Sierra Vista Invitational (B)

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Re: Sierra Vista Invitational (B)

Post by Umaroth »

Godspeed wrote: February 11th, 2021, 5:42 pm Hey everyone!

Sierra Vista Invitational awards are just around the corner so I wanted to put together a prediction contest.
https://forms.gle/8NNzHa1N4EroKX1j9
School Prediction rules: Submit once. Vote for one school at most once and no more. You will get 5 points for predicting a school on the dot, 3 points for 1 off, 2 points for 2 off, 1 point for 3 off, and none for more than 3 off.

Good Luck!
Hey a prediction contest I can win >:))
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Re: Sierra Vista Invitational (B)

Post by RobertYL »

Event Supervisor Review

Hi everyone! My name is Robert Lee and I am the co-ES for Reach for the Stars (with April Cheng, Gwennie Liu, and Pranit Mohnot) and the co-ES for Machines (with Andrew Chen and Grace Shao) for the Sierra Vista Invitational. I would like to thank and congratulate all of the teams who competed last weekend. SVSO is one of the largest division B invitationals this season and I am honored to contribute to this wonderful event. I hope all competitors can make this experience a learning one and achieve greater heights in the upcoming regional, state, and national tournaments.

Reach for the Stars

Statistics:
Mean: 83.8 (32.7%)
Median: 70.5 (27.5%)
St. Dev.: 41.5
Max: 198 (77.3%)

Graphs:
Reach_for_the_Stars_B-Distributions.png
Reach_for_the_Stars_B-Distributions.png (41.96 KiB) Viewed 3939 times
More in-depth statistics and graphs pertaining to sections and specific questions can be found at this link.

Thoughts:
Points were well distributed across the entire range with stronger teams pulling well ahead. Out of the three sections, a team's section B (Constellations, DSOs, and Stars) score most closely correlated with their ranking. As this event is called Reach for the Stars, we wanted to place an emphasis on being able to identify and recall information on each of the objects and constellations listed in the rules. Taking the time to practice identifying constellations, objects, and stars is valuable investment towards performing well in this event. Around half of the teams scored a significant amount of points in section C. I would recommend teams spending some time practicing the basic formulas and relationships that often show up on RFTS tests (parallax, Stefan-Boltzmann, distance modulus, angular diameter, etc.), since there were many points up for grabs here. Congratulations to the first and second place teams for their excellent performance!

Thank you to April, Gwennie, and Pranit for writing such an amazing test and making SVSO so much fun!

Test Folder:
The exam and all other material can be found in this folder.

Machines

Statistics:
Mean: 48.7 (32.5%)
Median: 44 (29.3%)
St. Dev.: 25.9
Max: 120 (80.0%)

Graphs:
Machines_B-Distributions.png
Machines_B-Distributions.png (42.47 KiB) Viewed 3939 times
More in-depth statistics and graphs pertaining to sections and specific questions can be found at this link.

Thoughts:
Overall, points were well distributed across the range with the top teams scoring phenomenally. The distribution of section A looks super weird with three non-normal distributions. No idea what happened there, but a few more easier questions in section A could have better differentiated between lower scoring teams. For section B, teams scored well on question B1 and around half of the teams made an external submission for B2. I understand were some issues with external submission; however, many of them could have been resolved if teams carefully read through all of the directions at the start of the test. Also, with this question, some teams misinterpreted what I was asking for. Please let me know if anything in the test is confusing and/or could be better worded, so I can improve future tests. I think for future tests, a greater number of shorter FRQs will provide better diversity of questions for teams to attempt.

Many thanks to Andrew and Grace for writing a big part of the test and supervising with me. Also, kudos to Andrew for writing up the solution manual for B1 and B4 that walks through all of the section B questions. We hope teams can use to review their tests and learn something new!

It was an honor and a really fun and novel experience to write this test for SVSO (my first one). I hope to see some of you in person next year!
- Andrew

Test Folder:
The exam and all other material can be found in this folder.

