News and Views: 2021–2 Season – 22 February 2022

Cup Quarter–Finals: Results

Cup Semi–Finals: Draw

Plate: Semi–Finals Draw

Chester Road Tavern were drawn to play against the Cock Inn, but the latter resigned from the League (including the knockout competitions) shortly after the draw was made.

The three semi–final matches (in the Cup and Plate) will be played on 22 March. The questions will be set by the Nags Head and the Park Taverners. These two teams have been asked to provide three question masters between them.

Analysis

All four matches were won by the teams that went first. This may suggest that there was some bias in the questions, but what might a slightly more detailed analysis reveal?

I always think that one way to gauge which team deserved to win is by comparing the number of questions that were answered correctly on pass–over; and in all four matches, the team that went first (and ended up winning) scored more this way.

Another criterion we could use is the number of questions that were not answered by either team, in any match. There were only three:

49	The white fatalii, rocoto and wiri wiri are types of what fruit?
	Chilli pepper (accept chilli or pepper)
76	On a menu, what traditionally is a coulibiac?
	Fish pie
113	Most Swiss Cantons have either one or two official languages. Which is the only one that has three?
	Graubunden or Grisons (German, Italian and Romansch)

Two of these went to the team that went first (and ended up winning), so the slight advantage in this matter would seem to be with the other teams.

But ... the following table shows how many questions on each side (odd or even) weren't answered in any of the four matches, how many were answered in only one match, and so on.

We've already seen that two odd–numbered questions and one even–numbered question were not answered correctly in any of the four matches. This table shows that six odd and eight even questions were answered correctly in only one match, four odd and nine even in two matches, and so on.

So a total of 18 even–numbered questions were answered in two matches or fewer, and only 12 odd; and 48 odd–numbered questions were answered correctly in at least three of the four matches, compared with 42 even. This might suggest that the teams that went second got more of the harder questions, and fewer of the easier ones.

In summary: the final table might suggest that the teams that went first got the easier run of the questions overall, despite having two of the three that nobody answered. But all four of those teams got more questions right on pass–overs, which suggests that they may have known more of the answers than their opponents did.

So we might conclude that all things considered, the results were not unfair.

Any comments welcome on the forum!

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