First, I want to congratulate everyone for a fantastic season of NFA-LD in Southern California. The activity is growing by leaps and bounds and there are some phenomenally talented debaters in our area.

I’m going to use this forum to discuss one of the biggest problems that NFA-LD had this year – affirmative side bias.

What is side bias? Simply put, side bias consists of factors which are external to the arguments articulated in a debate that give a debater an artificial advantage based solely on what side of the resolution they are advocating. A good analogy can be found in NFL football. When two teams go to overtime, they use a sudden death format – first to score wins. Hence, there is side bias in that the team that wins the coin flip to determine who gets the ball usually elects to receive the kick, and thus has the first opportunity to score. The rules are biased in that team’s favor.

Side bias is reflected in statistical trends that indicate that one side consistently has a materially higher winning percentage than the other throughout the course of the season. In other words, affirmative side bias simply means that the affirmative wins more often than the negative. Negative side bias means that the negative means more often than the affirmative.

The best resolutions have no side bias whatsoever. They favor neither the affirmative nor the negative, and over the course of an entire season, the win percentage for each side rounds out to about 50%, plus or minus a percentage point or two. However, rarely is a resolution that straightforward; most have at least a degree of side bias. With that in mind, the goal of any topic committee should be to minimize the amount of side bias inherent in a given resolution.

Why is side bias bad? The answer is simple – it artificially skews debates. If two debaters are fairly equal in terms of skill, the round may very well be determined by whichever debater has the side skew going for them. In tournaments with an odd number of preliminary rounds, side skew can be particularly unfair. And of course, side skew in elimination rounds can lead to “coin flip decisions,” where much like in the NFL, the person who wins the coin flip has a better chance of winning.
This season, I perceived that the topic would have an affirmative side bias. I’ll discuss the reasons for this in a moment. In order to test this hypothesis, I decided to go back through all of the tournament results and go round-by-round to see how many debates the aff won versus how many debates the neg won.

For the purposes of this study, I compiled results from eight tournaments in Southern California: LD in the IE at Riverside, APU Cougar, Free LD at IVC, Fall Champs, Sunset Cliffs, Socal LD Champs, Cowboy Swing, and Spring Champs. (I did not count the Watson-Lancer as the entry size was too small). For each tournament, I counted up the total number of aggregate aff and neg wins for all preliminary rounds and all elimination rounds. I then further subdivided this total into open division rounds and combined JV/novice division rounds. Then, I simply worked out percentages to yield the results below.

Please note that I probably made errors, although none should be substantial enough to skew the results (although there are an odd number of ballots when there should be an even number). I also excluded byes from consideration as no debate actually occurred.

DATA FOR PRELIMINARY ROUNDS

Aggregate aff wins: 324
Open aff wins: 183
JV/Novice aff wins: 141

Aggregate neg wins: 241
Open neg wins: 148
JV/Novice neg wins: 93

Aggregate aff win percentage – 57.3%
Open aff win percentage: 55.3%
JV/Novice aff win percentage: 60.2%

Aggregate neg win percentage: 42.7%
Open neg win percentage: 44.7%
JV/Novice neg win percentage: 39.8%

DATA FOR ELIMINATION ROUNDS

Aggregate aff wins wins: 47
Open aff wins: 26
JV/Novice aff wins: 21

Aggregate neg wins: 29
Open neg wins: 20
JV/Novice neg wins: 9

Aggregate aff win percentage: 61.8%
Open aff win percentage: 56.5%
JV/Novice aff win percentage: 70.0%

Aggregate neg win percentage: 38.8%
Open neg win percentage: 43.5%
JV/Novice neg win percentage: 30.0%

DATA FOR ELIMINATION ROUNDS, EXCLUDING SUNSET CLIFFS*

Aggregate aff wins excluding Sunset Cliffs: 43
Aggregate neg wins excluding Sunset Cliffs: 16

Aggregate aff win percentage excluding Sunset Cliffs: 72.8%
Aggregate neg win percentage excluding Sunset Cliffs: 27.2%

* There was one extremely large statistical anomaly that popped up in my study – the elimination rounds at Sunset Cliffs. For some reason, the aff-neg win percentage was completely lopsided – there were a total of 17 elimination rounds with only four affirmative wins. One possible explanation may be that in open, the negative team was the higher seed in eight out of the eleven debates the neg won. Combined with the usual randomness and variations that are apt to occur, it does help to account for the blip somewhat. To offset the anomaly, I posted separate elim round percentages that excludes the Sunset Cliffs tournament (and provides a much more telling story, in my opinion).