Test Feedback

If you have feedback for either test, feel free to leave it here! I would appreciate it a ton, since feedback helps a lot with gauging what I need to adjust in my tests. The test codes are as follows:
  • Reach for the Stars: 2021SVSO-RFTSB-Alpha
  • Machines: 2021SVSO-MachinesB-Angle
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Re: Sierra Vista Invitational (B)

Post by reninkidney »

When will full results and tests be released?
2021 Events: A&P, Heredity, XPD
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Re: Sierra Vista Invitational (B)

Post by l0lit »

Dynamic Planet B
================
Hey everyone, glaucophane and I wrote the Dynamic Planet test for this invite! It was fun writing such a unique test.

First of all, for some statistics:
- The total amount of points was 114
- The average score was 37.7 (about 33%)
- The standard deviation was 15 points for anyone who wants to use it
You can find a histogram of scores here.

Test Review:
I wrote the Seafloor Topography, Coral Reefs, Tides, and Tools sections (sorry Jacques and Piplup fans, that was my partner). In the spirit of online competition writing guidelines, I made my sections much more stimulus and analysis-based. You both need the term in your binder and some logical reasoning to get through the problems. While that is a part of almost all good DyPlan tests, the proportion of that to trivia was much higher than my usual tests. Looking over my partner's sections, he had the same strategy- lots of analysis and math.

I tried something new by starting each section with some sort of diagram, and then questions after it relate to the diagram in some way. This made it much less Google-searchable of course, but it also made it harder to look things up in your binder. I don't think most of the stimulus required too much prior knowledge on the map/chart/whatever itself (mainly on the topic), however not being able to read that likely contributed to a low average. Let me know how it worked out for you guys.

I would expect a lot more of this type of writing for competitors this year, and so we both would like to improve to write better tests for you all. If you have any questions/feedback, feel free to message me (or glaucophane) via the Scioly.org Chat!
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Re: Sierra Vista Invitational (B)

Post by Umaroth »

reninkidney wrote: February 13th, 2021, 4:35 pm When will full results and tests be released?
Full results, graded tests, and blank tests and keys have been released. Congratulations to all teams, and thank you for attending the Sierra Vista Invitational! We are waiting for the Duosmium link, but we'll get those posted when we can.

Tests: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing
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Re: Sierra Vista Invitational (B)

Post by person-v132 »

Game On B: ES Thoughts

Hello everyone! I’m person-v132, and I was your Game On ES for Sierra Vista with Phenakism and Galahad. We had a lot of fun grading and playing all of your games, and we want to congratulate you all for competing at this tournament. It’s really great to see how creative all of you are, especially since this is one of the only SciOly events that allow you to show off your creativity and artistic skills. There was even a team who recorded music played on their piano during the event!

For grading, we split the rubric up so I graded the Game Mechanics section, and Phenakism and Galahad graded Game Play, and their scores were averaged. This was done to be as consistent as possible, and we doubled up the Game Play section because it can be a lot more subjective. We graded fairly strictly, with the highest score being around 80-90 points.

Stats:

Total teams who submitted games: 79

Mean Total Score (out of 100): 46.82
Mean Game Mechanics (out of 50): 28.54
Mean Averaged Game Play (out of 50): 18.26

Median Total Score: 50.25
Median Game Mechanics: 32.00
Media Averaged Game Play: 16.75

Max Total Score: 87.50

Game_Total.png
Game_Total.png (19.38 KiB) Viewed 3785 times
Game_Mech.png
Game_Mech.png (21.15 KiB) Viewed 3785 times
Game_Play.png
Game_Play.png (22.35 KiB) Viewed 3785 times

Game Theme

Our chosen theme for this competition was “Color” because we thought it would be possible for teams that are just starting out, but broad enough for teams to come up with more creative scientific themes or games.
We also tried allowing internet access for research on the provided theme in an effort to encourage teams to use more advanced scientific themes. Since this isn’t something that’s normally allowed, it seems like teams did not fully take advantage of this, maybe only using it to confirm or supplement facts already known, such as the size of a specific wavelength of light, or the types of cells in the eye that detect light. Most of the games involved some sort of color mixing as the scientific theme (which we should’ve seen coming).

