Questions on Ranking ...

Discuss your experiences with and ideas about Stardust@home here.

Moderators: Stardust@home Team, DustMods

Nikita
DustMod
Posts: 994
Joined: Wed May 17, 2006 8:33 pm
Location: Indiana, USA

Post by Nikita »

Hey the moon,

Thanks for your opinion. I do want to suggest that the top 100 may be competing and working to get the rank, but that is ok. They are only 100 and there are thousands of people who have participated. Yes, they are viewing some movies over and over, but it won't really affect the movies chances of getting viewed any better than another because all movies are rotated. In other words, it doesn't affect it because the ratio of views to clicks stays the same. The ranking, certificates and all was set up to reward those who like the competition.

I don't think they have lost sight of the real goal, but are really enjoying it. Some of our dusters, like myself, really like the connection to something more than their their little corner of the world and continue to do it for the satisfaction. It's not hurting anything and I say, rock on everyone to do as much as you want!

Good luck to you in your dusting!
From dust we come
jsmaje
Posts: 616
Joined: Tue Aug 15, 2006 8:39 am
Location: Manchester UK

Post by jsmaje »

Besides CK's two programs in the top 100 (and any others as-yet undeclared), I'd be interested to know which might be group / school class contributors. Presumably the team know who's who, but there's no clue simply from their log-on names.

Is there a 'contributor confidentiality' clause somewhere; if so, why?
I think we would all like to know about and thereby be able to applaud such group/class efforts.
But if the team don't in fact know, why not?

On the other hand does it matter who/what/how many?
Gamma^Ray
Posts: 46
Joined: Wed May 17, 2006 11:13 pm
Location: USA
Contact:

Post by Gamma^Ray »

Although my ranking in the top 100 has fallen too 69 or so now, :( I have to say that although I do also believe that their should be more info shown to all users concerning each persons hit/miss ratio and how many users are actually participating behind one user name etc. I think doing this would make it harder for the few users who are only after rankings then on the real goal of finding dust particles, As it would be easy to see then if a user in the Top 100 is there based on really hard work and accuracy, Or based on the fact they are just clicking movies as fast as possible for the stats.

But to limit a persons amount of work or movies to be seen each week, Would by counterproductive to the project as a whole. As can you imagine how many users it would take to participate in Stardust from the beginning to be where they are as far as scanning and getting results for the project to date ? I would assume this would be unexceptable to the staff, Not to mention a determent to the few who are working on the computer programs to help out in the future, Unless you exclude them in the future, To which im not sure you would even need volunteers at that point.

I myself enjoy sitting and looking at the movies at the hopes of finding one, Although I do realize that it is a slight to none possibility that I will, But then again people do win the lotteries, And I actual know someone who did win a million bucks in one, So who knows! And I have to admit I have been known to sit in front of the pc for many hours going thru movies, Much to the annoyment of my wife at times. :roll: I have posted this elsewhere, But here are my stats recently:

Calibration Movies Answered Correctly 21184
Calibration Movies Answered Incorrectly 15
Your Overall Score: 21169
Total Real Movies Viewed: 56033
Your Rank: 69 out of 23082
Specificity: 99.93%
Sensitivity: 99.92%

Regards,
G^R
A.Einstein wrote:"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once."
the moon
Posts: 177
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 12:34 am

Post by the moon »