RELEVANT SUMMARY OF THE DATA

As an aggregate, the affirmative won 57.3% of preliminary LD rounds, compared to the negative winning 42.7%. The differential between these is 14.6% – a very large differential given the size of the sample.

As an aggregate, and when excluding Sunset Cliffs, the affirmative won 72.8% of elimination rounds, compared to the negative winning 27.2%. The differential between these is 45.6% – a shockingly large differential given the size of the sample.

CONCLUSIONS FROM THE DATA

1. There was a heavy affirmative side-bias on this year’s resolution. Debaters who were affirmative in any given round were substantially more likely to win than debaters who were negative in any given round.

2. In elimination round debates, the affirmative team almost always won. Now, the naysayers will tell us that each round is different, and that statistics don’t take into account what goes on during rounds. But when you have a gap that is simply gargantuan in size, there can be no other explanation other than that there was a massive advantage inherent to debating as the affirmative.

Short and sweet – in elimination round debates, the outcome was largely determined by virtue of who won the coin flip. I participated in four elimination round debates this year – in every one of them the aff was the team that had won the coin flip and went on to win the debate. At all three tournaments where I qualified to outrounds, I dropped out with rounds that I lost on the neg (ironically, all three were on 2-1 decisions – incredibly frustrating!)

3. The best debaters almost never lose on the affirmative. From personal experience, I lost two affirmative rounds all year long. When running my hydrogen refueling stations affirmative, I never lost. Period. That’s not a typo – I was literally undefeated with this case. Why is this? The best debaters are always ready to defend every aspect of their case. They are significantly more prepared for negative arguments and are rarely caught off-guard by unique lines of argumentation.

4. Conversely, the least experienced debaters are more likely to lose on the negative. In junior varsity and novice divisions, the negative tended to lose much more often than their counterparts in the open division.

REASONS FOR AFF SIDE BIAS

So, now we understand that there was a very real aff side-bias. The aff won way, way more rounds than the negative did. The question is – why? What were those factors that influenced debates so heavily? I would speculate that there were four major influences this year that helped determine the outcome of debate rounds.

1. Breadth of the resolution. To be frank, this year’s resolution was the broadest one I have ever debated. The number of potential cases was huge – there are literally thousands of possible ways to reform transportation infrastructure. As a result, it made doing specific negative research for cases almost impossible without prior knowledge of what was being run. Which leads us to our next point…

2. Disclosure norms (or lack of thereof). With a few exceptions, Southern California was way behind the curve when it came to disclosing cases on the NFA-LD Caselist Wiki compared to the rest of the country. It was a bit of a hassle to find out what people were running, and I had to rely a lot on word-of-mouth. This made negative research harder.

Now, the exceptions. Special mention to Mat Swanson of CSULA, Shantal Voorwinden of Cerritos, David “Bear” Saulet Bey of El Camino, and the folks at Point Loma for putting up full citations for their affirmatives. Your efforts to make LD debate better and more educational are appreciated.

If you include my own wiki page, that meant only five schools participated, however. I hope that more debaters will be inclined to follow their lead and participate in the wiki in future years.

3. Lack of negative ground. One of the more striking aspects of this topic was the sheer lack of generic negative ground. There seemed to be very few viable disadvantages aside from politics, federalism, and economy/spending/inflation, and the counterplans being run weren’t exactly cutting edge. Generics are typically the backbone of any negative strategy, but without them, the neg gets screwed. I would also say that kritiks were not widely embraced by the community. I ran kritiks usually once or twice a tournament, but many judges weren’t particularly fond of them or (in some cases) didn’t understand the arguments well enough to properly evaluate them. Kritiks had the potential to become the best negative strategy on this topic, but it didn’t work out.

