non-open-internet than open-internet. In regards to the length, i only put at a 6, despite it being the longest SMEC test in terms of # of questions - there were many questions that were rote memorization, which took no more than a few seconds. One other suggestion I'd make is to make the questions more clear; there were some questions that didn't make any sense/were incorrect. With that being said, I do appreciate that the test covered almost every topic in-depth, and it is clear that the exam author put a lot of effort into writing the test.

Felinology:
Difficulty: 7, Length: 5, Overall: 8
Great test. I don't regularly do bio ID events, but I thought the question quality was great, requiring more than a simple Google search. Questions were difficult even for an open-internet exam.

Sounds of Music:
Difficulty: 8, Length: 9, Overall: 9
This test was easily my favorite out of all of the tests I took this month. The test was divided up into topics, with question difficulty increasing towards the end of the topic, which gave an extremely good spread of easy/medium/hard questions. Having 100 questions, some with several parts, I obviously wasn't able to finish, but I was able to take a look at the entire test when guessing all of the multiple choice questions in the remaining few minutes. Almost all of the questions were in-depth; there were some questions that were just "plug-and-chug", but most required a deep knowledge of the topic. The music theory section was one part that stood out to me - it was clear that the exam author was very knowledgeable about the theory. Questions were weighted very well, although I'd argue that some were slightly overrated - some 4 or 5 point questions could have been reduced down 1-2 points, and similarly, some questions could have been worth slightly more. With that being said, this was a great test, and it's definitely a great resource for competitors when the event rotates back in.

Write It CAD It:
Difficulty: 8, Length: 9, Overall: 6
First of all, I'd like to thank Skythee/kh.aotic for being a great WICI partner! While this was the first time I've done WICI, I appreciated the last minute cram session and advice from JC, so hopefully we didn't do that poorly. In regards to the test, I found it very difficult. Obviously, it was impossible to finish, but one suggestion I'd make is to increase the amount of "easy" pieces, which would make a better distribution of scores. With that being said, this event was fun, and the instructions were very clear, which is why I gave it a 6/10.
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Re: Scioly.org Monthly Event Challenges: May 2021

Post by kellyjelly »

Hello, so I was checking things on Scioly.org and have just found out about this monthly event challenge. I noticed that the event challenge for May has ended. Is there going to be one again soon? Specifically talking about an event challenge for June.
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Re: Scioly.org Monthly Event Challenges: May 2021

Post by sciolyperson1 »

kellyjelly wrote: June 8th, 2021, 1:40 pm Hello, so I was checking things on Scioly.org and have just found out about this monthly event challenge. I noticed that the event challenge for May has ended. Is there going to be one again soon? Specifically talking about an event challenge for June.
Hi Kelly,

I can confirm that SMEC will not run for June.
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Re: Scioly.org Monthly Event Challenges: May 2021

Post by freed2003 »

builderguy135 wrote: June 6th, 2021, 1:47 pm Event Feedback
For each event, I'll be ranking it based on difficulty (with higher being more difficult), length (with higher being longer), and overall (with higher being better). Difficulty and length are more of my personal opinions about the event, and they don't necessarily reflect the overall quality of the test - I prefer long and difficult tests, but that does not mean that easier and shorter tests cannot be good quality.

Next, I'd like to note that I only seriously took 6 of these tests - I obviously don't have any experience with most events on the event slate. Thus, I'll be including these events at the bottom, and I won't be rating them, as I can't reliably tell the difficulty and quality of the test.

With that being said, here are my event reviews:

Circuit Lab:
Difficulty: 2, Length: 8, Overall: 4
I used this test to study/prepare for the AP Physics tests. While I obviously don't have a lot of circuit knowledge, I could tell that many questions were somewhat unoriginal, and the questions were all surface-level in terms of the depth of understanding needed to answer the questions correctly. An extremely large portion was a history portion (name the scientist, etc.), and two questions that stood out to me were questions near the end of this portion. These questions asked about your (the competitor's) opinion about which scientist from a list was the most influential based off of their developments in a certain area, and to include specific examples to back up your reasoning. Not only were these questions extremely overweighted (10 points), but they were also completely subjective, which is not what you want in a good test. Questions must be clear and to the point. Asking the competitor to write a paragraph about history in a science exam isn't what we want to be doing. I would personally change this test by making point values more even (no 1 and 50 point questions in the same test please!) and remove all subjectivity from questions to make sure they are clear. This test has a lot of potential, but the glaring issues in point values and unclear questions make the test somewhat frustrating to take.

