The last shall be first
It looks like I'm about as good at handicapping as the Derby mavens are. None of my first three picks brought a state championship home on Saturday evening -- but two state titles did come back to our region!
The role of Giacomo was taken by the interdisciplinary squad of Bedford-North Lawrence, which scored a clear win in Class 1 with 18 after squeaking into the finals in seventh place. Meanwhile, incoming class leader Castle confirmed Scripture by sliding to the bottom at Lafayette with 11. Congratulations, Stars!
Our other winner was perennial Class 2 power Madison -- not in math, where the Cubs' 23 left them one point and place behind winner Indianapolis Brebeuf, but in English, where Madison posted a 20, good enough to win by 2 over -- again -- Brebeuf. Look for a construction contract to be let soon as the Cubs expand their overflowing academic trophy case.
The other three squads from our region placed thus: Scottsburg (Class 2), fine arts, third with 16 behind NorthWood and Griffith; Scottsburg, math, sixth with 17 behind Brebeuf, Madison, West Lafayette, Leo, and Fort Wayne Dwenger; and Orleans (Class 4), fine arts (my best bet), second with 18 behind Northeast Dubois.
Upshot: two championships, two second places, a third, and a sixth. Result for our region: covered in glory. Result for yours truly's face: covered with egg.
Other state champs from southern Indiana include Columbus East (Class 1) in fine arts, North Knox (Class 3) in fine arts (on a tiebreaker over Cambridge City Lincoln), Northeast Dubois (Class 4) in fine arts (by 1 point over Orleans), North Posey (Class 3) in English, and Tell City (Class 3) in interdisciplinary. The latter two won easily -- North Posey by 3 over Kokomo Taylor and Tell City by 4 over Indianapolis Park Tudor. Congratulations, Olympians, Warriors, Jeeps, Vikings, and Marksmen!
The reversal of positions in Class 1 interdisciplinary astonished me enough to lead me to calculate Spearman rhos (rank-order correlation coefficients) between ranks coming out of regionals and ranks at the finals for 23 of the 24 contests. (For the statistically minded, the better known Pearson correlation coefficient was inappropriate because it would be applied to the actual scores, not just the ranks, and the questions used at the finals were presumably more difficult than those used at the regionals -- some of the lower-ranking squads had single-digit scores at Lafayette, though they scored much higher when they qualified.) No coefficient could be found for Class 1 social studies because one of the finalists, Columbus East, placed 47th in the regionals, apparently because of an erroneous score. Here are the other rhos:
English Fine Arts Social Studies Math Science Interdisciplinary
Class 1 .500 .786 (none) .741 .304 -.750
Class 2 .771 .829 .700 .829 .829 .600
Class 3 .043 -.029 .143 .814 .543 -.014
Class 4 .243 .700 -.100 .400 .725 -.200
In words, rank at regionals was a pretty fair predictor of rank at the state finals for all squads in Class 2, as well as for math and science squads, but not otherwise. Outside Class 2, regional rankings actually correlated negatively with final rankings for ID squads, though the small negative rhos for Classes 3 and 4 are much less stunning than the -.750 in Class 1.
It's interesting to speculate on the meaning of these correlations, though in the absence of any other similar data any speculation must remain just that. The high correlations throughout Class 2, for instance, might reflect the presence in that class of several perpetual contenders, such as Madison and (more recently) Scottsburg from our own region and NorthWood, Dwenger, Leo, Wawasee, and Brebeuf from elsewhere in the state, whereas the representation of the other three classes in the state finals is considerably more volatile. Math and science may produce high correlations and high scores for the same reason, which, in my belief, is that they are less bound to the annual theme of the competition than are the humanities. The negative correlations for ID seem to be associated with an inchoate notion of my own that schools with strong subject squads often perform relatively poorly in interdisciplinary competition (even Madison has shown this weakness), though a more obvious reason may be that the competition is inherently less fixed in nature than a one-subject competition would be, and that an ID squad is more likely to encounter an unfavorable run of questions at state than a subject squad is.