Nikita wrote:I don't think they have lost sight of the real goal, but are really enjoying it. Some of our dusters, like myself, really like the connection to something more than their their little corner of the world and continue to do it for the satisfaction. It's not hurting anything and I say, rock on everyone to do as much as you want!
I hope you're right and I hope you speak for the majority of the top ranked dusters.
Gamma^Ray wrote:I have to say that although I do also believe that their should be more info shown to all users concerning each persons hit/miss ratio and how many users are actually participating behind one user name etc. I think doing this would make it harder for the few users who are only after rankings then on the real goal of finding dust particles, As it would be easy to see then if a user in the Top 100 is there based on really hard work and accuracy, Or based on the fact they are just clicking movies as fast as possible for the stats.
I don't think this would be very revealing. Like I said before, most of the top 100 probably has accuracy better then 99%. CMs are not hard to spot at all. Anyone can have high accuracy, I think it has little to do with your ability to spot real tracks.
Gamma^Ray wrote:But to limit a persons amount of work or movies to be seen each week, Would by counterproductive to the project as a whole. As can you imagine how many users it would take to participate in Stardust from the beginning to be where they are as far as scanning and getting results for the project to date?
I think if the dusters had only done 10% of the work they have done, the project would still be in great shape and the results would be the same, if not better because people would be forced to slow down and carefully consider each movie.
foxranch
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Oct 17, 2006 3:49 pm
Location: Somerset, Kentucky USA

Post by foxranch »

Happy April Fool's Day, fellow Dusters (as good a day as any, I suppose, to make my first post). My name is Timothy Brown a.k.a. foxranch and I am currently #2 in the rankings. I live in Somerset, Kentucky (75 miles south of Lexington) on Lake Cumberland. I haven't posted anything until today because, quite frankly, I haven't had anything to say and have opted instead to spend my time looking for the dust. But I felt that it was probably time that I 'came out' and identified myself in hopes of quelling some of this unrest before it breaks out into open rebellion and the burning and looting start.

I've been involved in this project since Day One--since the night I heard Charles Gibson do a story on the ABC Nightly News about it and the fact that they were looking for volunteers. I came directly to my PC and put my name on the list. The day I got the e-mail that the data were on-line, I set to work and have been at it diligently almost every day since. To give you an idea of how focused (or maybe out of touch) I have been, I was #27 in the rankings before I discovered that there was a screen that would show me the top 100 ranked participants. Duh. Like I said, I've been looking for the dust.

It has only been very recently that I started looking at the forum and reading some of the posts, both past and current and have picked up on a growing sense that people want to know who the other participants are. OK. I'm 62 years old, retired from the world some years ago and consequently have a goodly amount of free time to donate to this project. Consequently, I have just recently passed the half-million mark in total number of movies looked at. My scores are 99.97% and 99.77% and my 'events' file is considerable which should testify to the fact that I am not just skimming through and looking for the CM's but am giving each movie a pretty good once-over. I didn't set out participating in this project with the idea in mind of being #1 (or even #2 for that matter) but in any structured exercise based on a point system, it is a 'given' that somebody has to be #1. And somebody has to be #2. Please don't hate me because I'm beautiful.
Gamma^Ray
Posts: 46
Joined: Wed May 17, 2006 11:13 pm
Location: USA
Contact:

Post by Gamma^Ray »

Seems I do remember trying to hold you off ALONG time ago foxranch(And unsuccessfully I might add :lol: ) I take my hat off to ya as I cannot imagine going thru as many as you have and to keep a great score also. I kinda burned out several months ago and have only recently started up again mildly. But don't worry, I don't think you have to worry about me catching you now :lol:

Regards,
G^R
A.Einstein wrote:"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once."
Wolter
DustMod
Posts: 457
Joined: Mon May 22, 2006 2:23 am
Location: Enkhuizen, the Netherlands

Post by Wolter »

Hi foxranch,

Welcome to the board. I must warn you though, starting to post on a forum might be as addictive as searching for dust on the scope ;)

Your scores give a whole new meaning to the word retired :lol:
Just dusting... Image
wonderdogxyz
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Sep 08, 2006 11:40 am
Location: Kansas City, Missouri

Post by wonderdogxyz »

