Hardest Science Olympiad Event, in your opinion?

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Re: Hardest Science Olympiad Event, in your opinion?

Post by DarthBuilder »

PM2017 wrote:
JavaScriptCoder wrote:
Name wrote:
I meant MIT invite (is there a regionals?)
Difficulty of an event isn't necessary "better." All events are already hard and take immense effort to do well, especially against top tier teams. I personally view WIDI as probably the hardest event I've done (however I wasn't given time to practice). Given enough practice almost any event can become "easy." When I said "hard" I meant personally I feel inquiry is incredibly hard to consistently place in every time (For at least our team, our inquiry has been extremely inconsistent but that might be because we as a team are inconsistent overall lol). Just because it's harder to place consistently doesn't make it "better." While for me at least, while WIDI has been "hard," that doesn't mean I learned as much from it, as matsci, and I definitely view amount learned as how "good" the event is. But that can definitely vary. If someone puts in little effort into matsci and puts in alot to WIDI, they could learn more skills in WIDI, making WIDI the more beneficial event. How beneficial a event is really depends on the person and thier interests (although I really don't believe you can learn anything from game on lol)

Agreed, it really is a useful tool especially when I was younger. It gives you a small taste of coding imo.

I think the hardest event for me was probably Heredity (I think that’s what it was called for Div. B). I have never seen any of the material in my life but in my Bio class I was the one who knew most of the stuff on genetics.

I personally think Mission is the hardest in general. All that time put in it and imagining if something went wrong.

Opinions expressed on this site are not official; the only place for official rules changes and FAQs is soinc.org.

Well, :P I don't know about any invitationals within 1 hour of us (outside of Chicago, St. Louis, Indianapolis, all of Iowa, most of Kentucky, etc.) and have never been informed of any. I agree with the game on thing, use a real language like Java instead of making it a science based Scratch program that's hastily improvised and awards points for random features. I'm one of the top ranked coders not only at our school but also in our city on websites like Codewars, Hackerrank, and Leetcode, but i'm never. touching. that. thing. washes mouth

EDIT REASON: Gave away precise location, school, and other stuff. look away...
As much as everyone trashes Scratch, it's actually a really powerful tool for education. Really, the only difference between using Scratch and another language like Python or JS is the fact that you have to pay attention to syntax. Scratch eliminates the need to memorize the minutia, and makes it much easier to actually achieve the purpose of doing something like Game On -- to learn the way computer logic works, in its simplest form.

Also, you have to remember, SciOly events only have 50 minutes per test. I don't think you can develop an entire game within that timeframe using other languages, and even if you can, most people doing Game On are not going to be as amazing with computer science as you are.
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Re: Hardest Science Olympiad Event, in your opinion?

Post by MadCow2357 »

Kylari04 wrote: Mystery also seems pretty hard, the element of surprise makes it super easy to bomb the event. You could prep for hours, but if you show up at competition day and you build say a bridge a little too long, and it fails, you cost your team a lottttt of points.
Mystery Architecture is why Barrington MS lost to us (GMS) again this year. They got 28th, while my partner and placed 3rd.
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Re: Hardest Science Olympiad Event, in your opinion?

Post by LionfishFilet »

Personally, I think it's Wright Stuff(B),

Participating in wright stuff is not only a challenge to the mind and the hands but also a testament of dignity and endurance.

Working months upon months to dial in just the perfect setup, just for some dumb incidents to ruin all the effort.

Study events only feed on your mind, these planes feed on your soul.
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Re: Hardest Science Olympiad Event, in your opinion?

Post by PM2017 »

LionfishFilet wrote:Personally, I think it's Wright Stuff(B),

Participating in wright stuff is not only a challenge to the mind and the hands but also a testament of dignity and endurance.

Working months upon months to dial in just the perfect setup, just for some dumb incidents to ruin all the effort.

Study events only feed on your mind, these planes feed on your soul.
Yeah, aviation events can go wrong so quickly...
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Re: Hardest Science Olympiad Event, in your opinion?

Post by 19alekb »

I feel like that any event in which there's a lot of ways a test writer could interrupt the rules(as in what to put on the test) is a very hard event because you just have to learn everything.
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Re: Hardest Science Olympiad Event, in your opinion?

Post by Skink »

PM2017 wrote:Also, you have to remember, SciOly events only have 50 minutes per test. I don't think you can develop an entire game within that timeframe using other languages, and even if you can, most people doing Game On are not going to be as amazing with computer science as you are.
This is why Game On (or, even, Experimental, perhaps) might be better done outside with the finished product brought to competition for presentation and scoring rather than done there in only 50min. The sky becomes the limit, then, and it's not pay to win-ish like some engineering events.
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Re: Hardest Science Olympiad Event, in your opinion?

Post by Name »

Skink wrote:
PM2017 wrote:Also, you have to remember, SciOly events only have 50 minutes per test. I don't think you can develop an entire game within that timeframe using other languages, and even if you can, most people doing Game On are not going to be as amazing with computer science as you are.
This is why Game On (or, even, Experimental, perhaps) might be better done outside with the finished product brought to competition for presentation and scoring rather than done there in only 50min. The sky becomes the limit, then, and it's not pay to win-ish like some engineering events.
There's the possibility of teams giving each other already made designs, especially if there's multiple teams from a school. With build events you can't just give another team a build, but with a thing that can be online premade, teams will trade it and for alot.
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Re: Hardest Science Olympiad Event, in your opinion?

Post by radioactivated »

Robot Arm. Not only are robotics parts generally expensive, but you need to get someone on your team who has an above-beginner knowledge of robotics.
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Re: Hardest Science Olympiad Event, in your opinion?

Post by CMS AC »

All events are hard to win - the events that give you a better chance are the ones that people practice less and hate more, but those tend to be a lot more unpredictable and random.

Someone should make a spreadsheet for calculating what is the most random event in terms of standard deviation of events at 2017 nationals for B and C and rank them in order of how much they deviate from the team's total score.
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Re: Hardest Science Olympiad Event, in your opinion?

Post by Skink »

CMS AC wrote:Someone should make a spreadsheet for calculating what is the most random event in terms of standard deviation of events at 2017 nationals for B and C and rank them in order of how much they deviate from the team's total score.
Someone did an analysis along these lines semirecently. Search for somethingorother events predictive of team score.
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