Let’s do a bit of data analysis with this one.
The 40th Scindia School Platinum Jubilee Memorial Quiz was held..er..for the 40th time in the Radheyshyam Seksaria Auditorium, Scindia School, Gwalior except last year. And 1/8th of those quizzes have been hosted by me, for the commerce without Maths and the PCB types that is 5 times (2009-2013). The newly renovated Auditorium with air-conditioning was a huge sigh of relief for me, since my quizzes here had been extremely sweaty affairs.
The quiz had nine teams spread geographically across North India.
The quiz started with the Quiz Incharge of the School, Mr Vishesh Sahai showing a video on change blindness and then explaining why observation is crucial to winning quizzes like these where observation is given greater importance than memory. The quiz was divided in two semi finals of 5 and 4 teams each with the top-2 qualifying for the finals. Both the Semi Finals went down to the last question for the 2nd spot. In Semi Final 1 Mayo Boys were 15 points behind the second placed La Martiniere boys before the last buzzer plus bonus question. Mayo pressed the buzzer, they had no choice, and identified Sursari and Jatashankari as River Ganga. Now Mayo was 10 points behind. They opted for the 10 pointer and identified Martin Luther King Jr making a metaphorical use of a dishonoured cheque in his I have a Dream speech. Mayo now level with the Lucknow boys. Lucknow boys made a mess of the sudden death and as a result, Mayo qualified along with MGD, winners in 2011.
Semi Final 2 was far trickier. Two questions to go, Scindia- 44, Genesis- 41 and Welham Boys, the defending champions- 27. On the buzzer, Scindia (who last won in 2010) called Kitalar Arasi Derbi as the Super El Classico and gave Welham a ray of hope. Scindia now at 39. On the last buzzer question Welham made the most of their knowledge of Vaishno Devi. An obvious choice of 10er followed. And a 10 pointer was duly served where they had to give the significane of the no. 46664 in the eponymous concerts. Welham said Nelson Mandela Prison Number, I heard Prisoner number and so just cross checked. Welham said, No Sir, Prison number. They couldn’t have made my life any difficult at this point. Heartbreaking stuff by the boys from Dehradun. And the audience erupted with joy when I announced the two finalists- Genesis and Scindia.
The finals surprisingly was a little disappointing as most of the questions were missed by teams on stage only for the audience to grab the chocolates on offer. And boy what a knowledgable audience we had. Except maybe 1 or 2 questions, all questions were answered by the 500 odd students and teachers we had on a cloudy Sunday morning. On stage all teams stepped up their game in the last round with Genesis and Scindia fighting for the top spot on the last two questions. Genesis’ s miss on the penultimate question paved the way for the Scindian boys to snatch victory after a close Semi Final.
Here’s some data to understand the quiz better.
Distribution of Topics (Percentagewise)-
Distribution of topic (absolute numbers)-
Topicwise Questions asnwered by teams on stage and audience (absolute numbers)-
So History, Science, Culture and Business had ~50% of the questions answered correctly while Literature, Technology and Geograohy had almost all questions answered by the teams. There was ~65% correct answers given for questions on Politics, Business and Sports.
A comparison between the two-
Now, let us look at how the scoreboard moved for all teams combined.
So it seems that the teams took a little while in settling down and so even the fairly easy questions in the first round were missed by teams. Only by the second and the third round did the teams got their act together and started giving the scorekeeper some trouble. It could also be that the standard of questions in the first round was relatively difficult.
Some questions from the quiz
- Leila Janah is the founder of Samasource, a nonprofit social business that gives digital work to poor women across the world. Excerpt from an interview with Forbes: There is a Hindi word, _____, which is a part of our values and essentially means: Do more with less. Fill in the blank.
- The singular word for Opera is Opus. The root word for Opus is Opuscule, which itself means ‘a small, minor literary or musical work’ and thus ‘a great, most popular work’ is called _______ ______. Fill in the blanks.
- Excerpt from James Astill’s The Great Tamasha: Cricket, Corruption and the Turbulent Rise of Modern India – ‘The X, largely run by government officials is one of the best run institutes in India. This doesn’t say much about X, but plenty about other institutions’. What organisation is X?
- Homepage for what website?
