Freezing Saddles 2018

[hozn]

@LhasaCM 168879 wrote:

My understanding (Steve can correct me if I’m wrong) is that the proposal on the table is for there to be a 50 point bonus for “rode-with-others” over the course of the competition (so you only get the bonus once per person, even if you ride with someone every day).

Honestly, (and this is coming from a relative newbie here so I don’t have a ton of experience to support it), I kind of like the idea of having the participation part (x points per day plus y points per FS person you rode with) be simple to understand with the mileage component (it being logarithmic so it’s not a simple point per mile and/or the MASS adjustment) be somewhat inscrutable, so that the easy to digest motivator is just getting out there with other people.

Yes, I agree. I like that idea.

@Steve O, what do you think about logarithmic mileage-to-points conversion?

[hozn]

@Steve O 167837 wrote:

So all I need is an appropriate title. Freezing Saddles Tyrant has a nice ring to it.

I propose the following scoring system based on the key goals of 1) encouraging people to ride their bikes even when the weather is bad and 2) building our community of bicycling friends.

– Days and Miles per MASS (Median Adjusted Scoring System*)
– 50 bonus points for each different FS rider you ride with (according to Strava)

This system combines the goals of FS and should be automatable (Strava reports who I ride with, so I assume the data is available).
Last year I rode with about 15 different other FS participants at least once, which is 750 points. Strangely, Strava only showed me riding with 4 riders at the FSLNHPP. People who went on the President’s Day ride would have done very well, possibly earning 1000 points. You only get points once for each unique rider, so even if you ride with your same buddy every day, it’s just 50 points.

Perhaps extra bonus for teammates would be good, too.

(*This adjust scores such that more points are awarded on gnarly days than on clement days. It has little effect on every-day riders since they ride every day. There’s a thread from last year with discussion of this and other ideas: http://bikearlingtonforum.com/forumdisplay.php?41-Freezing-Saddles-Winter-Riding-Competition. I based my Badassiest and Pusillanimousiest Pointless Prizes on this system.)

So, my only problem with the MASS system is that (as I understood it), it can only be calculated at the end of some interval — or the the end of the competition? I think it’s important that any scoring system provide an immediate and immutable score once the ride is uploaded/processed.

I’m all for rewarding cold rides in FS, though. Perhaps we could adopt a freeze-points-like system. And of course I’m also proposing that we change to using a logarithmic scale for mileage to put the focus on getting out there and riding — and with others. And not about using up vacation days to crank out 300 miles (unless you just want to do that, in which case great, but it wont’ get you more points than finding someone new to ride with).

[PeteD]

@hozn 168881 wrote:

Yes, I agree. I like that idea.

@Steve O, what do you think about logarithmic mileage-to-points conversion?

Was talking about this just this morning… That and using 2nd or 3rd standard deviations to determine a drop line for determining if a person should be dropped from a team.

But… Math

[LhasaCM]

@hozn 168882 wrote:

So, my only problem with the MASS system is that (as I understood it), it can only be calculated at the end of some interval — or the the end of the competition? I think it’s important that any scoring system provide an immediate and immutable score once the ride is uploaded/processed.

I’m all for rewarding cold rides in FS, though. Perhaps we could adopt a freeze-points-like system. And of course I’m also proposing that we change to using a logarithmic scale for mileage to put the focus on getting out there and riding — and with others. And not about using up vacation days to crank out 300 miles (unless you just want to do that, in which case great, but it wont’ get you more points than finding someone new to ride with).

You can calculate it whenever you want, but the numbers will keep changing until all rides are recorded. As I recall, the way the leaderboard was set up last year was a “real-time” recalculation where one’s score would change during the day as more rides were uploaded. In other words – someone who logs a ride shortly after midnight and uploads it right away would have a HUGE bonus for that day’s ride, but by the end of the day when folks had uploaded their rides, it would normalize. Folks really wouldn’t know what their score was until the rides were uploaded, though you’d have a reasonable approximation by the end of a given day (since I think most people uploaded on a daily basis). Since this leaderboard wasn’t introduced right away, some of the “early in the competition” noise wasn’t as evident.