A lack of case research combined with very little negative ground probably made for very poor debates. If the aff has some weird case you’ve not prepared for, and your only generic strategy is a spending disad, you’re probably in trouble.

4. Structural reasons – the affirmative speaks first and last, has infinite prep time, gets an extra speech, and has two more minutes of speech time than the negative.

The first of these is pretty obvious, I think – the advantages inherent in giving the first and the last speeches have been well-documented in the debate community.

The second is infinite prep time. While of course, there is no such thing as “infinite” time to prepare, the idea is that you can spend much more time perfecting your affirmative than your opponent can spend time writing negative strategies for your case. A crude example – let’s say you have a tournament featuring eleven debaters from eleven different schools each running different cases, and everyone is allowed only 20 total hours to prepare. If everyone does 10 hours of work on their affirmative, that leaves 10 hours of negative work that must be split between 10 different cases – translating to 1 hour per negative case. So, in each round, there is a prep skew, because the affirmative will always have spent way more time working on the aff strat than the negative will have spent time working on the neg strat. Pretty simple.

The final reasons are that the aff gets an extra speech and gets extra speaking time. In most policy debate formats, each side has an equal number of speeches – usually four, with the negative getting a “block” of two consecutive speeches before the affirmative’s first rebuttal. However, in LD, the negative only gets two speeches and loses the benefit of the negative block. Additionally, the affirmative simply has more speech time – two extra minutes, to be exact. This is one of my major peeves about LD – it is literally the only competitive debate format in existence where one side is given more speech time than the other.

All four of these lend to a debate format that automatically favors the affirmative, regardless of the actual resolution.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

1. While the topic was interesting, the resolution itself left much to be desired. For the second year in a row, it appears that the framers did not take the time to adequately consider the sheer breadth of the topic and the overall division of ground. Amusingly, last year’s topic was so overlimited that debates became stale after the second tournament, but this year the reverse occurred. For me, at least, the huge scope of the resolution was obvious from Day 1. Not only was it bidirectional (due to the use of the word “reform” instead of “increase”), the term “transportation infrastructure” is so broad, and number of potential reforms so large, that it simply exploded the research burden. Furthermore, the lack of negative ground should have been much more obvious – they could have held an hourlong brainstorming session on potential generic negative ground and they probably would not have come up with much more than what was actually run this year.

2. Judges should be more proactive in considering side bias. In high school policy and NDT-CEDA, one of the things that a lot of judges do is they take into account whether a topic has been aff or neg biased and adjust their in-round practices accordingly. If a topic has been particularly aff-biased, they may compensate by “leaning” slightly negative on procedurals and theory, giving arguments related to ground, limits, and fairness more consideration. Additionally, they may decide to grant more weight to disads with a generic link story or be more willing to entertain arguments that they ordinarily would not.  There are many ways in which judges can adjust for side bias, and I would encourage critics to do so in the future.

3. Please encourage next year’s topic committee to consider the breadth of the topic and the division of ground when deciding on a resolution. We already know that the topic area is Mental Health Services, and the topic committee has already put out a request for feedback. Learn how to contact them here: http://www.debatecooperative.net/forums/showpost.php?p=12449&postcount=1

This was a long post, so I’m going to wrap it up there. I hope this was sufficiently informative, and I look forward to your feedback.

- Nick

What is Critical Thinking? The Center for Critical offers a few diffferent definitions on their webpage. For me, I think it’s best summed up as the ability to think clearly and rationally. It includes the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking.

A critical thinker is one who, when confronted with a stressful situation, can think through their thoughts and pause before making rash decisions. In debate, it involves not necessarily answering the argument with the most knee-jerk reaction but pausing a moment to evaluate the different options one has in responding to the argument. A good critical thinker understands the interaction of many different arguments with each other. A critical thinker will see where contradictions might happen between different arguments made at different points in the debate.