Just because jsmaje asked: I am just someone that wants to find a particle. I do realize that the odds are rather long. I am not nearly as old as foxranch, only 59. ;-) I have been interested in this type of science stuff since I was a kid. I was suppressed then. My 7th grade science teacher really got after me when I asked him about the speed of gravity. He thought that I was trying to make him look bad. This project allows me to help in the scientific process and learn about the things I really want to know. I never believed that I would be in the top ten searchers. I really have a problem stopping once I start looking. My computer is in the family room so I am not isolated. My wife is very understanding. I normally have my CD player set on random while I search. I have learned that I don’t have to watch most TV programs. I can just listen to most of them. (“24â€
the moon
Posts: 177
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 12:34 am

Post by the moon »

the moon wrote:So what's the motivation to sit for days and click thru 100,000 movies? At some point the people interested in the science are going to say "well that's enough dusting for now, there's no need to keep voting on movies viewed over 300 times", so the people left voting are doing it for no other reason but to see their ranking move up. And I'll bet almost everyone in the top 100 has accuracy better then 99%. They must be very good at spotting that single track by now, but would they notice a real track if it looked even slightly different? Their votes are burying the votes from people that study the information on the forum and take their time viewing but may not have time or be interesting in viewing more then an hour a week.
After reading the responses I changed my mind on this. I spent my whole life in southern California (oh no, now everyone else in the US hates me), where people probably have the shortest attention spans in the world. How someone could view tens of thousands of movies for fun was inconceivable to me. But I get it now, so there ya go.

I'm still interested in knowing if the data would change significantly if they limited the movies you could vote on though.

I'm also curious what rank is the average movie viewing duster. In other words, what rank is the person where 50% of the total movies viewed were by people ranked higher, and 50% were by people ranked lower. #500? #1000?
Howie
Posts: 331
Joined: Wed Jun 21, 2006 2:47 pm
Location: Florida

Post by Howie »

Hi to All,

I also recently retired at 62 and have the time in between my chores. Some health issues have slowed me up the last couple years, so I rest and dust an hour here and a hour there. Like some of you, one day I saw my score at 300 something, go figure, and one day all of a sudden I was in the top 100. If I remember right, I moved up when all the problems were happening with the site and I stayed with it when many gave up for awhile.

I notice over the months some names that must have gave up as they are moving down or out of the top 100, or their score has stopped. Even the posts have slowed down from months ago, although out of all the dusters, only a few really participate in the posts, yet many view them.

I really do not see myself getting much higher in ranking with the group ahead of me working so hard!

Sincerely,
Howie
fflo
Posts: 63
Joined: Tue Aug 08, 2006 7:37 am
Location: Eindhoven, Netherlands

Post by fflo »

wonderdogxyz wrote:Just because jsmaje asked: I am just someone that wants to find a particle. ........................................................................... I am sure that my experience is about the same as anybody that has a score of 1000 or more.
foxranch wrote:Happy April Fool's Day, fellow Dusters (as good a day as any, I suppose, to make my first post). My name is Timothy Brown a.k.a. foxranch and ....................................................................somebody has to be #2. Please don't hate me because I'm beautiful.
Now that the two top-scorers of dusters have testified in front of the community of "posters" -- for which all of the worried volunteers(!) have to be profoundly thankful -- I had a look at the memberlist and put together the list of "Poster's 10 Top Scorers" (sorry for the table, I used Excel as an intermediary):

Number Username Location Joined Posts

2499 Orion_0169 2-Aug-06 153
2500 jsmaje Manchester UK 15-Aug-06 157
2501 sb126k Charlevoix, MI (AKA, Tourist Town, USA) 24 May 2006 161
2502 Sharqua Bradenton, FL 18 May 2006 249
2503 Howie Florida 21-Jun-06 287
2504 bmendez UC Berkeley Space Sciences Lab 19-Apr-06 328
2505 Wolter Enkhuizen, the Netherlands 22 May 2006 380
2506 Nikita Indiana, USA 17 May 2006 656
2507 fjgiie Hampton, SC, US 20 May 2006 666
2508 DustBuster Horsetown, USA 17 May 2006 747

