So uh. We got ranked as the best quizbowl team in the nation. And despite the fact that we do have one of the best players in the country on our team, I must say that I was a heavily contributing member of the team :/
But yeah, quizbowl “Groger” rankings are out through November 2024, and to someone’s (maybe mine’s) surprise, Livingston A holds the top spot. I could go into depth about how all these rankings and scores were calculated, but for the short version, they used this formula:
Make sense? No? Well yes there’s some fancy terminology, but it generally boils down to this: score points, rank high.
For an explanation anyway, the Groger team uses aP/G (adjusted Powers per Game, basically how fast you’re able to answer questions correctly), aPPB(adjusted Points per Bonus, basically how consistent are you at getting questions right), and N/G (negs per game, aka how many times you get it WRONG ahahaha yeah I do this a lot) to determine teams relative rankings across different regions of the country and across question sets of varying difficulty (where the “adjusted” part comes in for the aP/G and aPPB). For more information, this paper goes into more depth about the math and reasoning behind the formula and how weighting works.
All that out of the way, the pressure is on! Can’t help but feel like I might drag this team down a few spots in the coming months but I have hope my teammates will be more than able enough to cover for me being The Idiot of the club. Let it be known that just like Prince Myshkin, I am not stupid, just anxious and also pretty whimsical.