[LhasaCM]

@hozn 169081 wrote:

Ok, these are good ideas. I do like Bob’s idea is 10,20,30 bonus points for miles 1-3.

If someone wants to propose a diminishing mileage formula that seems reasonable, I’m generally in favor of the idea. I was trying to see if I could find other similar scoring systems that had been used elsewhere, but hadn’t turned up anything in brief research.

As “food for thought” – here’s a quick example of a “tiered” system of diminishing returns for the number of miles ridden in a given day, separate from the bonus points idea. This is setup so that after every 10 mile increment, the value of the next incremental mile is reduced by, for example, 10%. In other words, 1 point per mile up to 10, 0.9 points per mile for anything between 10 and 20, 0.81 points per mile for anything between 20 and 30, etc. The Excel formula to calculate that is: 10*((1-0.9^ROUNDDOWN(MILES/10,0))/(1-0.9))+MOD(MILES,10)*(0.9^ROUNDDOWN(MILES/10,0)) That decreases a little bit faster than the previous example, with the 101st mile being worth 0.35 points. You can make it diminish faster or slower easily enough by changing the 0.9 figure either lower or higher. The table below shows what happens every 10 miles for 0.95, 0.9, 0.8, and 0.7.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]15806[/ATTACH]

One could mix and match so that you have a similar tiered idea, but with accelerating discounts (i.e., maybe you start with a 0.9 factor but make it 0.8 after 40 miles and 0.7 after 80 miles or whatever). Again – it all depends on what you want the results to look like.

[LhasaCM]

@hozn 169076 wrote:

I’m rethinking the idea of logarithmic mileage. It might be too complicated [for people to figure out] and maybe wouldn’t really further the goals of the competition. To encourage daily riding we could increase the per-day points from 10 to 20 … but maybe we keep mileage/points linear after that.[/quote]

I think the notion of logarithmic mileage or some other form of diminishing returns was to dampen the impact of really long rides (i.e., to remove some of the scoring system’s encouragement to keep adding miles) by making the 50th mile of the day, for example, less valuable than the 5th. If that’s desirable, then logarithmic mileage would be a pretty straightforward calculation; the challenge would be in defining how quickly to “depreciate” additional mileage – would it be something constant like each additional mile on a given day is only worth 99% of the previous mile (a discount of 1%), or would there be tiers with different discounts? The former approximates as “miles * (0.9975)^miles” aside from the “you rode today” bonus. In that math, 1 mile is 1 point, 2 miles is 1.99 points, 20 miles is 19 points, 50 miles is 44.1 points, 100 miles is 77.86 points (by which point an additional mile is 0.58 points). The math is relatively easy to figure out once the desired outcome is somewhat defined.

I do think that’s a separate (but related) issue from the daily bonus and the idea that Bob raised a few minutes ago (and others raised in the other post) of having additional points awarded for more than just the first completed mile. That way, there’s still a strong incentive for at least a sleaze ride of a mile, but also a strong incentive to maybe tack on a little more to get that 2nd mile (or 3rd mile) bonus.

[LhasaCM]

@AFHokie 169054 wrote:

Just remember there’s truth in the statement that “none of us is as dumb as all of us”

Not to pick on them, but keep in mind people such as Judd, Komorebi, & LSG who I rarely see riding apart from each other will benefit the most from these “social” points.

Think about how fast a team with a few people who already know each other and typically ride together will pull away from teams who start as strangers.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930AZ using Tapatalk

The idea as I understood it was you would only get credit for a person once, so there was not an inherent huge benefit to scenarios like (not to single people out) jrenaut riding with his wife or what you noted…just a one time benefit.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A5000 using Tapatalk

[LhasaCM]

@hozn 169007 wrote:

You’re certainly a key member of the organization!

Thanks for feedback. 10 points (and probably some limits of some kind) seems very reasonable. Maybe a maximum total points is not as important if there is a maximum per-ride bonus.

