470: Revisiting Puzzle 153

Closed since over 14 years ago

Summary

• Created: October 20, 2011
• Expires: October 28, 2011 at 02:00 UTC
• Max points: 100

Description

We are revisting old Foldit puzzles so we can compare results to see how useful the recent additions to the game have been. Players will NOT be able to load in any previous solutions for these puzzles. The fourth Revisiting Puzzle goes back to June 2009: http://fold.it/portal/node/986227

Top groups

• 1. Void Crushers 100 pts. 10,882
• 2. Anthropic Dreams 88 pts. 10,859
• 3. Contenders 76 pts. 10,844
• 4. Deleted group pts. 10,822
• 5. Androids 57 pts. 10,792
• 6. Go Science 49 pts. 10,785
• 7. foldeRNA 42 pts. 10,718
• 8. ROMANIA Team 36 pts. 10,671
• 9. Deleted group pts. 10,658
• 10. Deleted group pts. 10,617

Top soloists

• 1. spmm 100 pts. 10,876
• 2. auntdeen 100 pts. 10,859
• 3. steveB 99 pts. 10,833
• 4. Junker 98 pts. 10,822
• 5. mimi 97 pts. 10,806
• 6. HYLEE1 96 pts. 10,783
• 7. mottiger 95 pts. 10,782
• 8. mangoman 94 pts. 10,781
• 9. gramps 93 pts. 10,777
• 10. emunch 93 pts. 10,776

Comments

[spvincent]

It seems that the scores for these "revisited" puzzles are quite a bit higher than the scores in the original puzzles. Assuming the scoring function hasn't changed in any way, any thoughts as to why?

[spmm]

IMHO these three things would have an influence:

1 Greater individual and collective experience in developing solutions. Including exposure to more protein types and shapes

2 Improved scripts, plus old and newscripts used more effectively (see 1)

3 Faster personal computers, allowing for more experimentation to arrive at a solution

[beta_helix]

…which is why we find these puzzles very interesting.

The question is also: is it just the scores that have gotten better (you have all gotten better at optimizing the Rosetta energy function) or are the solutions getting better (closer to the correct answer) which would also explain better scores (lower energies).

Obviously we will need to run a fair amount of these puzzles before we can come to a statistically significant conclusion, but we all agree these results are very interesting (and we hope these puzzles are old enough that they aren't too boring for those of you who played them already).

[spmm]

'are the solutions getting better (closer to the correct answer)'
It would be helpful to have that question answered for each puzzle, soon after they are completed and to compare the two. Is that possible or desirable?
It may be that in some sections solutions are very similar and in other sections quite different, but perhaps still not the 'best' answer.

[beta_helix]

but the reason we don't post the solutions (or a Quest to the Native) just after a puzzle closes is that we often want to give you the same puzzle in a different way:

for example the Exploration Puzzles or using Electron Density or adding constraints.

The only way we can gauge the impact of constraints, exploration, or using Electron Density is if we first have a control.

I completely realize that from your end it may seem like we aren't giving you enough information or feedback, and for that we do apologize.

We do try to provide as much information as we can for unsolved cases (since we obviously don't know the correct answer and want to make sure you have all the help you can get) but since those cases are rare we use the standard puzzles to gauge how we can improve the game to help you fold more efficiently.

[spmm]

understand, and I was certainly wondering what we might come up with for this puzzle if we were given it as an exploration or density puzzle.