Running A Skeptical Quiz Competition At A SiTP

by podblack on October 14, 2009

Since I’ve had correspondence with two people now on this topic – here are my tips about the running of a skeptic quiz at a ‘Skeptics in the Pub / courtyard / lecture room / what have you’. I ran a quiz last month for the Perth Skeptics, but because we have our get-togethers from 3-5 on Sundays, I had what may be a less formal arrangement than most.

I imagine most people will have theirs at night, so if you’re stuck with how they run, I suggest attending a local one or checking out a few websites online about coordinating a quiz in general – I found How to Run a Great Quiz Night and Run your own Fundraising Trivia Night good for the really basic essentials if you’ve never experienced one before.

Since the (gorgeous!) venue we have is mostly chairs and low tables (it’s a bar-lounge area), I made sure that I had something for people to write with (Ikea pencils are great; otherwise just scrabble some pens together and suggest people bring one next time too) and something to write on (the bar area also has some old second-hand hardcover books; in the past I’ve suggested using a few beer mats as something to lean on too). Check your venue, see if you can get enough space to fit people in.

Consider using sites like Meetup.com to coordinate numbers so everyone fits in and try a sign-up sheet the meeting before the quiz if you want to formally organise tables. Remember, there may be people coming who are new and may not know that it was going to be running – be flexible if they want to take part! I have an additional suggestion at the end about ‘independent quizes’ too, if they would prefer to sit out being a part of a group.

The Perth Skeptics had four rounds of five questions each, which lasted for about one and a half hours in total, which including the grading (done by helpers at the end of each round) – important not to have things go on too long if people also want to socialise! I suggest small prize for a table at the half-way mark too.

Suggestion – don’t make your questions too long as people might strain to get what you’re saying by the time you’ve reached the end of the question! There’s also single word answers, along with multiple choice, of course.

Mix it up with funny elements and pop culture; you might like to add things like podcast names and some of the news items on pseudoscience that people are interested in, along with basic science questions. Your audience is bound to have a mixture of ages and interests and even qualifications, so it’s useful to keep in mind. My personal favourite was the snappy:

The Viking Orbiter found it in 1976 – Richard Hoagland thinks it really exists and the Bad Astronomer has had enough of it. What is it?

The categories I had (and of course, you can have many more) were:

* Logic and Fallacies (that way, you could mix up with not only those ‘tried and true’ fallacies that skeptics like, but some of the other elements like Occam’s razor)
* Weird and Wacky - those odder claims out there like ‘Examples include – the nun bun and Jesus on a dog’s bottom. What is it?’
* Pseudoscience and the Paranormal – of course, these could be two categories or split into even more such as UFO/Aliens, Halloween and Superstitions, etc.
* Name the Author / Name the Book – helps promote discussion after about books that people should be getting into (or should be avoiding!).

Typically at any quiz gathering, there’s mid-point games like ‘Heads and Tails’ (make a point that you’re teaching probability!) and table prizes. Suggestion: have not only a trivia quiz, but a separate two-sided, one page of questions that are for individual entry only. That way, you can have an additional fun element of people ‘winning for their own merit only’. For this, I had a first, second and third prizes for the most completed.

This ‘individual quiz’ could hold more detailed questions, such as, ‘name the science-skeptic song title / fill in the lyrics’ with material from Tim Minchin, George Hrab, Roy Zimmerman, Jonathan Coulton, They Might Be Giants and the like on one side.

On the other side I had a ‘Who Am I?’ where I took biographical details of skeptics (e.g. Richard Saunders, Carl Sagan – do make sure you recognise the range of people who have contributed over the years!) and gave some facts about them and let them figure out who it was. There’s plenty of variations you could do with this too – such as names of your committee members of your skeptic group (’do you know who…’ ‘which committee member has…’).

This can also extend to a breaking-the-ice activity, where people can be given the sheet before any skeptic meeting and have to go around finding out about each other in order to complete it all (not unusual at school camps I’ve gone to, where you have to find ’someone who lives near / in suburb X’ to complete your ‘person bingo’ sheet).

Hope this is of help – let me know if you have any further questions or suggestions!

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