[Steve O]

@hozn 168882 wrote:

So, my only problem with the MASS system is that (as I understood it), it can only be calculated at the end of some interval — or the the end of the competition? I think it’s important that any scoring system provide an immediate and immutable score once the ride is uploaded/processed.

I might ask why you think that’s important? I think of it as a feature, not a bug. A little fog in the game makes it more interesting, IMO. If one rides on a really blizzardy day in January and then there aren’t any more of those, what’s wrong with getting a little more boost later on for being one of the few, the brave, the crazy?

Using MASS as originally conceived would require recalculating all the daily scores any time the median value changes if people were interested in their ranking on a daily basis. Potential approaches include:

• Exactly that – recalculate daily with an adjusted median
• Use an estimated proxy median until the end and then recalculate using the real one. I think this would be fun.
• Use an estimated proxy median, but update it every couple weeks to make it close to the current real one, with a final recalculate at the end.
• Use a set value at the beginning and stick with it. This is how the leaderboard currently works, using 200 as the value. This system works just fine, and I doubt it changes the rankings much, if at all. This also has the (dis)advantage of knowing your score at the end of each day without fear (or hope) that it will change again.

[Steve O]

@hozn 168881 wrote:

@Steve O, what do you think about logarithmic mileage-to-points conversion?

I’m fine with it, and am supportive of the idea that the early miles on a particular day (notwithstanding mile #1, which already is) should be more valuable than the later ones.

[wheelswings]

I think it would be great if more FS riders interacted socially, both online and in person. It’s frustrating to have teammates who never once bother to say hi, even on Strava. So I understand where Steve O is coming from with the riding-with-others points. That said, I’d vote against the proposal.

Two considerations:

(1)I am not convinced that awarding points for riding together would actually do that much to encourage the FS riders who drop out of sight and barely participate. I think the suggestions from Sunyata and others may help. And the wealth of coffee clubs, donut rides, taste-testing contests, brewery visits, and other activities will hopefully draw people in, though I realize that’s not always been the case in recent years.

(2)For me a huge strength of FS is the fact that it’s so welcoming. You just need to pedal your bike. There are a wealth of opportunities, but it is what you make of it and what works for each person. As a single parent with carpools, eldercare, and other responsibilities, it’s challenge enough to get myself out the door on a lot of days. I like the fact that I can still find ways to participate…sponsoring prizes, setting up happy hours, writing silly limericks, going to the occasional coffee club, etc. and that I’m not penalized for my lack of availability. There are many different ways to be social, and to prioritize riding-with-others just doesn’t work for me. And honestly, as much as I enjoy the occasional caravan, I’d say that such rides are often the least “social” of all social activities, at least on the winding trails and crowded roads of Arlington and DC.

I’m hoping we will keep the point system simple without a social component, and consider making riding-with-others a pointless prize option.

Just my two cents. w&w

[hozn]

@Steve O 168888 wrote:

I might ask why you think that’s important? I think of it as a feature, not a bug. A little fog in the game makes it more interesting, IMO. If one rides on a really blizzardy day in January and then there aren’t any more of those, what’s wrong with getting a little more boost later on for being one of the few, the brave, the crazy?

Using MASS as originally conceived would require recalculating all the daily scores any time the median value changes if people were interested in their ranking on a daily basis. Potential approaches include:

• Exactly that – recalculate daily with an adjusted median
• Use an estimated proxy median until the end and then recalculate using the real one. I think this would be fun.
• Use an estimated proxy median, but update it every couple weeks to make it close to the current real one, with a final recalculate at the end.
• Use a set value at the beginning and stick with it. This is how the leaderboard currently works, using 200 as the value. This system works just fine, and I doubt it changes the rankings much, if at all. This also has the (dis)advantage of knowing your score at the end of each day without fear (or hope) that it will change again.

I guess I was thinking that if there were a close competition it would feel more “fair” to know your score early, but I suppose it’s also true that someone could stockpile rides and upload them all at the end to surge ahead. So maybe it doesn’t matter.

Of course, I’m also assuming that we can express the more complicated logic all in the db layer so that the changing of the points just happens automatically as the underlying data changes (rides are uploaded), but so far I don’t think there’s any reason to think we can’t calculate this automatically.

