Michigan Memorandum 2002

Appendix: Packet Requirements and Distribution

October 3, 2001

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I. DISTRIBUTION

The distribution for packets submitted to the MLK is as follows; this distribution supersedes those found in the Stanford Guidelines and in previous versions of the Michigan Memorandum and its appendix.

Subject	TU-B	TOT
Literature	4-4	8
History	4-4	8
Science	5-4	9
Current Events	3-3	6
Fine Arts	3-4	7
Geography and Social Science	4-4	8
Mythology, Religion, and Philosophy	3-3	6
Popular Culture	3-3	6
General Knowledge	1-1	2
TOTAL	30-30	60

After editing, the final length of packets will be 26 tossups and 26 bonuses.

Of your sixty questions, at least 10 must cover underrepresented topics. These questions may be about women or people of color, but may also be about social movements, non-western literature, history, culture or thought and any other topic which, despite being the subject of serious academic study, are not asked about with an appropriate frequency in quiz bowl. While the subjects of these questions may not frequently be asked about, this in no way indicates that they are in any sense obscure to a well-educated person; accordingly, these subjects should not be considered obscure by quiz bowl players.

II. QUESTION DIFFICULTY

Traditionally the Michigan MLK has attracted a wide cross-section of teams, ranging from many of the top teams on the circuit to a number of newly established programs and C and D teams. It is always very difficult for editors and question writers to produce a set of questions that is sufficiently challenging for the stronger teams, sufficiently accessible for the weaker teams, and capable of differentiating between teams of all skill levels.

Questions should therefore be of intermediate difficulty: middle-of-the-pack teams should be able to average 200 points per game, and even the weakest teams should be able to average at least 100 points.

Tossups
At least 90% of tossups should be answerable by one of the eight players if read in their entirety in a match between two strong teams. This is not the same as having 90% answered in match situations. In matches between weaker teams, at least 70% of the questions should be answerable if read in its entirety.

Difficulty is an important consideration is determining tossup quality, but the overriding consideration is that tossups are written is pyramidal style, with clues ordered from the most to the least obscure.

Bonuses
The structure of bonuses allows a question writer to write questions that contain both accessible and challenging answers. Our objectives for bonus conversion are:

• top teams should score about 21 points per bonus
• average teams should score about 14 points per bonus
• no team should score fewer than 7 points per bonus

When editing questions for difficulty, we shall assume that the strong teams, average teams, and weak teams will be of similar caliber to the teams that have competed in the MLK in past years.

Length
Since the MLK is a timed tournament, wording questions concisely is essential. Tossups should have an average length of about 400 characters (about 4.5 lines using 10-point Arial font and 1.25" margins) 3-part bonuses should be at most about 500 characters total; 4-part or 5-part bonuses must be shorter to account for the extra time required for each prompt.

III. CONSISTENCY

Our role as editors is to take the questions, which may be submitted by more than 100 different authors, and mold them so that there is a feeling of consistency between each round in the tournament. If team A defeats team B in Round 1, we want team B to feel that team A could have beaten them on any round, and that their defeat was not the result of a packet that was in some way different from all the others at the tournament.

Each team's packet is a statement of what they expect the rounds to be like and we will use as many submitted questions as possible. However, all teams should expect to have some questions in their packets replaced due to repeated information, improper difficulty, or other problems that make them inconsistent with questions in other packets. Although each team's packet will have a distinct character, our objective is to ensure that the difficulty, distribution, and style are relatively constant throughout the entire tournament.

IV. CATEGORY SUBDISTRIBUTION

In order for the difficulty and distribution to be consistent from packet to packet, we require that packets cover a wide variety of subject areas within each broad category distribution. Over- or under emphasis on a specific topic makes packets unfair.

The category subdistribution here is intended as a guide and reasonable variance is OK provided your packets remains fair, diverse, and no one category is overrepresented.

History (8)
North American History (3-4 questions)
European History (2-3)
World History (1-2)
Ancient History (1-2)

History questions should cover political, military, social, and institutional history. Ancient, medieval, early modern and modern history should all be represented.

Subcategories listed as "North American" should be divided among Canadian and American topics at a ratio roughly commensurate with the number of Canadian and American teams that can be expected to play at the tournament.

