Incorrect global player scores

Started by CharlieFortsConscience

Vincera Lv 1

We should be able to keep all points accrued. If a lapse occurs, our respective ranks would reflect that ANYWAY, sans interventions and tampering.

mimi Lv 1

As Infjamc mentioned, I'm not playing at present because I'm away travelling the world.
I have every expectation that by the time I get back I will have lost most, if not all, of my current points. I may well be back to playing <150 pt level puzzles. It will be a challenge to see if I can get back up to my previous level.

If players kept all their accumulated points then new players would never be able to compete with those who have been around for the last three years or more. The four month cut off makes life interesting and allows "newbies" to play on an equal footing with the veterans.

The scoring mechanism has always appeared to be a bit "erratic". It would be nice to see an automatic recalculation on a 120 day basis - or whatever - that way we could all easily check whether there seems to be a problem with our own scores.

infjamc Lv 1

Re: SuperNova

"Steady participation and INCREASED performance is my aim, not steady performance. I need my stats to reflect that for me to perceive some that I've advanced my skills base, even if ever so slightly."

Well, in theory, this will eventually happen… but it takes time. In your case, for example, the sudden drop was unfortunately due to a scoring gap between the <15 / <150 puzzles and the "regular" puzzles: your <15 and <150 puzzles accounted for 245 points (30.63 pts/puzzle over 8 puzzles) within the span of one month, while your non-beginner puzzles afterward accounted for 170 points over 26 puzzles (6.5 pts/puzzle). Hence, once the September 2010 puzzles dropped out of the equation, a huge drop in rank was unfortunately inevitable even though your skills are most likely actually progressing.

==> Don't be discouraged, though. The fact is that the "beginners only" puzzle are not a fair comparison because it is much easier to be ranked high there. After all, it's obviously much harder to score at the same rate as in the <15 and <150 puzzles when the competition pool is much larger. This fact is further strengthened by the way that score is calculated (relative position raised to the 7th power), which arguably rewards a small number of very good performances over a steady above-average performance. For example, ranking in the 75th percentile over 10 puzzles would yield 14 points per puzzle (for 140 points), while ranking in the 95th percentile over 2 puzzles and in the 60th percentile over the other 8 would yield 70 pts/puzzle over the two top finishes and 3 pts/puzzle for the other eight, for a total of 164 points.

Bottom line: unless you are consistently performing significantly above average, your improvement in skills could very easily be hidden by the seemingly low score. For example, your profile page indicated that you're getting 6.65 pts/puzzle over 30 puzzles during the last four months. While this number might look low at first glance, the fact is that this translates a 68 percentile performance (about half a standard deviation above average). Statistically speaking, this means that your skills are definitely improving.

[By the way: My experience is that scripting, while useful, is not necessary or even sufficient for success. Some tactics require significant human judgment and cannot be easily automated without programming a full AI (good luck with that) anyway. Plus, there's always the option of downloading the recipes and scripts that others have created and combining them with your manual folding strategies…]

CharlieFortsConscience Lv 1

The 4 month score window is probably the fairest way of 'levelling the playing field' between so-called veterans and newer players, as it reflects contribution over a sustained period of activity. As players hang around and improve, they naturally find their level, and older scores fall off the back of the window.

The notion of these web-page scores for group, evo and solo occasionally needing a recalculation has come up before (http://fold.it/portal/node/986302). There does also seem to be an issue with <15 and <150 contributing towards current group scores (when they shouldnt). To be fair, they historically do seem to be trimmed away, but it just underlines the need for a recalculation.

For clarification, is the 4 month window calculated by month, or is it 120 days (as mimi mentioned earlier)?
It would be great to set the record straight here in fine detail, once and for all - ""for example…""

Today is the 15th Feb, the window is 10 days long, so it stretches from the 6th to the 15th. This means the first scoring puzzle is 397 which ended on the 7th, and 396 is dropped, as it finished on the 5th which is 11 days ago, and therefore the first puzzle outside of the window.

Thanks
CFC