Disease Detectives

Participants: 2

Materials: You are allowed to bring a double-sided notesheet and two scientific, non-graphing calculators.

A helpful first step is to learn the basic vocabulary and procedures relating to outbreaks, transmission, and infectious agents. The rules manual for the current year outlines all of the necessary topics, in addition to covering the basic rules. After this it is useful to learn about the various statistical tools used to investigate outbreaks. Finally, the best thing you can do is take practice tests, check what you did wrong and why you did it wrong, and then update your study guide appropriately with new vocabulary, diagrams, or information. Practice tests can be found at the Science Olympiad Test Exchange.

Notesheet:

Use color, boldface, bullet points, tables, and diagrams whenever you can instead of paragraphs of text, and make sure that the information will be easily accessible during the test. A clear, dedicated vocabulary question will be very helpful, as well as information about the 10 steps of outbreak investigation and other hard-to-memorize information.

Example notesheet:

Disease Detectives Notesheet

The test will be a stapled packet, which you can usually separate. It is generally best to work separately on different halves for the easier or more tedious questions, such as the calculations and vocabulary, but for the harder thinking questions working with your partner can help generate good ideas. They do not give you very much time to complete the test, so work quickly and skip any questions you can't answer, and come back to them at the end. For less experienced teams, focus on the calculations and vocabulary first as those are surefire points, and then work on everything else.