Analysis: Season 1, Game-week 4

-Paul Pop

Game-week 4 left players thinking about ethical questions in conservation as well as the earworms of sound effects from Star Wars. It was quite an eclectic mix. It featured some of easiest quads of the season as well as some of the hardest.

In game-week four, no questions went unanswered. The most answered questions was the same as in the first game-week (12), and one more than the last week (i.e. answered in every one of the 29 games that happened). That means ~25% of the questions in the set were answered in every single game without fail. The average number of unanswered questions went up from 9.08 in GW3 to 10.79 in G4.

The least correct answer of game-week 4 was the ‘Fringing reef’ and ‘Empty Forest Syndrome’, with only two correct answers each. They sure are tough to those uninitiated to ecology. The former was cracked by Kunal Mandal and Narayani; and the latter by kiran k and Sanat Pai Raikar. Congrats to you four, for cracking them!

In terms of quads, the toughest quad was ‘Ethical questions in conservation' with a 17.61% answer rate, a 7.05% decrease from last week's toughest quad (corrects/opportunities). The paper on which this quad is based on (by Helen Kopnina) is one of my favourite papers on conservation, which argues against anthropocentric conservation models, which is the norm today.

The most answered quad was the 'Sound effects in Star Wars', with a answer rate of 60.22%, a 8.24% decrease from the easiest quad of GW3. What’s a nature, science and tech quiz without some Star Wars references, right?

GW4’s maximum score was 19, scored by Soumya Sharma. Partly, due to the absence of a player. This helped Soumya become the only quad leader for ‘Technology in Anime’.

GW4 had a rather even spread of themes amongst quads, with 2 quads of history & literature, biology, engineering & technology, and movies & TV, and 1 each of other themes.

Musketeers will be rare since only one question per quad is direct to a person. In game-week four, musketeers was not rare, it was completely absent! The only game-week so far without any musketeers. I guess all quads had at least one easy question which got quickly answered without passing, resulting in no one getting the opportunity to get be a musketeer/get a musketeer.

Themewise (T) and quad (Q, primary quad relating to a theme) leaders for game-week 4:

1) Physical Geography - ‘Types of coral reefs’ (max = 3/4 (75%)) - Jyothi Mohan

2T) History and Literature - ‘ (max = 5/8 (62.5%)) - Abel Gilsing & Pavan Nagaraj

2Q) ‘Historic crashes and explosions’ (max = 3/4 (75%)) - Ananth Kachroo & Pavan Nagaraj

3T) Biology (max = 4/8 (50%)) - Eric Mukherjee & Pavan Nagaraj

3Q) ‘Biomolecules’ (max = 2/4 (50%)) - Jimmy Li, Ian Bayley, Abdul Raouf, Calvin, Eric Mukherjee, Seoan Webb, Subrat M, Kishore Rajendra, Pavan Nagaraj, Aditya Sundaray, Shramanth Rajarathnam, John Liu & Soumya Sharma

4) Chemistry - ‘Food Preservation’ (max = 3/4 (75%)) - Aswath Venkataraman, Pranjal Agrawal & Dibyesh Hota

5) Physics - ‘Astroparticle Physics’ (max = 3/4 (75%)) - Eric Mukherjee & Akshay Gurumoorthi

6T) Engineering & Technology (max = 4/8 (50%)) - Srinath Krishnamurthy & Rishav Dewan

6Q) ‘Technology in Anime’ (max = 3/4 (75%)) - Soumya Sharma

7) Mathematics - ‘The Cult of Statistical Significance’ (max = 3/4 (75%)) - Dhruv Sharma, Srinath Krishnamurthy, John Liu & Jyothi Mohan

8T) Movies & TV (max = 5/8 (62.5%)) - Rishav Dewan, Soumya Sharma & Diptojyoti Das Purkayastha

8Q) ‘Sound effects in Star Wars’ (max = 3/4 (75%)) - Rishav Dewan, Shramanth Rajarathnam & Diptojyoti Das Purkayastha

9) Music, Art and Architecture - ‘Scientific art of Da Vinci’ (max = 3/4 (75%)) - Abel Gilsing & CR

10) Mythbusting - ‘Why Darwin Matters’ (max = 2/4 (50%)) - Jimmy Li, Prakhar Gupta, Calvin, Padmanav Baruah, Eric Mukherjee, Gaurav Sinha, Daivat Bhatt, Sarah Trevarthen, Rajagopal, Anirudh Shastry, Narayani, Ronak Gupta & John Liu

11) Social Science & Psychology - ‘Ethical questions in conservation’ (max = 3/4 (75%)) - manoj saranathan

12) Home & Hobbies - ‘Home appliances’ (max = 2/4 (50%)) - George Scratcherd, Pat Gibson, Shankha Ghosh Dastidar, Padmanav Baruah, Seoan Webb, Gautham Mahadevan, Mukunth Raghavan, Rajiv D'Silva, Abel Gilsing, Pavan Nagaraj, Narayani, Chandrakala Geddapu, Srinath Krishnamurthy, Rishav Dewan, Abhijith Bhadran, Arun Prasad, Akshay Gurumoorthi, Saahil Sharma