Codebusters:
Difficulty: 5, Length: 8, Overall: 6
I wrote the bot that made this test, so obviously I'm slightly biased, but I thought this test was slightly above average. The lack of aristocrats, coupled with the easy patristocrats, are what made me give this test a 6/10. I believe this test had 4 aristocrats and 3 patristocrats - last time I checked, this is not a good balance. There should be at least double, if not triple the amount of aristocrats than patristocrats. For a one-person test, 3 patristocrats are far too many, since the test Codebuilder generates are made for three people at a national level. Overall, I would want make the question balance better (more aristocrats, less patristocrats), and much shorter (15 questions are more reasonable).

Edit: It turns out that the person who generated the test used preset 1, which is meant as a debugging preset…

Cybersecurity:
Difficulty: 3, Length: 6, Overall: 6
I thought this test was great in terms of topics covered, although some of the question quality could do some work. With this test being open-internet, I was expecting many questions to be more difficult, and I thought this test was better suited for non-open-internet than open-internet. In regards to the length, i only put at a 6, despite it being the longest SMEC test in terms of # of questions - there were many questions that were rote memorization, which took no more than a few seconds. One other suggestion I'd make is to make the questions more clear; there were some questions that didn't make any sense/were incorrect. With that being said, I do appreciate that the test covered almost every topic in-depth, and it is clear that the exam author put a lot of effort into writing the test.

Felinology:
Difficulty: 7, Length: 5, Overall: 8
Great test. I don't regularly do bio ID events, but I thought the question quality was great, requiring more than a simple Google search. Questions were difficult even for an open-internet exam.

Sounds of Music:
Difficulty: 8, Length: 9, Overall: 9
This test was easily my favorite out of all of the tests I took this month. The test was divided up into topics, with question difficulty increasing towards the end of the topic, which gave an extremely good spread of easy/medium/hard questions. Having 100 questions, some with several parts, I obviously wasn't able to finish, but I was able to take a look at the entire test when guessing all of the multiple choice questions in the remaining few minutes. Almost all of the questions were in-depth; there were some questions that were just "plug-and-chug", but most required a deep knowledge of the topic. The music theory section was one part that stood out to me - it was clear that the exam author was very knowledgeable about the theory. Questions were weighted very well, although I'd argue that some were slightly overrated - some 4 or 5 point questions could have been reduced down 1-2 points, and similarly, some questions could have been worth slightly more. With that being said, this was a great test, and it's definitely a great resource for competitors when the event rotates back in.

Write It CAD It:
Difficulty: 8, Length: 9, Overall: 6
First of all, I'd like to thank Skythee/kh.aotic for being a great WICI partner! While this was the first time I've done WICI, I appreciated the last minute cram session and advice from JC, so hopefully we didn't do that poorly. In regards to the test, I found it very difficult. Obviously, it was impossible to finish, but one suggestion I'd make is to increase the amount of "easy" pieces, which would make a better distribution of scores. With that being said, this event was fun, and the instructions were very clear, which is why I gave it a 6/10.
Noted! The test was written with beginners in mind (and not cracked people like you heh_, hence the easy problems plus open internet. The goal of the test was more to introduce a variety of topics and basics to the test taker, so the many shallow questions were actually intended. Question quality and clarity is definitely something that I agree can be improved, so I'll make sure to work on that in the future.
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Cybersecurity 3/ /2/1
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Re: Scioly.org Monthly Event Challenges: May 2021

Post by awesomeaidan123 »

Hello, I noticed that the May challenge has ended and there won't be any in June, do you possibly know when the next monthly event will be?
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Re: Scioly.org Monthly Event Challenges: May 2021

Post by sciolyperson1 »

awesomeaidan123 wrote: June 17th, 2021, 9:50 am Hello, I noticed that the May challenge has ended and there won't be any in June, do you possibly know when the next monthly event will be?
Hi Aidan!

The summer months (June, July, August) will be reserved for SSSS. SMEC may or may not come back this September - I'll have to wait and see to gauge interest and availability. Thanks for your interest!
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Re: Scioly.org Monthly Event Challenges: May 2021

Post by awesomeaidan123 »

Hello,
That sounds great! I'm excited to do anything Science Olympiad related, it's very fun!
Best, Aidan
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