[hozn]

@wheels&wings 168890 wrote:

I think it would be great if more FS riders interacted socially, both online and in person. It’s frustrating to have teammates who never once bother to say hi, even on Strava. So I understand where Steve O is coming from with the riding-with-others points. That said, I’d vote against the proposal.

Two considerations:

(1)I am not convinced that awarding points for riding together would actually do that much to encourage the FS riders who drop out of sight and barely participate. I think the suggestions from Sunyata and others may help. And the wealth of coffee clubs, donut rides, taste-testing contests, brewery visits, and other activities will hopefully draw people in, though I realize that’s not always been the case in recent years.

(2)For me a huge strength of FS is the fact that it’s so welcoming. You just need to pedal your bike. There are a wealth of opportunities, but it is what you make of it and what works for each person. As a single parent with carpools, eldercare, and other responsibilities, it’s challenge enough to get myself out the door on a lot of days. I like the fact that I can still find ways to participate…sponsoring prizes, setting up happy hours, writing silly limericks, going to the occasional coffee club, etc. and that I’m not penalized for my lack of availability. There are many different ways to be social, and to prioritize riding-with-others just doesn’t work for me. And honestly, as much as I enjoy the occasional caravan, I’d say that such rides are often the least “social” of all social activities, at least on the winding trails and crowded roads of Arlington and DC.

I’m hoping we will keep the point system simple without a social component, and consider making riding-with-others a pointless prize option.

Just my two cents. w&w

Your two cents certainly matter.

I suppose if value is assigned to “riding with others” we might want to lower the points impact so that it isn’t perceived that in order to do well in freezing saddles you have to hunt down new people to ride with every day. On the other hand, finding new riding partners is probably one of the best things one could hope for from a competition like this, so from the sidelines I think it sounds like a nice idea.

But I hear you. If I were playing (I haven’t signed up yet, but might consider it given different rules focus), I’d probably be a little wary of the social points component since it certainly favors folks that are commuting in denser areas [of cyclist commuters]. I’d probably make some special detours, though to ride the MVT in the AM or something just so I could ride with other folks … so maybe that’s exactly the point.

[TwoWheelsDC]

I’m an anti-social reverse commuter (DC to the ‘burbs), so a socially-orientated points system would probably lead me to go ahead and withdraw. I like the contest in the sense that it gives me a way to see how my winter riding stacks up to that of others, but I’m not one to make an effort to participate in social rides/activities, outside of maybe a ride or two to put names to faces with my teammates.

[hozn]

@TwoWheelsDC 168894 wrote:

I’m an anti-social reverse commuter (DC to the ‘burbs), so a socially-orientated points system would probably lead me to go ahead and withdraw. I like the contest in the sense that it gives me a way to see how my winter riding stacks up to that of others, but I’m not one to make an effort to participate in social rides/activities, outside of maybe a ride or two to put names to faces with my teammates.

Were you otherwise trying to win the points competition? Or are you concerned that you’d be doing your team a disservice if you didn’t get enough ‘rides with others’ in.

I do think the 50 points per person is probably too high, but it’s an interesting idea to have something that encourages meeting other cyclists.

But I think one could pretty easily argue against a points system that simply rewards based on mileage (and some bonus for daily participation). This make it hard for folks who don’t have the luxury of being able to spend 4 hours a day on their bikes to ever hope to compete in the points competition. I think adding a social component to scoring could make it competitive to a much larger group and keep the competition more dynamic. I liked some ideas thrown out earlier (perhaps last year) about having bonus points based on winning some of the ongoing pointless prize competitions too, not sure how exactly that gets managed technically, but anything to keep the competition open seems like it would be an improvement.

[Steve O]

@wheels&wings 168890 wrote:

I think it would be great if more FS riders interacted socially, both online and in person. It’s frustrating to have teammates who never once bother to say hi, even on Strava. So I understand where Steve O is coming from with the riding-with-others points.

Thanks
@wheels&wings 168890 wrote:

(1)I am not convinced that awarding points for riding together would actually do that much to encourage the FS riders who drop out of sight and barely participate. I think the suggestions from Sunyata and others may help. And the wealth of coffee clubs, donut rides, taste-testing contests, brewery visits, and other activities will hopefully draw people in, though I realize that’s not always been the case in recent years.

