How are points assigned?

Started by Deleted user Edit Topic

shepherd Lv 1

Points decrease exponentially with ranking. To compare puzzles, you have to normalize for the number of players.

If you don't believe my data (above), run your own numbers.

Deleted user

Looking at the last closed puzzle, #65, there are a number of people with the same score who got different points assigned (because they were assigned rank randomly?) , then there are some with the same score who got the same number of points. So - rank doesn't seem to work in this case.

We can pursue this SWAGuessing forever - wouldn't it be easier for the project staff to just post the answer? What happened to the new, more frequent updates mentioned in the "Civility" thread? Haven't seen anything yet…

admin Staff Lv 1

Good guesses, shepherd. It's actually not exponential, but power of 7.

Angus, the people with the same score may not internally have the same score. What is displayed to you is a rounded score, some digits are chopped off, and these may be different. When people really have the same score, they also get the same number of points.

The formula for points on a puzzle is based on the total number of players in the puzzle, and your own rank. If there are less than 10, you get no points.

As Marijuana said, you get one point for showing up.

Points = Max(1, Ceil( 1 - (Rank - 1)/(NumPlayers - 1) )^7 ) * 100)

Feel free to put this in a convenient place on the wiki.

admin Staff Lv 1

Sorry. To quote ceil(3):
"ceiling function: smallest integral value not less than argument"

Diderot Lv 1

I'm sorry but this still doesn't make sense to me. A celi is described as the "smallest integral value not less than argument." But what does THAT mean?

Diderot Lv 1

Which argument are we talking about?

And is it "integral" (suggesting calculus not shown in the formula), or "integer" (which I understand)?

I think I understand, but these are why I was confused.

admin Staff Lv 1

It rounds up between the parentheses of the Ceil function.

Ceil(4.1) = 5. Ceil(4) = 4. Ceil(1 - 1/2) = 1.

Integral as a noun means what you think of in calculus; as an adjective here it means integer.

dejerpha Lv 1

Thank you Shepherd and Admin. I think it would be better to have your score depend, not on you rank, but on how far you are from the protein's best solution.

For instance, best result = 100 points, median result = 30 points…

That way, if a team is at first place at some point in the contest, it is still in its interest to try and find a much better solution (because this will lower everyone else's final score).

The ultimate goal of Fold.it being to find better solutions!