As someone who has even less of a vote than Sunyata and anyone else who’s chimed in, I still think a maximum total points is important to address some of the feedback above. Without some limits, it could be that the social component becomes more of a burden (must find someone to ride with to get more points) as opposed to an encouragement to ride with people if you can with a little bit of an extra incentive for those who otherwise may not. And that helps minimize the impact on those who, by nature of location or just “life” are not able to ride with (m)any others.

Sticking with the biathlon analogy: the Olympic biathlon race is a 10km cross country skiing race, with 10 targets to hit (in groups of 5) for the sprint (the individual race is twice as much for each). Any missed target results in a 150m penalty loop. So if someone doesn’t want to shoot at all, they end up with a 11.5km race, meaning the shooting part is roughly 1/8 of the total. So, if biking is skiing and “social riding” is shooting – the preponderance of the scoring weight should be on the biking aspect.

[LhasaCM]

@jrenaut 168996 wrote:

Let’s compromise. You get 10 bonus points every time you ride with Steve O. Steve O gets no points.

Using #rodewithsteveo so easy to code. Could be a winner.

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[LhasaCM]

@hozn 168983 wrote:

Codifying MASS needs some clarification too, I think. Is there any renewed interest in incorporating freeze points or is the thought that MASS makes that redundant?

I think MASS was meant to replace freeze points – the same general sense of “you get more points the worse it was outside” – but using our behavior as a proxy for weather conditions rather than temperature (or trying to make something up that would factor in precipitation/wind/etc.). It doesn’t include any sort of diminishing returns (which I think was raised elsewhere as another idea for consideration).

For the social riding aspect – for all of the discussion of if it’s a good idea or not, I think there’s also the open question of how easy/feasible it is to capture that with the Strava data (ignoring the quality of the algorithm’s results, as well). Does the Strava API expose the names/IDs of the “rode with…” in an easy enough to use way? (Poking around the documentation a little bit, it looks like it’s relatively easy to get the athlete_count for an activity, but you may have to query each activity with a count > 1 to then get the array of related activities in order to then determine who the user is?)

[LhasaCM]

@ShawnoftheDread 168987 wrote:

Y’all might be overthinking this. But that’s none of my business.

I thought that was the point?

[LhasaCM]

@Steve O 168951 wrote:

There’s a weird sport called the biathlon. The objectives are to cross-country ski and shoot a rifle at targets. There are two objectives to the sport, and both are scored.

How odd it would be if at the end of the race the only thing that was scored was how fast you skied?

There is a pretty strong consensus that the two main objectives to Freezing Saddles are:

• to encourage riding in winter conditions
• to encourage growth, activities, friendships, connections and enjoyment in our biking community

How odd it would be if at the end of the game the only thing that was scored was how many days and miles you rode?

Stretching this analogy a bit further – biathlon has a set number of targets, not “hit as many as you can.” Would it make more sense/be less objectionable to folks if a social component had a maximum score contribution – something a bit lofty but attainable and not too much that it would drive the uber-competitive folks away? In other words, you get points up to maybe 20 FS people you rode with but nothing beyond that on the official leaderboard, so there’s no extra pressure to go beyond a number just for the sake of winning that it makes people miserable?

[LhasaCM]

@lordofthemark 168957 wrote:

As cool as watching biathlon is, I really don’t want to carry a rifle when I ride, thankyou very much.

It’s a different way of enforcing “no cars in the bike lane” laws, maybe even more effective than the “almost nothing” that’s done now. Easier to do for you Virginians, though – so clearly not fair.

[LhasaCM]

@Fairlington124 168936 wrote:

Anything new? Seems like it’s been a slow year with respect to infrastructure improvements, even low-cost approaches like bike lanes. Alexandria hasn’t been updating their webpage for it (Go Alexandria, the name of their non-car transportation program) and I’ve been riding almost none anymore (indoor rock climbing and grad school).

Anyone got anything to report?