Literature (8)
North American Literature (2-4)
British Literature (1-2)
Continental European (1-2)
World (1-2)
Ancient (includes all regions) (0-2)

Literature includes prose, poetry, and drama; at least those three categories should be represented. Questions should concentrate on the content of works; maintain a balance between authors, characters, and titles of works.

Fiction that is not considered literary (e.g. thrillers, most sci-fi/fantasy) should be categorized under popular culture.

World literature refers to Asian, Latin American, African, Middle Eastern, or any other literary tradition not covered under the other categories.

If the ancient literature question is not used, a question in science, history, art or philosophy should be devoted to events of that era.

Science (9)
Physics (2-3)
Biology and Medicine (2-3)
Chemistry (2-3)
Mathematics (1-2)
Computer Science (0-1)
Engineering (0-1)
Geology & Astronomy (0-1)

No more than one question can be pure history of science. A biographical question need not be history of science, provided it concentrates on the character of the scientist's work and not on biographical details (e.g. birthplace, school, prizes)

Pseudoscience and discredited theories (e.g. alchemy, phlogiston, mesmerism) are not science and should be classified under general knowledge if used at all.

Current Events (6)
Politics and Military (2-4)
Business and Industry (1-3)
Literature, Art and Academia (1-2)

Current events refers to events over the past five to ten years that an educated person should know about today. It does not refer to tabloid events, nor to events that were noteworthy at the time but have slipped from view.

Politics should contain questions on events from both the U.S. and the world; business questions should refer to different sectors of the economy.

The Literature, Art, and Academia category includes recent works and discoveries that have been publicized in either the popular press or in academic journals. (In all cases, questions in this category should be accessible to a general audience.) Examples of question material for this category include recent literary award winners and new discoveries in science.

Fine Arts (7)
Music (2-4)
Visual Arts (2-4)
Architecture (0-1)
Dance (0-1)
Film (0-1)

Music includes all time periods from Gregorian to Baroque to Jazz. Visual Arts includes painting and sculpture. At least one of the minor categories (architecture, dance, film) should be represented.

Geography/Social Science (8)
Physical Geography (1-2)
Political Geography (1-2)
Economics (0-2)
Psychology (0-2)
Sociology (0-2)
Anthropology (0-2)
Linguistics (0-1)
Political Science (0-1)
Law (0-1)

Geography should contain both North American and world geography. At least four different social sciences should be represented, and there should be five social science questions in total.

Religion/Mythology/Philosophy (6)
Religion (2)
Mythology (2)
Philosophy (2)

At least two questions should be about non-Western traditions.

Popular Culture (6)
Sports (1-2)
Popular Music (1-2)
Movies (0-2)
Television (0-2)
Miscellaneous Popular Culture (1-2)

Be sure to include at least four of these categories.

General Knowledge (2)
Areas or academic interest not covered in the above distribution, as well as interdisciplinary questions, should be placed here. This category should not be used as a dumping ground for excess questions from other categories.

V. SUBMISSION OF PACKETS

Please submit rounds (in order of preference):

1. by E-mail as Rich Text Format to mac.packetdrop@umich.edu
2. by E-mail as a Word file or attachment
3. by E-mail as text

Your packet must be blind to all but the team writing the packet if your school is entering more than one team.

If we do not use your packet for whatever reason, we will return it to you so you can send it to a tournament that Michigan is not attending.

VI. FORMATTING

Past editors have spent an inordinate amount of time reformatting rounds into a consistent format. It will allow us more time spend on the more important facets of editing if the rounds follow a pattern so that macros can be used for formatting. Please follow the follow guidelines:

1. DO NOT use tabs or spaces to line things up.
2. In bonuses, place the answer to each bonus part directly after each part, not at the end of the question.
3. DO NOT CAPITALIZE the underlined part of your answers. Instead, bold the portion which is the acceptable answer if sending in rich text, or surround the needed portion with _underscore marks._
4. Please label all parts of bonuses with their point value as such (10) or (5/5), (30), (20), (10), etc.
5. DO NOT NUMBER your questions.
6. For titles within the body of questions, italicize the titles, such as Moby Dick.
7. Type all bonuses with the answers on a SEPARATE line from the question.
8. DO NOT randomize your packet. We will be dividing questions for editing by category and will do the randomization afterwards.

VII. SAMPLE PACKETS

A sample packet with the proper distribution, difficulty, and format is available in HTML or Word format.

A sample edited packet, as it would be used as the tournament, is also available in HTML or Word format.