Secondly, a critical thinker is one who can think rationally during the debate – a person who makes logical arguments that appeal to the audience and offer the most persuasive case for their side. Bill Sparks, former director at Cerritos College, argued that spread debate is the antithesis of critical thinking. That when confronted with a debater using spread (by which I mean, dumping as many arguments as possible in response to position) he immediately wondered if he or she had any critical thinking skills. Rather than employing spread he taught his students to use their critical thinking skills to present the best arguments rather than all the arguments. So rather than respond to a topicality position with 30 answers – some of which may or may not apply to a particular position, choose 5 arguments that directly refute and counter the position. Explain those 5 arguments more in depth and justify the importance of each argument both in refutation of the position being made and the entire debate. That would show the judge much higher order critical thinking than just spewing out every possible answer.

It’s easy to defend the debater using spread as simply being smarter. That rather than coming up with only 5 responses to a position the debater used their critical thinking to come up with 30 arguments. That the debater making more arguments necessarily used more critical thinking to come up with more responses. However, I don’t think that’s true at all. I don’t think it’s hard to come up with 30 answers to any position. It’s deciding which of those 30 answers, in this particular debate round, with this particular judge, are the best answers, that employs the greatest level of critical thinking skills. As a judge I would much rather hear five nuanced and well explained answers to a position than 30 blipped arguments that require me, as a judge, to draw connections between the original argument and the refutation.

One example of this is the lack of signposting when responding to arguments in a debate. As a judge I detest debaters who say “on topicality, here are my 30 answers” and proceed to make all different types of responses to different parts of the topicality position. Answers 1,3,5,19,20-22 all deal with the standards debate, answers 2,4,6,8-14 all deal with the violation, and the rest deal with the voter. Strategically, the debater is likely trying to obfuscate the debate and try to ensure that the affirmative debater misses one of those answers. In the 2AR then, the debater will make the connection between dropped argument 21 and the lack of a response to the 3rd standard. For me, this is bad debating and shows a lack of critical thinking skills. It’s playing the game of debate as we’ve discussed before.

I think the same line of thinking can be applied to running topicality every single round. Sure, there are enough competing definitions of transportation infrastructure that you could probably run it against any case. However, do you need to? Is it in your strategic interest? A critical thinker will examine the situation and choose to run topicality whereas someone who defaults to running it every round is likely just following the script rather than applying their critical thinking skills to the round. Are there alternative arguments that would be a better use of the debater’s time? In front of this particular judge is topicality a losing issue anyway?

Third, critical thinking requires reflective thinking. This is the area that debate trains the best in my opinion. Because we split debates into constructives and rebuttals, debaters are forced to evaluate what is happening within the debate itself in order to give themselves the best chance of winning. You need to be able to take a step back and evaluate the round – what positions am I winning – what positions is my opponent winning? How can my positions earn me the ballot? A big component of critical thinking is the idea that you can examine the different points of view on an issue. Most novice debaters are only able to see the debate through the prism of their own perspective – hence, why so many novice debaters do not understand why they lost the debate. Reflective thinking, on the other hand, enables a debater to see the round from the other debater’s point of view and – perhaps more importantly – from the point of view of the judge. One of the best activities that you can do as a college debater to understand the different points of view would be to judge at local high school debate tournaments. As a judge you will see that the two debate teams often are seeing the round very differently from each other – and from you!

Another way that debate requires reflective thinking is that you must evaluate what is and is not working in your debate rounds. Following a tournament analyze where and how you lost each debate round. Furthermore, analyze where and how you won each debate round. This will give you a good idea where the strengths and weaknesses of your case are to help you in future rounds. If you keep losing to topicality it’s time to write out some better answers – or maybe find a new case?

Finally, critical thinking requires independent thinking. Independent thinking in debate means that you do your own research – pure and simple. When you have research and developed your own case you will be much more successful in the activity. As we’ve discussed before I’m perfectly fine with brand new students using camp/outside evidence for the first few tournaments in order to get familar with the activity and what using evidence looks like in a debate. Beyond that I think students are losing out on one of the most important benefits of the activity – research and critical thinking skills. It does not take much critical thinking to run evidence/cases that someone else has written for you. It takes incredible amounts of critical thinking to find articles, cut them into position, use those in a debate, and win debate rounds. Beyond any trophy that you may win in a tournament that skill will last you a life time and be incredibly valuable.