Meanwhile, back at Floyd Central, there's always next year!
The role of Giacomo was taken by the interdisciplinary squad of Bedford-North Lawrence, which scored a clear win in Class 1 with 18 after squeaking into the finals in seventh place. Meanwhile, incoming class leader Castle confirmed Scripture by sliding to the bottom at Lafayette with 11. Congratulations, Stars!
Our other winner was perennial Class 2 power Madison -- not in math, where the Cubs' 23 left them one point and place behind winner Indianapolis Brebeuf, but in English, where Madison posted a 20, good enough to win by 2 over -- again -- Brebeuf. Look for a construction contract to be let soon as the Cubs expand their overflowing academic trophy case.
The other three squads from our region placed thus: Scottsburg (Class 2), fine arts, third with 16 behind NorthWood and Griffith; Scottsburg, math, sixth with 17 behind Brebeuf, Madison, West Lafayette, Leo, and Fort Wayne Dwenger; and Orleans (Class 4), fine arts (my best bet), second with 18 behind Northeast Dubois.
Upshot: two championships, two second places, a third, and a sixth. Result for our region: covered in glory. Result for yours truly's face: covered with egg.
Other state champs from southern Indiana include Columbus East (Class 1) in fine arts, North Knox (Class 3) in fine arts (on a tiebreaker over Cambridge City Lincoln), Northeast Dubois (Class 4) in fine arts (by 1 point over Orleans), North Posey (Class 3) in English, and Tell City (Class 3) in interdisciplinary. The latter two won easily -- North Posey by 3 over Kokomo Taylor and Tell City by 4 over Indianapolis Park Tudor. Congratulations, Olympians, Warriors, Jeeps, Vikings, and Marksmen!
The reversal of positions in Class 1 interdisciplinary astonished me enough to lead me to calculate Spearman rhos (rank-order correlation coefficients) between ranks coming out of regionals and ranks at the finals for 23 of the 24 contests. (For the statistically minded, the better known Pearson correlation coefficient was inappropriate because it would be applied to the actual scores, not just the ranks, and the questions used at the finals were presumably more difficult than those used at the regionals -- some of the lower-ranking squads had single-digit scores at Lafayette, though they scored much higher when they qualified.) No coefficient could be found for Class 1 social studies because one of the finalists, Columbus East, placed 47th in the regionals, apparently because of an erroneous score. Here are the other rhos:
English Fine Arts Social Studies Math Science Interdisciplinary
Class 1 .500 .786 (none) .741 .304 -.750
Class 2 .771 .829 .700 .829 .829 .600
Class 3 .043 -.029 .143 .814 .543 -.014
Class 4 .243 .700 -.100 .400 .725 -.200
In words, rank at regionals was a pretty fair predictor of rank at the state finals for all squads in Class 2, as well as for math and science squads, but not otherwise. Outside Class 2, regional rankings actually correlated negatively with final rankings for ID squads, though the small negative rhos for Classes 3 and 4 are much less stunning than the -.750 in Class 1.
It's interesting to speculate on the meaning of these correlations, though in the absence of any other similar data any speculation must remain just that. The high correlations throughout Class 2, for instance, might reflect the presence in that class of several perpetual contenders, such as Madison and (more recently) Scottsburg from our own region and NorthWood, Dwenger, Leo, Wawasee, and Brebeuf from elsewhere in the state, whereas the representation of the other three classes in the state finals is considerably more volatile. Math and science may produce high correlations and high scores for the same reason, which, in my belief, is that they are less bound to the annual theme of the competition than are the humanities. The negative correlations for ID seem to be associated with an inchoate notion of my own that schools with strong subject squads often perform relatively poorly in interdisciplinary competition (even Madison has shown this weakness), though a more obvious reason may be that the competition is inherently less fixed in nature than a one-subject competition would be, and that an ID squad is more likely to encounter an unfavorable run of questions at state than a subject squad is.
Meanwhile, back at Floyd Central, there's always next year!
posted by Bill Kenney at 11:33 PM
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