New York 2011

[paleonaps]

He just bothers me when he mumbles and no one understands him lol.
and he always say our name wrong. Spack. Like back. not that complicated.... =P

Maybe he thinks the "a" is an "o"?
Anyway, what do you think would happen if Long Island actually did separate from New York State? Like, became the 51st State in the union?

[gneissisnice]

He just bothers me when he mumbles and no one understands him lol.
and he always say our name wrong. Spack. Like back. not that complicated.... =P

Maybe he thinks the "a" is an "o"?
Anyway, what do you think would happen if Long Island actually did separate from New York State? Like, became the 51st State in the union?

I support that, but only if we take Manhattan too.

Not that there's anything wrong with you Upstate fellows, of course.

And Personasaurus, Gelinas (one of WM's jr. highs)tends to get butchered too. At Nationals, we were constantly referred to as "Paul j. Galinas". Ge-li-nas. "GE" almost always makes a soft G sound. It's not that hard.

[Flavorflav]

I do agree with quiz that the tests should be scored as accurately as possible. And sadly, this may mean changing teams that go to nationals. HOWEVER, looking at the evidence given over chat, it seems that the main argument quizbowl is claiming is that he wasn't sure how to number the test, but it appears the event coordinator gave perfectly clear instructions. Clarification could have been asked for but wasn't pursued to the necessary extent. I can't see this appeal holding up. It's a minor error, but it's still part of the event, and I'm sorry quizbowl, I know it sucks, but that's just the way it is. Be proud of how you did, you did great! Don't let it get you down and channel your disappointment into doing better next year.

First of all, I agree with you that the tests should be rescored. If not, the real winners might not be awarded what they deserve. However, I never mentioned on chat that I did in fact ask for a clarification. When responded to, the coordinator merely repeated what he stated and would not give more information. We asked again, but he answered another question instead of ours and we never had a chance to talk to him (the test was long enough - if we didn't start, we'd have not finished). If the proctor had been more clear, or more willing to explain it, this might have been avoided.

I don't think so. I talked to the event supervisor about it and it just doesn't seem possible that the numbering issue could have been a factor. He graded all of the tests himself, and the section with the numbering issue started with a fill-in. Apparently it was totally obvious when a team had misnumbered, because they wrote "d" instead of "nitrification" or something like that. He says that there's just no way that he could have misgraded that section. You can't ever rule out the possibility of an addition error, but I think we can rule out the numbering.

[gsheni]

A couple of interesting phenomena from States. Most notable of course is how close the top four were, but the whole cluster at the top is closer than it has been before. In the last three years there has always been a gap of at least 150 points somewhere in the top four places (between 3rd and 4th in 2008, 1st and 2nd in 2009, 2nd and 3rd in 2010). This year, the biggest gap in the whole scoresheet is only 78 points. The competition seems to be getting tighter. One other thing I noticed is the rise of Plattsburg. They were literally last place two years ago, and they got 14th this year. One to watch, perhaps - they are rising even faster than Spackenkill (or should I say Spockenkill?) did in the first years of this millennium.

I'm from Plattsburgh, did Protein Modeling, Mousetrap, Mag Lev, D Planet, Technical Problem Solving, Remote Sensing, so thank you, we are very pumped for next year states, and we now know that going to Nationals is not out of our reach as we once thought. We are especially very proud of our two freshmen and one junior winning Mission Possible and our two seniors winning Optics. We will be back to states next year!!

[personasaurus rex]

Can you confirm that the track was actually the right size? My former team apparently had an issue where their vehicle wouldn't fit on the track. The vehicle was 2-17/32" wide (I can confirm this, measured it myself), which should fit on the 2-9/16" wide track just fine, however, they said the vehicle did not fit onto the track (don't know much more as I wasn't there). I know the dimensions of the vehicle didn't leave much of a margin, but it still should have fit. But I wasn't there to see what they were struggling with either.

Uh no haha I don't do MagLev, so I wasn't even competing, I just watched it. However, whatever size that track is, it seemed to have worked wonders =P

[Flavorflav]

A couple of interesting phenomena from States. Most notable of course is how close the top four were, but the whole cluster at the top is closer than it has been before. In the last three years there has always been a gap of at least 150 points somewhere in the top four places (between 3rd and 4th in 2008, 1st and 2nd in 2009, 2nd and 3rd in 2010). This year, the biggest gap in the whole scoresheet is only 78 points. The competition seems to be getting tighter. One other thing I noticed is the rise of Plattsburg. They were literally last place two years ago, and they got 14th this year. One to watch, perhaps - they are rising even faster than Spackenkill (or should I say Spockenkill?) did in the first years of this millennium.

I'm from Plattsburgh, did Protein Modeling, Mousetrap, Mag Lev, D Planet, Technical Problem Solving, Remote Sensing, so thank you, we are very pumped for next year states, and we now know that going to Nationals is not out of our reach as we once thought. We are especially very proud of our two freshmen and one junior winning Mission Possible and our two seniors winning Optics. We will be back to states next year!!

Wow. Six events and only one tank? Impressive. Very few kids can handle five, in my experience.

[personasaurus rex]

Who else thought that the the test for Dynamic this year was annoyingly easy? It was the same way with earthquakes and volcanoes last year, and it was the same lady. The event was run well, but the test could have been harder.

[FueL]

I heard that the test had a lot of earth science questions, which does seem pretty easy considering you take earth science in eighth grade. :/

[smartkid222]

I heard from my teamates that it was pretty easy. I took the earthquake and volcanoes one last year and I remember it was very easy. What did everyone think of optics or TPS?

[personasaurus rex]

I heard from my teamates that it was pretty easy. I took the earthquake and volcanoes one last year and I remember it was very easy. What did everyone think of optics or TPS?

My teammates complained that optics was too easy also...

And FueL: It was. Most of the questions began with directions saying something along the lines of "Use your knowledge of earth science and the Earth Science Reference Tables to answer the following questions." Hmm... haha