In sum, critical thinking is one of the most important skills in the 21st century and one that debate can teach extremely well. However, debaters, judges, and coaches must make choices to promote their critical thinking skills in debate. It’s been almost 7 years since my last competitive debate round and I can attest that the critical thinking skills I learned in debate are still valuable today.

Very exciting to see 11 different schools receiving at least 1 award this weekend in NFA-LD! Cume sheets available on forensicstournament.net

2010 PSCFA Paul Gaske Spring Champs
San Diego State – Feb 26-28 2010
Final Placing Junior LD

Team Final Result

Pt Loma Wilso (James Wilson) BRONZE
Biola McCur (Stephanie McCurley) BRONZE
OCC Delah (James Delahoussaye) BRONZE
Solano Raybu (Josh Rayburn) SILVER
Biola Frede (Jenna Fredericksen) SILVER
Biola Hensl (Jonathan Hensley) GOLD
Biola VanHu (Corey VanHuystee) GOLD

2010 PSCFA Paul Gaske Spring Champs
San Diego State – Feb 26-28 2010
Final Placing Novice LD

Team Final Result
Irvine Valley Arasa (Jaya Arasalike) BRONZE
Pt Loma Sonod (Jonothan Sonoda) BRONZE
Pasadena City Tyler (Jeff Tyler) SILVER
Cal Baptist Rose (Victor Rose) GOLD

2010 PSCFA Paul Gaske Spring Champs
San Diego State – Feb 26-28 2010
Final Placing Senior LD

Team Final Result
OCC Aly (Mohammed Aly) BRONZE
Palomar Meiha (Michael Meihaus) BRONZE
Pt Loma Sharp (Ian Sharples) BRONZE
Cal Baptist Lamas (Alex Lamascus) BRONZE
Pt Loma Andre (MacLean Andrews) BRONZE
UC Los Angeles Matth (Nick Matthews) BRONZE
El Camino Maxwe (Robert Maxwell) SILVER
Moorpark Laugh (Joe Laughon) SILVER
Irvine Valley Croud (Jason Croudace) SILVER
OCC Towle (Megan Towles) GOLD
Pt Loma Nadal (Daniel Nadal) GOLD
Moorpark Taylo (Ebony Taylor) GOLD

As always, any errors are my own. You’ll recall from previous posts that the award will cover tournaments through this weekend at Spring Champs. Prelim wins and rounds count normally, all elim rounds count as 3 wins and 3 ballots.

Also, for those who were against the Novice division being included in the individual sweeps, remember that being in novice isn’t always a (relative) cakewalk. This last weekend at Glendale, CBU was the only school who entered the novice division, so my 5 novices (3 of which had never been to a tournament before) went 4 and 16 against open competition. Notice also how the individuals who won rounds in novice early in the year are now in junior and open divisions.

I’ll see many of you Saturday!

2010SeasonSweeps-Update5

Novice NFA-LD entries
Jeff Tyler – Pasadena City College
Jonothan Sonoda – Point Loma Nazarene University
Jason Maves – Rio Hondo College
Shayna Lurya – Orange Coast College
Jaya Arasalike – Irvine Valley College
Victor Rose – California Baptist University
William Fragoza – California Baptist University
Sam Fragoza – California Baptist University
Corey Keirns – California Baptist University
Kamal Lahlou – Irvine Valley College

Junior NFA-LD entries:

Solano Community College – Junior NFA-LD – Josh Rayburn
Point Loma Nazarene University – Junior NFA-LD – James Wilson
Pasadena City College – Junior NFA-LD – Andrew Silverstein
Biola University – Junior NFA-LD – Amy Scofield
Biola University – Junior NFA-LD – Jenna Fredericksen
Biola University – Junior NFA-LD – Jonathan Hensley
Biola University – Junior NFA-LD – Stephanie McCurley
Biola University – Junior NFA-LD – Corey VanHuystee
Biola University – Junior NFA-LD – David Kraiss
Biola University – Junior NFA-LD – Steven Reynolds
Orange Coast College – Junior NFA-LD – James Delahoussaye
Orange Coast College – Junior NFA-LD – Zach Rosen
Moorpark College – Junior NFA-LD – Allison Bowman
California Baptist University – Junior NFA-LD – Rebecca Wurm
Los Angeles Valley College – Junior NFA-LD – Gegam Petrosyan

