"Freeze Points" metric

[jrenaut]

@Steve O 134654 wrote:

The one downside being that we’ll have to reserve the final HH location until midnight.

This is only a downside because unless we have it very quickly after the last day of the competition, i will likely be on a beach in the southern hemisphere when it happens.

Oh, wait, nevermind. There is no downside to being on a beach in the southern hemisphere mere days after Freezing Saddles ends. Carry on.

[hozn]

Yeah, my Garmin always reads 5-7° colder than weather.com (which I trust more); I don’t think using Strava/Garmin data would be more accurate.

I am considering, though, switching to always use lat/lon and slowly going back to correct previous rides where we used location names. My API key should allow sufficient lat/lon queries since we only do it once per day. It will probably be close, though.

[Vicegrip]

@Steve O 134654 wrote:

Just a reminder that the prizes are pointless. So arguing whether or not something is “fairer” or “better” or “more representative of FS” is kind of a pointless exercise as well.
That said, including more ways to look at data allows for even more Pointless Prizes to be awarded. There is no limit on winners. We already have something like 25-30 different awards going, so what’s one more? Or 5 more?

• Pointless prizes for those who end up in the identical place on both lists
• Person who accumulates the most negative points
• Highest average “Freeze Points” per mile ridden
• etc.

The one downside being that we’ll have to reserve the final HH location until midnight.

Please to not get me wrong. I like pointless prizes. in fact this year I am striving at 0.00 pointless prizes as a goal in and of itself. On the other hand it was mentioned that thermal gradient might be used as a modifier for team points. Pointless prizes are 1 thing and funny but
Team Points are a whole nother thing. I am all over any way to add to my team points. I am also all over any way to add laughs and granularity to the game.

[hozn]

Yeah, I proposed using it for official scoring. I wasn’t 100%/serious, though I do think a version of this (maybe not givng negative scores for longer rides) could be more interesting than a mileage-based system. Or at least seems to capture better essence of the competition. Rides in cold should be rewarded disproportionately, no?

Temp data isn’t perfect, but then neither are things like barometric elevation data and yet Strava loves climbing competitions. There are ways to improve the temp data too. (We should also track windspeed, probably.)

[QuikAF77]

A lot of the same names, of course, but as you say, some notable jumps between placings. Matt H, Pete B, Michael P for example all jump up quite a bit – all regular AM commuters, I think.

I like this new metric, I jumped from the 30’s and 40’s to 7th!

[hozn]

FWIW, I am redoing all weather data using lat/lon, so wunderground should use the closest weather station and not snap rides to regional authorities. The data won’t be perfect, of course, but it should be at least the same level of imperfect for everyone (in this region, not so confident about accuracy abroad).

[jrenaut]

What OS are you running? Is that Gnome 3?

[hozn]

Just to follow up, the rides are all using lat/lon-based weather now. So this is as good as it’s gonna get unless we can find a more accurate/better-coverage API for weather data.

@jrenaut, this is just Ubuntu 15.10 / Unity desktop. I’m pretty impatient when it comes to distros these days and enjoy the huge ubuntu community for solving my problems for me

[Vicegrip]

What magic is this? They are speaking in tongues. Burn them!

Thanks again to all the folks for all the work making the game run and be fun.

[DrP]

So, if you use manual entries for strava, none of these special metrics work? I guess trying to tell from my ride title where I went is tough in an automated manner. But they all are in the DC area, so one might think that could give some basic, even if not perfect numbers (and yes, DCA is all wrong with temp – there are many times through out the year that once you reach the Gravely Point parking lot you heat up until you cross 4MR. And one very memorable occasion of walls of temperature differences. And then the fog days.). Oh well. I guess I pay for not having something recording my every move. Darn.:rolleyes:

[jrenaut]

@hozn 134670 wrote:

@jrenaut, this is just Ubuntu 15.10 / Unity desktop. I’m pretty impatient when it comes to distros these days and enjoy the huge ubuntu community for solving my problems for me

I realize that less than 5% of the forum here will care about this, and less than 10% will even get what we’re talking about, but threadjacking is a part of this forum and I can’t help myself. I like Debian-based distros (and i’m currently running Debian 8 with Mate desktop) because they tend to be lighter than Ubuntu but can still use all the Ubuntu packages. When I finish this contract I’m on and have a minute of computer downtime I’m planning to reinstall my OS (which I like to do every 6 months or so, and would recommend everyone do on a similar schedule) and go back to Crunchbang (or at least the community continuation of the dead OS).

[vvill]

Nice!!! I assume this would affect snowiest/rainiest ride data too?

@Steve O 134654 wrote:

Just a reminder that the prizes are pointless. So arguing whether or not something is “fairer” or “better” or “more representative of FS” is kind of a pointless exercise as well.

Further to Vicegrip’s reply: I don’t think anyone is arguing at all. It’s just discussion, which I don’t think is actually pointless. If they were completely pointless, people wouldn’t bother coming up with them or competing for them, or awarding them! They’re more auxiliary or secondary but that doesn’t have the nice alliteration.

I guess the question is do we want to try to take this further than the original basic concept which was just adapted from the National Bike Challenge. It does seem a shame not to do a little more with all the data and keen riders we have. I imagine we’d always keep the existing scoring system (maybe it’d be the “Classic” leaderboard), but perhaps something involving more variables would be more interesting.

[hozn]

@jrenaut 134673 wrote:

I like Debian-based distros (and i’m currently running Debian 8 with Mate desktop) because they tend to be lighter than Ubuntu but can still use all the Ubuntu packages.

Wait, Ubuntu *is* a debian-based distro! I don’t mind the heft since it performs very snappy on my current system (the solid-state drive helps); I use Xubuntu on another older system where I want better performance. I like Debian’s stability, but want the latest/greatest packages. I have not tried this in dpkg land, but I assume you could not actually install Ubuntu packages that have been built against newer glibc (or other core Linux shared libs). You might also have to contend with different dep pkg naming, etc. At least that has been my experience mixing packages from different RH-based distros.

Ok, I won’t hijack vvill’s thread anymore.

Yeah, @vvill, this should affect snow data, though I should have done a before/after comparison. It doesn’t look hugely different.

[davidq]

@hozn 134666 wrote:

FWIW, I am redoing all weather data using lat/lon, so wunderground should use the closest weather station and not snap rides to regional authorities. The data won’t be perfect, of course, but it should be at least the same level of imperfect for everyone (in this region, not so confident about accuracy abroad).

Wow, nice work hozn.

I have a question for the coldest ride, what’s the criteria? I check mine looks like it pick the ride on Feb 6 which marks 33.10F (average?), but I knew this is not true. I have many short ride under frozen temperature, but the one I won’t forget is the ride I did on Jan 18 (https://www.strava.com/activities/473181536) because my water bottle totally frozen and I didn’t get drink until rest stop. My phone AccuWeather show that I started at 14F and finished at 19F. I am pretty sure the whole DC area should has similar temperature on Jan 18, which is MLK Birthday.

[hozn]

I will get back to you on that. The criteria is based on ride start location and weather observations over the duration of the ride, but I am not sure what chart you are referring to, so I will check the data.

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