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Chimp Challenge Idea's

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Adak

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 9, 2006
I'm inviting over other teams, to share their idea's for changing the Chimp Challenge race.

I'd like this to be an open discussion of idea's and not a critical analysis.
 
Good idea Adak.

1. I liked the way the points were figured this year. (Handicaped?)

2. I would have liked a place to check the points individually, but realize someone would have to keep this up. (say on day 3 I wanted to see where the teams were at- before Adak posted it here) - may not be possible. - just a thought, that might not happen and I'll have to suck it up like the rest. :p

3. Enjoyed competing against other teams, hoped it help bring the forums together a bit.
Maybe have a Thread deticated ever year at a different forum, sort of a HOST for the CC, a place we can go and talk smack maybe each year? That may get unruley though. 50/50 on that thought....

Just my .02.

:attn:
WII
 
I liked the point system as well. I say this now, despite the fact that it really sets the bar high for us next year. We increased our points over last year by about 50 million, and last year we only had like 40 million points in the entire CC... That's why our growth dominated fools. It's also why next year we will really have to work hard to improve even more.

2. I would have liked a place to check the points individually, but realize someone would have to keep this up. (say on day 3 I wanted to see where the teams were at- before Adak posted it here) - may not be possible. - just a thought, that might not happen and I'll have to suck it up like the rest. :p

Maybe you didn't see this link to the stats, updated real time - I think this is what you wanted:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqJjQktZy8GkdFFlSjctandWTmNuSkhrSVFSZVFxOWc#gid=3
 
i like that idea as well. helps build the community and spirit of the competition!

my two cents would be for the chimp challenge to have a dedicated website with the stats posted on the front page and a blurb about what FAH is and what the chimp challenge is. have the start/end dates and times for the next challenge on there. a page showing past challenge team winners and final stats. a page for team descriptions and links to teams. and other various things.
 
i like that idea as well. helps build the community and spirit of the competition!

my two cents would be for the chimp challenge to have a dedicated website with the stats posted on the front page and a blurb about what FAH is and what the chimp challenge is. have the start/end dates and times for the next challenge on there. a page showing past challenge team winners and final stats. a page for team descriptions and links to teams. and other various things.

Something like this would be a good start (I don't think they did it again for 2012):
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/chimp_challenge/2011/
 
I wonder if we could talk IMOG into talking to the Bosses at iNet
about actually HOSTING it next year?

Just a thought.

I've always been a dreamer about how much support we could muster over Cancer and all the rest.
 
I think thats a great idea, but what does hosting it entail (that inet could help with)? I think other sites, just send out emails/start threads for adverts, and someone needs to keep stats.

Sorry, Im not good at thinking outside the box. Any more support that anyone can provide is always welcomed. :)
 
I wonder if we could talk IMOG into talking to the Bosses at iNet
about actually HOSTING it next year?

Just a thought.

I've always been a dreamer about how much support we could muster over Cancer and all the rest.

iNET doesn't have much to offer - they don't have extra developer time to devote to any support for "fun" community things. Every week there are barrels full of initiatives that don't get worked on, because all design and developer time is utilized. 4 devs and 1 designer, and something more than 20 websites. We could happily provide a page, hosting, and bandwidth... But the actual features, design, organization, and anything else related to "hosting" the CC would need to be supported by us, the community itself.

That's kind of iNET's game - they don't want to run anything for us, but are happy to see us take ownership and make things what we want of them.
 
That's cool, wasn't sure if they could provide server space for Stats is all.
A "web address" for the next Chimp Challenge.

www. CC.net or something like that. - just wondering, a place ALL the Teams could show up at for the "show down". Just thinking outloud is all. - as opposed to each Forum hosting it and us getting unruley and thrown out for Flinging too much poo at the competition.... in an "overly" friendly manner as things tend to get sometimes.

I understand their positon though.
 
I could put a domain into things, no problem - hosting and that I can cover. The hard part in my eyes is creating/managing the page content. I could handle the html, but would not have the time to put into it... If someone can step up for that, we could do it. I could take on a supporting role if problems or advice needed attention - just couldn't manage it myself.
 
I could put a domain into things, no problem - hosting and that I can cover. The hard part in my eyes is creating/managing the page content. I could handle the html, but would not have the time to put into it... If someone can step up for that, we could do it. I could take on a supporting role if problems or advice needed attention - just couldn't manage it myself.

Well I already have a nearly complete backend using python and a mysql database for fah. The only changed needed would be to use stanford's data instead of EOC's and to implement the point system (both of which would take less than a couple hours). The front end is based on drupal, and the only thing missing is a nice graphics set. If someone can help me with drupal/php and displaying nice graphs we could have this ready for next year pretty easily I think.
 