DC installed some paint and flexible posts on 4th St NE and along M St NE in an attempt to connect the MBT with Union Market, but that’s a complete mess (especially during school drop-off and pickup times). While I can understand some of what motivated their decisions there, they just seem wrong.

[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.

[LhasaCM]

@hozn 168874 wrote:

I think we have a clear path to reducing strain on the weather API, so we shouldn’t discourage folks posting more rides to maximize the symmetry.

I’ll admit that I’ve lost track of these threads , but is proposal for official scoring system to also provide bonus points for “rode-with-others”? (I think it’s a nice idea, but there is some work needed to implement that, which is why I ask.)

Also, to throw a last-minute wrench question out there, should we consider making the points system logarithmic for distance? Personally, and having only actually played once, I think the competition would be a lot more fun if it weren’t just about riding ridiculous distances. Shaking up the points scoring system would probably make it something that someone competitive like Subby (or myself) would find appealing to play again.

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.

[LhasaCM]

@accordioneur 168848 wrote:

I vote -100 points every time a Midwesterner gets haughty about how we don’t have “real” winters in the DC area. Let’s face it – the fact that y’all’s ancestors didn’t have enough common sense to settle somewhere warmer isn’t anything brag about.

P.S. -200 points if they’re from Michigan.

Asking for a friend – when would the haughtiness penalty be in effect? For example, would getting haughty today count against the competition, or is it just haughtiness that occurs between midnight January 1 and the end of winter?

[LhasaCM]

@hozn 168725 wrote:

(2) One limit we’re pushing up against that is motivating the 250 limit is that we can only make 500 weather-related API calls per day. So if we suggest that most people are posting 2 rides per day, 250 participants would saturate that limit. Granted, in reality the number of calls per day is probably less than 2x total participants. We could increase the API limit by buying commercial tokens … but not sure who’s gonna foot the bill there.

As someone who generally has 4 or 5 rides a day to maintain the integrity of my #kidical reporting and so disproportionately taxes the backend – what kind of a bill are we talking about here? Is it something like the $20/month for the “Drizzle” level of the Stratus plan at Weather Underground?

[LhasaCM]

@Steve O 168837 wrote:

I did not do the analysis on how it would have affected team standings (I still have the data, so I could do this I suppose).[/quote]

I still have that data saved in Excel from the earlier straw man exercises. There’s a slight shuffling in the top half (4th and 5th place swap; 10th place jumps up to 8th) but nothing too huge. And one would think the impact would be even less if this is the scoring that shows up on the main leaderboard (as opposed to being a “crazy idea” on the side).

@Steve O 168837 wrote:

One con is that rides taken outside the DC area will adjust based on weather here, not there. This is particularly key for the FS diaspora (boomer, consular, etc.).
A couple of solutions:

• Don’t sweat it (perfect being the enemy of good). Those rides represent a couple of percent of all the rides and won’t have any material effect. That said, out-of-area riders should be ineligible for prizes that are based on points (or coffee, if their name starts with B and rhymes with schloomer)
• Some sort of hashtag that scores out-of-town rides per the old system. I have no idea how hard this would be technically. If hard, then I defer back to the above bullet point.

I vote for “don’t sweat it.” I think it’d be (relatively speaking if not in absolute terms) a lot of work to adjust/capture for the non-local cases, and ignores the more prevalent “local area” weather issues that come with being in the DC area (i.e., often being somewhere in the snow/ice/rain transition zone for winter storms) where we can have wildly different weather conditions within the metro area on a given day. Too messy to actually solve, so let’s leave well enough alone.

One note about the social part of the proposed scoring system for the more technically inclined to figure out: as mentioned earlier in this thread (post #162) – accurately capturing the “50 point bonus for every FS rider you ride with” has the non-trivial asymmetry problem to address in the data with Strava’s “you rode with ____” algorithm. Or you encourage folks to report more rides (to force symmetry in Strava), which as we’ve more recently been reminded of, overloads the weather API.

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