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Detailed toplist

9 comments (Add new comment)
Posted 21st May 2012 at 13:54
kocos Daily subscriber
Excellent new feature!
How many users are green? I would guess 5, but it's really hard to distinguish.
Posted 21st May 2012 at 15:25
Last edited by gareth 21st May 2012 at 15:27
gareth Administrator Daily subscriber
The username fades from green to black over the top 5 users, so you're absolutely right. :) (The first fully-black one is the 6th).

Also, your own username is highlighted with a pale yellow bar if you've completed a puzzle in this way.

I'm glad you like it. The next step is to do a ranking chart for each puzzle type, so you get the average time over the most recent (say) 5 or 10 puzzles of a type.

If anyone has any other suggestions for ranking tables please let me hear them!

Another idea would be to have the 'best overall' for someone who completes all the puzzles on a day, except that's quite a high bar and some days I suspect almost no one will do all 4 puzzles without the aids (say if there's a 12x12 wraparound sudoku or something). It could be your 'best 2' puzzles but then that gets complex to define and I'd rather keep it simple.

Oh, and I still need to make the site keep track of whether you've opened a puzzle more than once. If you opened and closed it then it shouldn't count towards the chart unless you complete it on your first opening.


Gareth, puzzlemix

Posted 21st May 2012 at 16:28
kocos Daily subscriber
Instead of average time for puzzle type I would suggest a percentage against average time for each puzzles, and calculate the average for theese percentages for each type.

Like: I solved 4 kakuros.
# my time, average for the puzzle, my %
#1 2:00 1:00 200%
#2 1:30 1:00 150%
#3 4:00 3:00 133%
#4 6:00 10:00 60%

Average time:3:22 (pretty meaningless)
Average of averages: 3:45
My average against average of averages: 90%
My average percentage: 136%

Of course it might happen, that you have to leave your puzzle before finished, and forgot to save it. Or simply did not have the opportunity. So worst 10% could be exluded from the calculation. Or something like that, to prevent a 1536% kills your average.

I more thing: all time played would be interesting, however it has a chance to scare people. :)
"OMG, I could have changed the world during I played puzzlemix." :)

I would also love to see number of puzzles I solved fastest.

Posted 23rd May 2012 at 09:48
Elisabeth Daily subscriber
I have to admit I hadn't noticed the 'green' aspect of the ranking, perhaps because I am usually heading towards the other end! Whilst it is good to want to be a high achiever, I hope the competitive aspect will not dominate the website. There are surely many like me pleased to complete the puzzles, without any aids if possible, thus giving satisfaction. I am delighted tho' when I see the little yellow bar popping up, wherever. Good luck to those aiming for the top.
Posted 23rd May 2012 at 15:55
gareth Administrator Daily subscriber
Hi Elisabeth,
I completely agree - that's why I have the 'privacy' option in the user settings, so you can decide not to have your times shown in these charts. People should be able to solve the puzzles as they see fit and without feeling any pressure to do so at any given speed.

Gareth

Posted 23rd May 2012 at 16:02
Last edited by gareth 23rd May 2012 at 16:04
gareth Administrator Daily subscriber
Hi kocos,
Thanks for the suggestion. Average time is entirely meaningful if you rank over the same puzzle set for all users. Then if used to sort a ranking it is obviously equivalent to just the sum of all your times, which is an entirely fair metric to assess performance if everyone has done the exact same puzzles. So I would do this for say the most recent 10 slitherlink, and if you hadn't done all of them you wouldn't be in the ranking.

Your system allows the ranking to be independent of the puzzle selection, but that wasn't what I had in mind. That's much more of a universal ranking system, which I think is something else again - and definitely something I'm interested in doing, so I'm not dismissing that at all. For that to work the rankings would need to have a rule along the lines of "you must play the puzzle within 48 hours of it being published" and then the scores would be frozen at that point for that puzzle. Otherwise it would be too computationally expensive (to redo all calculations every time someone viewed the page).

I don't keep total time for all puzzles, particularly if you played the puzzles more than a year ago when I periodically wipe your data for expired puzzles, and if you played more than once. However just for you, kocos, I can tell you the sum of your most recent solve time (so ignoring any prior plays of a puzzle) for your puzzles I have in the database still is 218 hours. And yes, I don't want to scare people! I've considered that sort of stat before but I think it is more off-putting than helpful.

Gareth, puzzlemix

Posted 24th May 2012 at 08:22
kocos Daily subscriber
Disagree. There are puzzles within the same puzzle set, where the average (or with other words the difficulty) is much higher (e.g. 9 minutes against 36 minutes, 300% difference). If you simply sum up the results times, this will implicitly assign a weigth to each puzzle according to it's difficulty. I admit that this might be a valid approach, if you say this is your intended goal. However I would find system (all puzzle has the same weight) much more fair.

Here is an example. You write to test on the same subject. One of them has a maximum of 50 points, while the other has 100. Your result on the first one is 50 points (100%) and 60 points on the second one (60%). What percentage discribes your knowledge better? Sum of scores against sum of possible scores (110/150 = 73%) or the average of your percentages ((60+100)/2 = 80%). My vote goes to the second choice.

One more thing: you only have to recalculate results when a new (first) suolution time arrives. A simple view does not change the numbers. Considering this I would not froze the averages at all.

Posted 25th May 2012 at 11:45
kocos Daily subscriber
4 more days passed, and I have to say, the detailed toplist increased the enjoy factor of the site significantly.
Posted 31st May 2012 at 13:18
kocos Daily subscriber
Here is a toplist for the previous week: http://goo.gl/dLy3b
Green ranks were awarded with 5-4-3-2-1 points.

Gareth: could we have something like that in the future?

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