I'd be interested to see how you're inserting/updating the MySQL database. I've been messing with PHP/MySQL and trying to find the best way of handling that gigantic tab delimited stats file from Stanford.
 
I'd be interested to see how you're inserting/updating the MySQL database. I've been messing with PHP/MySQL and trying to find the best way of handling that gigantic tab delimited stats file from Stanford.

I haven't actually implemented it fully in python mostly because I'm still experimenting with converting from an array to a dictionary, but my basic implementation looks like the following:

Code:
origarray = []
statsFile= open( "daily_team_summary.txt", "r" )
for aRow in statsFile:
     origarray.append(aRow.split('\t'))
statsFile.close()

Now you end with an array or arrays containing all of the data.
origarray[#][0] = name
origarray[#][1] = newcredit
origarray[#][2] = sum(total)
origarray[#][3] = team

You can then import it directly into mysql or play with it more.

I'm not sure how to convert my code to php, as I try to use python as much as I can.
 
Hey OCF, how is it going? :)

I was wondering what you guys think about another category that measures "how the team does during the competition" (in terms of keeping the production steady during the competition). Some of you may have read about my idea on this at EVGA forums; I call it Stamina ;) The initial version I had was not very robust to day to day fluctuations, but I think I have a better idea about it now.

I'm going to post it here if you think such a measure makes sense, and has potential to be included in CC as a category.
To give you a better idea of what I'm talking about, I recorded daily production of each team during CC2012 and made graphs. As you see, some teams (names not disclosed) did a good job of maintaining a good level of production (albeit with fluctuations), while some others did show a significant drop in production:
359mhzr.jpg
1z2izbo.jpg
110hjiq.jpg
2zexxck.jpg
2min82.jpg
ayam8n.jpg
qsp4k4.jpg
2v2i6pe.jpg

The motivation behind this idea is rewarding the teams who were able to maintain production during CC, and I believe I have a working measure towards this end.

So, I'm looking forward to hearing your comments on this...

Cheers!

PS: I know adding another category or replacing one requires agreement of all teams, but I decided to start here. If I get sufficiently positive response, I'll make a detailed post on this and I'll post on a few other teams' forums as well. Alternatively, we may direct them here...
 
You've done a lot of work on this, however --

If your category had been used, we might have lost the race, because we're a relatively small team, with a relatively high number of 4p systems.

That means our production was VERY uneven, and there is NOTHING we can do about it without "timing" when the 4P's can upload their wu's. (We are the top graph in your list.)

CCBeingEven.PNG

Which means a lot of "busy" bookkeeping work for us, AND a noticeable slow down in returning work units, because we're trying now to make each update more even.

That is bad, for two reasons:

1) The bookkeeping involved would cut out the fun of the race, and increase the work needed to run a good race, substantially.

2) Anything that slows down the return of work units, simply MUST be avoided, due to the sequential nature of FAH's work.

A category like yours would definitely always favor a large team, or a team with a smaller proportion of -bigadv folders on it. OCN, for instance, had VERY even updates, compared to ours.

For us, it's a very bad idea, as you must know from generating the above data. I'm not surprised you removed the team's names from the graphs. :sn:

I just found out today that you've started your own folding team! Very ambitious! :clap:

Note:
If you want to measure evenness in the updates, you can use Standard Deviation calculations to do it.
 
Last edited:
Hey Adak,
I think I was unable to communicate what the measure is trying to capture. Let me try it again.

It's not rewarding the teams who can have even daily updates, evenness is not an issue at all. What it's trying to capture is the dynamics of the average production during the competition. To give you a gist, what I'm looking at is the slope of the least-squares line (the trendline in Excel), after weeding out some outliers.

Just so you know, T32 did second best in Stamina in CC2012 and comes first still in the overall total ;)

As a result, as long as a team keeps the production up on the average (some ups and downs are always expected with bigadvs), the Stamina score will be high. So, you don't have to worry about timing, bookkeeping, or any other strategies. The only strategy would be "no matter what, just keep folding till the end of competition".

PS: Thanks, I try :)
 
In a race, especially a long one, some teams will do better at the start, while others do better at the middle or at the end of the race.

What amount of decrease they may have, from one part of the race to another, is not meaningful.

What the CC does need, is a formula for working with new teams that are in the CC for the first time.

I believe it helps to think of the CC like a simple handicap foot race. You and I get a head start, and Usain Bolt has to start later.

Now, would it make any difference if you won, even though you got tired and slowed down in the last part of the race?

No, it wouldn't matter.

Would it matter if Usain Bolt won the race, and he'd slowed way down to pose for a few pictures, before he crossed the finish line?

No, it wouldn't matter.

Obviously the CC is not a foot race, but my impression is that people wouldn't want this category added to the race, because they don't believe it matters if a team's production decreases (or how much), during the race.
 
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