I agree. I don’t think there’s anything that can pull out the “barely participate” types. However, there are others who may be the “participate some” types who will participate more. All things are on a scale. Moving the far end of the scale is likely impossible, but moving some people in the middle is not.

I would be strongly in favor of including more of the community type activities in the scoring. The proposal I made is one that can be accomplished with Strava, which is why I suggested it. I have a hundred ideas for other ways to improve the scoring, but I don’t know how they could be implemented technically (e.g., bonus points for winning a pointless prize, for offering a pointless prize, for organizing a donut/brewery ride, for beerneuring, for posting photos on instagram, etc.)
I have heard support from many corners to augment the scoring with a social component. Although this suggestion is not perfect, we can’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

@wheels&wings 168890 wrote:

(2)For me a huge strength of FS is the fact that it’s so welcoming. You just need to pedal your bike. There are a wealth of opportunities, but it is what you make of it and what works for each person. As a single parent with carpools, eldercare, and other responsibilities, it’s challenge enough to get myself out the door on a lot of days. I like the fact that I can still find ways to participate…sponsoring prizes, setting up happy hours, writing silly limericks, going to the occasional coffee club, etc. and that I’m not penalized for my lack of availability. There are many different ways to be social, and to prioritize riding-with-others just doesn’t work for me. And honestly, as much as I enjoy the occasional caravan, I’d say that such rides are often the least “social” of all social activities, at least on the winding trails and crowded roads of Arlington and DC.

No one is being penalized for anything; see post #120 in this thread.

Or, everyone is being penalized for everything. People who have to work on Fridays are penalized for not being able to go on 60-mile hooky rides. People with full-time jobs are penalized for not riding centuries every day. People with weekend obligations are penalized for only being able to get in a sleaze ride on Sat/Sun. People with short commutes are penalized for not having long commutes. People who travel are penalized for not being able to ride every single day. People who can’t stay up late are penalized for not being able to do the post-midnight sleaze to avoid the big storm…..
Everyone can come up with their own whine about why they are being “penalized” by any particular scoring system–all of which are arbitrary in different ways.

I disagree that “You just need to pedal your bike.” In fact, the first point you made was complaining about people who did only that and nothing else. It is, in fact, all the other things about FS above and beyond just pedaling that make it such a rich experience for so many. Somehow including the most important aspect of the game in the scoring seems like a no-brainer.

[TwoWheelsDC]

@hozn 168895 wrote:

Or are you concerned that you’d be doing your team a disservice if you didn’t get enough ‘rides with others’ in.

This. I’m obviously fine with some type of prize or bonus for riding with others, but I wouldn’t want it the competition heavily weighted in that direction…I would effectively become a liability for my team in that case.

[Steve O]

@TwoWheelsDC 168894 wrote:

I’m an anti-social reverse commuter (DC to the ‘burbs), so a socially-orientated points system would probably lead me to go ahead and withdraw. I like the contest in the sense that it gives me a way to see how my winter riding stacks up to that of others, but I’m not one to make an effort to participate in social rides/activities, outside of maybe a ride or two to put names to faces with my teammates.

So if you ended up in 46th place instead of 36th place because some other people took rides with other FS participants, would you get your panties all in a knot?

[Edelweiss]

@LhasaCM 168887 wrote:

You can calculate it whenever you want, but the numbers will keep changing until all rides are recorded. As I recall, the way the leaderboard was set up last year was a “real-time” recalculation where one’s score would change during the day as more rides were uploaded. In other words – someone who logs a ride shortly after midnight and uploads it right away would have a HUGE bonus for that day’s ride, but by the end of the day when folks had uploaded their rides, it would normalize. Folks really wouldn’t know what their score was until the rides were uploaded, though you’d have a reasonable approximation by the end of a given day (since I think most people uploaded on a daily basis). Since this leaderboard wasn’t introduced right away, some of the “early in the competition” noise wasn’t as evident.

As a Midnight Rider, I used to LOVE seeing my name at the TOP of the leaderboard after my rides, and then I had to brace for how far I fell in the standings when I got up in the morning.

[Author]

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