Write It Do It B/C

[samlan16]

Does judging for this event vary? I know that you get points per piece that is in the correct place, but what are some general error cutoffs? (ex: something 1cm off vs. something in right spot but oriented wrong)

Yes, like I said, it's subjective in that there is no real scoring rubric defined anywhere to describe what needs scoring. Some common point deductions include using the wrong color of an object, orienting the object incorrectly, and placing an object in the wrong spot. Other judges may penalize you for differences as low as 1 mm away from where an object is supposed to be (i.e. Wright State), 10 degrees too high, and objects that clearly cannot be supported as on the model. I recommend using your discretion.

[Skink]

Right, as the Doer, assume that the model in the ether somewhere has to be replicated exactly. I've been involved with State-level arbitration over party pick colors, of all things. It's not pretty. Orientation is even more obviously important. Some supervisors are more precise than others, but that doesn't matter much from your perspective because you have to strive to perform your best, anyway! Giving yourself wiggle room doesn't really make the task easier or improve your performance. I'd be more concerned with something being oriented rightly than positioned exactly, then. There's a greater chance of losing points on the former.

[bernard]

Right, as the Doer, assume that the model in the ether somewhere has to be replicated exactly. I've been involved with State-level arbitration over party pick colors, of all things. It's not pretty. Orientation is even more obviously important. Some supervisors are more precise than others, but that doesn't matter much from your perspective because you have to strive to perform your best, anyway! Giving yourself wiggle room doesn't really make the task easier or improve your performance. I'd be more concerned with something being oriented rightly than positioned exactly, then. There's a greater chance of losing points on the former.

How does arbitration work for this event, when often you don't know your exact results or how the event supervisor judged your doing?

[Skink]

I mean, most events at Regionals and up share that problem of...nobody really knowing how the ES scores participants. It's a problem we kind of just accept after while, especially if the testimonies in the poorly ran events topic are any metric . In this case, though, it goes something like this:
bernard: Your instructions stink because blah blah blah...
(omitted)
Skink: The green toothpick was supposed to be stuck this far into the cup at a sixty degree angle...like I said.
bernard: Uhhhhhh...I didn't have any green toothpicks...
We tell our coach, and the ball gets rolling.

Since I'm on the subject, this event also is prone to arbitration in cases where, say, the rotation between Writer and Doer is mismanaged, which permits communication either between partners midway into the event or from a team that has competed to a team that hasn't. I fought the former once because there was one room less than there should have been for the event, but I lost it because it was an invitational .

[boomvroomshroom]

Any WIDI judges out there? What things do you look for/consider most important?

[hscmom]

Any WIDI judges out there? What things do you look for/consider most important?

Only proctored this once. Things I looked for:

3D position (maybe it's 30 degrees from vertical AND 45 degrees from far)
Orientation (is the B on the baby block facing up with the sailboat picture to the right?)
Item in relation to other objects (is the block 3 cm left of the tube? Is the sticker slightly off center to the left? How much of the toothpick shows?)
Choosing the right item (if the builder has several toothpicks, did he pick the green wood one or the white plastic one?)
Counting off for using extra items (sometimes the builder receives all the items needed AND a few extras to "throw him off" so if he uses items that he shouldn't they are a deduction).
Details on tough pieces (spirals in pipe cleaners have the right number of turns, the right spacing between turns, and right length of the tails on either end of the spiral)

The rubric should be straightforward and decided before competition. If possible, the same person should grade all the builds of a division to avoid Bob thinking that the toothpick is close enough to get the point and Bill thinking it's just off enough to miss the point. If you have two to score the builds, have one check the structures against the rubric and one to read the write-ups looking for violations (undefined abbreviations, disallowed symbols).

Also, the rubric should have enough potential points to minimize ties. If 30 teams are competing, a rubric with only 25 possible points guarantees ties, A rubric of 40 points might still result in quite a few ties - I'd aim for at least twice as many rubric points as there are teams competing.

[MareezyWA]

Well, I am looking to see what national organizers think of this... since behavior and ethics matter to scientists and those teaching young scientists. I am writing about the WIDI competition for Div B for our state competition 2 weeks ago.

At state, for WIDI, our event team came out of the event visibly shaking. They did not expect to place and so were doing their best to just have a good showing and nothing more so there was no expectation and no reason for them to be so upset except for this:

1. The event supervisor turned the rooms over to high school kids as proctors. These students created such a ruckus, we were all in disbelief when our event team recounted what they had seen in the rooms.
2. The behaviors they witnessed were these unruly high school students picking up a bottle in the lab and spraying it all about. Since this was a science lab, event participants had no idea what was in the bottle and they were concerned.
3. These "proctors" ran about and ran into a TV in the room and were using the computer and not paying attention.
4. One of the proctors used the "F word" for no reason and told the participating teams "Don't tell your coach."
5. This is the worst yet, they left the room door open so that people could see in as well as additional commotion.

These terrible behaviors were reported to the State organizer with our coach within minutes of the even being over. Our impressions, this was perhaps a new way to cheat, by getting the teams in that section so upset and off kilter that teams in an other section were at a great advantage. As it turns out, our WIDI team, would not have been the team that some might have been trying to sabotage but there were 2 teams in our teams' section that have been to nationals. It occurs to us that these high school proctors might have been trying to throw THEM off.

When we have noticed things going wrong in other competitions and notified the organizers, they at least tried to intervene to adjust so that other sections or teams were not disadvantaged. How do you replicate these terrible conditions for event participants when this was so unsafe, disruptive and unethical? All other sections did not have to deal with immature proctors being unsafe, disrespectful and maybe even trying to sabotage the event for their own former school or their friends who were competing. I hate that my mind goes there about sabotage but we have witnessed cheating at state and even adult aided cheating... so I hope that those adults read this and are ashamed of themselves, if they had any part of this. It is all so fishy because I don't think people can accidentally be this outrageous. Do you?

[chalker]

... It is all so fishy because I don't think people can accidentally be this outrageous. Do you?

It's unfortunate this happened to you and your team. In situations like this, I like to remind people of Hanlon's razor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor), which can be phrased a variety of ways as essentially: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." There are over 300 tournaments that get run around the country each year, and with an average of 46 events per tournament, that is ~14,000 individual event supervisors needed, plus who knows how many volunteers. The vast majority of these people are unpaid volunteers. Hence while it's unfortunate, there are bound to be 'bad apples' in the bunch that don't take the events seriously or do the right things. This is why we have policies and procedures in place to correct issues (which your team rightfully utilized).

[theoriginalweevil]

Writers: strategies to work faster than the clock? I saw one school using a chart to organize the orientation, placement, and description of an object. I'm done now, but wondering for future reference.

Has anyone tried this/currently uses this method/will try it out?

Thanks.

[19sawickin]

Really? I understand that we are not allowed to use underlines because it is not on the standard keyboard. Carrots are Shift-6 on the keyboard. However, at the Solon Invitational in Ohio, our team for WIDI was tiered down because we had 4 carrot symbols...Does this carrot rule vary from supervisor to supervisor?

No rules about which characters are allowed should vary between tournaments. The rules allow any characters that can be typed on a 101-key keyboard with or without the shift key. Typing 'shift+6' produces the '^' symbol so it is allowed.

That is exactly what our WIDI team thought. Will this occur at Regionals or States or Nats? I'm not sure which state created WIDI at Solon, but if what you're saying is right, then they didn't do it right.

I don't remember the name of the team that proctored the event but the lady was Chalker who heads science olympiad