Senior NFA-LD entries:

Point Loma Nazarene University – Senior NFA-LD – Daniel Nadal
Point Loma Nazarene University – Senior NFA-LD – MacLean Andrews
Point Loma Nazarene University – Senior NFA-LD – Ian Sharples
Pasadena City College – Senior NFA-LD – Nolan Pack
Point Loma Nazarene University – Senior NFA-LD – Ciera Wilson
Irvine Valley College – Senior NFA-LD – Jason Croudace
Point Loma Nazarene University – Senior NFA-LD – Barbara Gausewitz
Palomar College – Senior NFA-LD – Alyssa Sambor
Palomar College – Senior NFA-LD – Michael Meihaus
Palomar College – Senior NFA-LD – Stephanie Sorensen
Palomar College – Senior NFA-LD – Jon Chi Lou
Palomar College – Senior NFA-LD – Laura Ross
Palomar College – Senior NFA-LD – Mark Notarian
Orange Coast College – Senior NFA-LD – Mohammed Aly
Orange Coast College – Senior NFA-LD – Megan Towles
University of California, Los Angeles – Senior NFA-LD – Nick Matthews
El Camino College – Senior NFA-LD – Ashley Graham
El Camino College – Senior NFA-LD – Richard Ewell
El Camino College – Senior NFA-LD – Robert Maxwell
El Camino College – Senior NFA-LD – David “Bear” Saulet
El Camino College – Senior NFA-LD – Mark Faaita
El Camino College – Senior NFA-LD – Shouhei Ichimiya
Moorpark College – Senior NFA-LD – Joe Laughon
Moorpark College – Senior NFA-LD – Ebony Taylor
California Baptist University – Senior NFA-LD – Alex Lamascus
Point Loma Nazarene University – Senior NFA-LD – John Morris

Biola Hensley (Jonathan Hensley)
Biola Reynolds (Steven Reynolds)
El Paso Anguiano (Joel Anguiano)
El Paso Bohannon (Terrell Bohannon)
El Paso Grijalva (Albert Grijalva)
El Paso Klooster (Susannah Klooster)
Mt. SAC Nakama (Jin Nakama)

We’ll be breaking to semifinals and remember that the final round will be judged by a CA Assembly member!

Biola Hensley Jonathan Hensley
Biola Reynolds Steven Reynolds
Cal Baptist Fachner Tawni Fachner
Cal Baptist Fragoza William Fragoza
Cal Baptist Keirns Corey Keirns
Cal Baptist Kristensen Cassie Kristensen
Cal Baptist Rose Victor Rose
Cal Baptist Wurm Rebecca Wurm
El Paso Anguiano Joel Anguiano
El Paso Bohannon Terrell Bohannon
El Paso Grijalva Albert Grijalva
El Paso Klooster Susannah Klooster
LA Valley Petrosyan Gegam Petrosyan
Mt. SAC Nakama Jin Nakama
Mt. SAC Sherwood Sarah Sherwood
Rio Hondo Maves Jason Maves

Plus, you can build big monuments in the middle!

Anyone running this? Anyone have good ideas on the neg?

OCC Towl (Megan Towles) 1st
Pasadena City Pack (Nolan Pack) 2nd

Moorpark Laug (Joe Laughon) Semis
El Paso Boha (Terrell Bohannon) Semis

Irvine Valley Aras (Jaya Arasalike) Quarters
El Camino Ewel (Richard Ewell) Quarters
El Camino Maxw (Robert Maxwell) Quarters
El Camino Saul (David Saulet) Quarters

Cume sheets available at forensicstournament.net!

El Camino Ewel (Richard Ewell)
El Camino Maxw (Robert Maxwell)
El Camino Saul (David Saulet)
El Paso Boha (Terrell Bohannon)
Irvine Valley Aras (Jaya Arasalike)
Moorpark Laug (Joe Laughon)
OCC Towl (Megan Towles)
Pasadena City Pack (Nolan Pack)

Quarters underway…