D-Values

NAQT computes “D-Values” to issue invitations to its Intercollegiate Championship Tournament (ICT) and Community College Championship Tournament (CCCT). The inputs to the D-Values are teams’ performances at the Sectional Championship Tournaments (SCTs) and Community College Sectional Championship Tournaments (CC SCTs).

D-Values are calculated to compare the performance of teams that competed at different qualifying tournaments.

The system is based on, and named for, a proposal by former NAQT writer Dwight Wynne, who played quiz bowl at Capistrano Valley High School, UCLA, and UC-Irvine.

The original D-Value system was introduced in 2010. It was used through 2017 and then also for the 2018 CC SCTs. A second version was used for the 2018 SCTs and 2019 CC SCTs. A third version (described on this page) was introduced for the 2019 four-year SCTs. Both CC SCTs and four-year SCTs have used the third version since 2020. The changes are summarized here.

NAQT’s ICT qualification process strongly emphasises D-Values: The first 20 spots in the field are reserved for the teams with the highest D-Values.

Components

The system makes use of these statistics:

Method

The team’s base D-Value is computed to simulate the points it would score in a 20-tossup game against average opponents. It equals

20 × (Adjusted TUPPTUH + (Adjusted BHPTUH × Adjusted PPB))

This computation is done separately for the Division I and Division II fields.

After the base values are computed, they are listed in order for each SCT and a correction is applied to ensure that invitations do not break the order of finish at an SCT. Starting at the top of each SCT, each team is checked to see if it finished above one or more teams with higher D-Values. If it did, then that team and every team between it and the lowest team with a higher D-Value are given the mean D-Value of that group and ranked in order by their finish (and, if still tied, by base D-Value).

After those order-of-finish corrections are applied for each SCT, the rankings are combined into a single list for each division.

Public Nature

The raw data for the teams and the computed values will be posted on NAQT’s website.

Tournament Schedule

NAQT maintains a schedule of college events, including novice tournaments, sectional championships, and the Intercollegiate Championship Tournament.

View Schedule

Contact Us

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to write to us at naqt@naqt.com or call us at 888‑411‑6278 (“NAQT”).

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