Overall, I think this event went pretty smoothly. If you submitted a game, your rubric scores should be available in Scilympiad in the Game On "test". We did have a couple of hiccups during game submission, but luckily it all worked out. If you participated in Game On and haven’t filled out the feedback form, I’d love to know your thoughts on how the event went. Thank you all so much!

Link: https://forms.gle/VeScHazgQzHGjYGq6
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Re: Sierra Vista Invitational (B)

Post by Klebb »

Experimental and Data Analysis Data Analysis!

There were a surprisingly high number of no-shows, but overall I think teams did quite well and I was impressed. Special congratulations to Beckendorff A for winning by almost 50 points!

You can find all score distributions on the "Stats" document in the test folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... _d-OQ-o8T1

Mean: 317.95
Median: 325.5
Std. Dev: 131.536
Max: 604
Min: 48
Q1: 225.5
Q3: 418.5
Max Possible Score: 690

Overall, I'm pretty satisfied with the distribution, which was surprisingly almost normal.

Common Errors:

I feel the need to detail sketches of solutions to 3 of the most difficult problems on the test.

First, the "base rate fallacy." Very few teams gave a full explanation of what's going on. The general idea is that if you compute the number of false positives, you have more false positives than true positives! The "base rate" accuracy of 95\% seems off considering that if you receive a positive test, you are more likely to be clean than not. Hence, the fallacy.

Second, the bird-pecking problem. In my opinion, this was by far the hardest problem on the test. I believe only one or two teams got within what I presumed to be a rounding error. The problem is based on two related problems that are more well-known:

1. At a nursery, 2006 babies sit in a circle. Suddenly each baby pokes the baby immediately to either its left or its right, with equal probability. What is the expected number of unpoked babies? (2006 HMMT Guts Round/3)

2. In a barn, 100 chicks sit peacefully in a circle. Suddenly, each chick randomly pecks the chick immediately to its left or right. What is the expected number of un-pecked chicks? (2017 MATHCOUNTS Nationals Countdown Round/Final Problem)

The key here is to use linearity of expectation, which tells us that E[X]+E[Y] = E[X+Y] for any events X and Y. So, one can compute the expected un-pecked-ness of the birds on the corners, edges, etc. and add them.

Third, the final CORVID-19 problem. A team pointed out to me that vaccines don't really work the way I had portrayed them in the test, so the new final version should say "treatment." Anyway, onward to what the problem. I think only one or two teams got full points on this question, though there were many that got partial credit.

For full points, I hoped for teams to realize that the improvements in the recovery rates were very low, and in fact if one were to combine the data between the two species (recall CORVID-19 is supposed to be affecting all birds!), the trend is actually that the treatment lowers recovery rate, an example of Simpson's Paradox. I also awarded full points if (as I realized after writing the key initially) the team note that if you were to compute the margins of error on the given sample sizes, then the improvement is within said margin of error and hence the improvement is negligible. In hindsight, a statement saying that the treatment is meant for all birds might have been helpful.

Otherwise, the only issues I saw were a lack of clarity or detail on explanations and the prelab, which is understandable for a long-ish test.

Overall:

Thank you everyone for taking my test! I was pleasantly surprised both at the quality of responses teams gave as well as the distribution of the scores. When the mean and median are that similar, I'm pretty happy.

