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September 30, 2005
Scoring and rule changes
Lots of you are worried about the scoring for the first challenge part B, especially given the problems you had submitting. The marking scheme is complicated, but will take those problems into account. In this entry we will (try to) explain the scoring system and outline two rule changes designed to discourage the sort of multiple submission frenzy that slowed everything down yesterday.What you need to know is that we give you two marks for each Challenge B, one for accuracy and one for speed. To do this we look at your most accurate submission and give it a score for accuracy out of 100. Then we look at the time you submitted that version and give it a mark for speed. If you submit the same solution multiple times we will (from Challenge 2 onwards - this is our first rule change) use the last copy we receive in assessing your speed. This is to discourage multiple rapid fire submissions which would in fact slow you down.
In week one the mark for speed will be out of five, with a mark of 5 for a submission on September 29th or 30th , 4 for a submission on October 1st and so on with a mark of 1 for submitting on October 4th or 5th. Your overall mark in Challenge 1B will therefore look like (x%, y) with a maximum of (100, 5), and we will compare these using the dictionary order so that a score of (100, 5) beats everything, (70, 5) is beaten by (80, 5) and (70,5) beats (70, 4). [Note added: (80,1) beats (70,5)] Other part B challenges will be marked in a similar way, though the number of marks available for speed increases as the Challenge gets harder and we distinguish by smaller time periods, part day, hours or minutes rather than by the day. We combine your marks in the part B challenges to produce the final rankings. The outcome is that being delayed by even several hours yesterday will not affect your position in the final table. Of course you can all think of much better schemes, but I'm afraid this is not open to debate or discussion, and I hope we can agree that it is fair.
For the part A challenge we will give you a mark out of 100 for your best submission and speed will not matter.
The second rule change is that we will disqualify anyone who makes an unreasonable number of submissions. In the first instance this will mean that anyone who submits more than 20 times in 10 minutes will be open to disqualification, so go easy on the submit button! Given our scoring scheme you don't need to hammer at it like a woodpecker at a tree, and you are more likely to get a response from the server if you don't wear it out.
Posted by Harry at September 30, 2005 04:42 PM
Comments
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If the code is in blocks of five letters do you need to change it into word blocks, or does the scorer ignore spaces anyway?
Posted by: Jane at October 15, 2005 03:14 PM
that's not a problem, usually i do part A at school and part B at home, meaning that it is a completely different browser. thank you!
Posted by: harry de voil at October 6, 2005 09:53 PM
Harry, that is OK with us, but the automatic system will still want you to close the browser window, and in some cases to do more (see the entry in the log).
Posted by: Harry at October 6, 2005 09:41 PM
wait a sec. what if i submit A and B separately. is this okay? say at 4.15 i submit ONLY part A. then at 4.30 i submit ONLY part B. will this work, yes? the automatic system won't look at the last submission and think that i just haven't bothered to do part A?
Posted by: harry de voil at October 6, 2005 09:39 PM
No, Chloe, even (71,1) would beat (70, 5)!
Posted by: Harry at October 5, 2005 09:01 PM
would (70,5) beat (71,4)?
Posted by: Chloe at October 5, 2005 06:49 PM
What can I say? It was there. If you mean should you have corrected it, then the answer is no you should ALWAYS decrypt the message as it is written!
Posted by: Harry at October 3, 2005 03:59 PM
i found the spelling mistake aswell. was it supposed to be there?
Posted by: Beth at October 3, 2005 03:51 PM
Bradley, it will come out on Thursday at 4pm. There is a schedule showing when each Challenge comes out and the deadline for submit each solution on the standing orders page. All the best, Harry
Posted by: Harry at October 3, 2005 08:19 AM
when will the next code come out
Posted by: Bradley Hunt at October 3, 2005 07:50 AM
yeah those scoring rules sound really fair and will certainly cut out those who keep submitting their answers.
Posted by: claire at October 2, 2005 11:09 PM
The cipher challenge is worth every bit of effort and knoledge to crack and decipher the code.It really gets you thinking about which letter goes where.
Me and my team mate are up to the challenge and we will fight to the end, ARE YOU?
we want competition so just bring it on!!!
Posted by: Matthew Jacobs at October 2, 2005 08:33 PM
Thanks for letting us know about how the scoring works. Perhaps if we'd known about it before you wouldn't have had people rushing to get it in in the first 30 seconds because they thought every second counted.
What are the time intervals going to be for the next challenges then?
Thanks,
Mike
Posted by: Michael Bryant at October 2, 2005 03:33 PM
Cecil, leave any non alphabetic characters alone, unless we tell you otherwise, we will strip them out and it won't affect your submission.
Posted by: Harry at October 2, 2005 09:56 AM
What should we do if we come across a number in a ****** ***** cipher?
Posted by: cecil at October 2, 2005 09:25 AM
James, I understand your point, but believe me the later challenges take more than a few minutes to crack! We do need some way to separate out the top competitors and this is one way to do it. All the best, Harry.
Posted by: Harry at October 1, 2005 09:38 PM
I don't think the time scores should change. So I think the first 2 days 5 etc should stay the same throughout. Mainly because then it comes down to who has the most free time and who can get onto a computer the quickest. Two days and so on for the scores makes it fair as it gives everyone a chance to get at least a look at it, before you start losing points. Also if you have an activity at 4-8 lets say on a Thursday you will start off fine for the first challenges and then lose points when the timing gets stricter. So it isn't really sorting out who gets it done quicker.
Posted by: James at October 1, 2005 09:33 PM
Yes, (80,4) beats (70, 5). All the best, Harry.
Posted by: Harry at October 1, 2005 03:26 PM
I suppose it would
Posted by: Ruth at October 1, 2005 03:04 PM
Would (80,4) beat (70,5)?
Posted by: Ruth at October 1, 2005 03:03 PM
I also spotted the spelling mistake. Did everyone else find it in the last clause of the second sentence?
Posted by: Jocasta at September 30, 2005 09:40 PM
I think the new rules are good, but the Honours Board should be done differently because of the changes. Instead of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th it should be something like 1st, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3rd, 4th.
Also, is there suppose to be a spelling mistake in part b?
Posted by: jon at September 30, 2005 07:28 PM
I think that that's quite a fair system.
I didn't like the average score system last year that much, because anyone coming low down on the first challenge got knocked right out.
If you're only going to score time in terms of minutes, on later challenges, then it might end up with quite a few people on identical scores, but then perhaps that's good, because the final challenge will be a real decider.
Posted by: tom at September 30, 2005 06:44 PM