Good luck on the rest of your season everyone! - Klebb
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Re: Sierra Vista Invitational (B)

Post by azboy1910 »

Hey, I saw a bunch of people doing event reviews, so I decided I might do a few of my own for this invitational. First, I'd like to thank everyone who made it possible for me to compete at this invitational! This was a really great experience for me and I hope that if fate allows it, I can be able to have this type of experience again! So anyway, back to the actual event reviews:

Circuit Lab (5th):
This test was the most difficult circuit lab test I have ever taken. There were plenty of questions that I just had no idea how to solve and many of the calculation problems were especially difficult for me. At times, I just forgot to read the problem, but I got many of the calculation problems wrong :( That being said, however, I do believe the test was very well-made and was high quality, but I wish it was a tad bit easier. 9/10

Crime Busters (5th):
I really liked this test. It wasn't the most difficult test ever but definitely proved itself to be a hard test for me. Many of the general questions were difficult to answer for me and my teammate. I liked the structure of the crime scene and suspect backgrounds, how it was short and got straight to the point, so students wouldn't have to spend so much time reading over it. Overall very good test. 10/10

Density Lab (3rd):
This test wasn't too difficult, and I honestly wish it was a little harder, but I guess I'm not considering the general difficulty of this test. Anyway, the test wasn't that bad, but it felt like a test we had already taken before. The test also gave away a lot of free points just from knowledge of things like gas laws and atomic weight. However, most of the questions were pretty good and like I said I felt this test could've been a lot better, but maybe that's me being picky about the test. I think this test was pretty good, not the best. 7/10
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Re: Sierra Vista Invitational (B)

Post by Umaroth »

Hello everyone,

Results have been uploaded to Duosmium and tests are publicly released on our Scilympiad page. Duosmium link: https://duosmium.org/results/2021-02-06 ... tational_b. To sort results by track, click the triple bar sorting icon (or for you Circuit Lab kids, the ground symbol), and you can sort for the A and AA tracks.

Congratulations once again to Mesa Robles Yellow, our winner in the A track, and Kennedy Gold, our tournament champion. More congratulations to all of the medalists. We hope you take pride in your achievement and will be excited to have one of our custom medals for this year! Of course, great job to everyone who competed. A lot of the tests were challenging, and even if you didn't do as well as you wanted, we hope you can take away some more knowledge in your events. Many of our amazing event supervisors gave their contact information in the test and would be more than happy to answer questions you may have about their test or other parts of the event. A lot of them have posted information about sores and their thoughts here on the forums, so make sure to check those out! I will probably do it for the two events I wrote (Circuit Lab and Meteorology) once I get the chance. Like I said during the awards, they are all volunteers, so without their generosity, we would not have been able to run such a successful tournament. Finally, we must recognize the selfless coaches, taking time out of their schedule to help foster a love of science in today's youth. We know that for several of you, this was your first venture into online Science Olympiad, or just SciOly in general, so we hope that we in the Coach Support Zoom helped in making sure that things ran smoothly for your teams and that you are more confident with the system going into Regional and State tournaments.

We thank everyone for choosing to take time out of their weekend to attend our tournament virtually. Outside of California, we had teams from 13 other states participate in the tournament! As part of our program here at Sierra Vista, our two main goals are to get students excited about science and help build leadership and character, and we hope that our tournament was a great learning opportunity for your students with those goals in mind. Hope we can get back to normal and see everyone (including the out of state teams who can make it!) next year in beautiful Irvine, California!

Tim Elnitiarta
[email protected]
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Re: Sierra Vista Invitational (B)

Post by bernard »

Event Supervisor Comments: Digital Structures

Parameters: The distance from the origin to the Contact Width Lines was 5.5 cm. The distance between the origin and the Contact Depth Line was 20.0 cm. The distance between the Testing Wall and the Loading Point closest to the Testing Wall was 27.0 cm.

Scoring: Teams' submissions were scored following the rules. Enforcing the 45-minute time limit with some leniency, teams that had more than 50 minutes elapse between the time they started the Scilympiad test and when their SkyCiv submission was received were assessed a Competition Violation and placed in Tier 2—this affected a handful of teams.

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