On 02-04-2007, there were 23.100 Dusters.
At the same time we had 2.508 Posters.
Above are the top 10 with their number of posts.
Everybody can check that
- 1257 had zero posts
- 770 had less than 3 posts
- 389 had less than 10 posts
N.B.1: Should we create certificates for “posting-milestonesâ€
fjgiie
DustMod
Posts: 1253
Joined: Sat May 20, 2006 8:47 am
Location: Hampton, SC, US

Post by fjgiie »

the moon wrote:I'm still interested in knowing if the data would change significantly if they limited the movies you could vote on though.
No would be my guess because:
Score has no vote on real movies. If more movies/view are voted on by lower ranked dusters, the movies are already limited. Divide number of events by total movies for each duster, and the lower ranked duster would always have a higher fraction. The ratio for the track/no-track for a single movie would probably not change much after views go above 30 or 40, I believe your guess was 20.
I'm also curious what rank is the average movie viewing duster. In other words, what rank is the person where 50% of the total movies viewed were by people ranked higher, and 50% were by people ranked lower. #500? #1000?
This question was the reason for my posting an answer. Somewhere between rank #300 and #400 by my interpolation.
.
Howie
Posts: 331
Joined: Wed Jun 21, 2006 2:47 pm
Location: Florida

Post by Howie »

fflo wrote:
wonderdogxyz wrote:Just because jsmaje asked: I am just someone that wants to find a particle. ........................................................................... I am sure that my experience is about the same as anybody that has a score of 1000 or more.
foxranch wrote:Happy April Fool's Day, fellow Dusters (as good a day as any, I suppose, to make my first post). My name is Timothy Brown a.k.a. foxranch and ....................................................................somebody has to be #2. Please don't hate me because I'm beautiful.
Now that the two top-scorers of dusters have testified in front of the community of "posters" -- for which all of the worried volunteers(!) have to be profoundly thankful -- I had a look at the memberlist and put together the list of "Poster's 10 Top Scorers" (sorry for the table, I used Excel as an intermediary):

Number Username Location Joined Posts

2499 Orion_0169 2-Aug-06 153
2500 jsmaje Manchester UK 15-Aug-06 157
2501 sb126k Charlevoix, MI (AKA, Tourist Town, USA) 24 May 2006 161
2502 Sharqua Bradenton, FL 18 May 2006 249
2503 Howie Florida 21-Jun-06 287
2504 bmendez UC Berkeley Space Sciences Lab 19-Apr-06 328
2505 Wolter Enkhuizen, the Netherlands 22 May 2006 380
2506 Nikita Indiana, USA 17 May 2006 656
2507 fjgiie Hampton, SC, US 20 May 2006 666
2508 DustBuster Horsetown, USA 17 May 2006 747

On 02-04-2007, there were 23.100 Dusters.
At the same time we had 2.508 Posters.
Above are the top 10 with their number of posts.
Everybody can check that
- 1257 had zero posts
- 770 had less than 3 posts
- 389 had less than 10 posts
N.B.1: Should we create certificates for “posting-milestonesâ€
foxranch
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Oct 17, 2006 3:49 pm
Location: Somerset, Kentucky USA

Post by foxranch »

I received a phone call a couple of weeks back from my favorite nephew in Indianapolis. When he asked me what I was doing, I said I was upstairs 'dusting' and he said, "Well it's about time". He misunderstood me but I didn't misunderstand him. The upstairs, like the rest of my house, could use not only dusting but a very thorough going-over. But that task, along with many others, has been set aside and allowed to get backed up because of the large blocks of time I have carved out of my days (every day for months now) in order to participate in and contribute to this project. In fact, of the 23,000 or so participants in the project, there is only ONE other person who has contributed more time and energy to the task of reviewing these movies than myself (and he's been able to do that only because he is SOOOooooo much younger than I am). The point of this is that I received an e-mail this morning asking me to post my events file. Really? The whole file? To what end, just so you can sit there and count the number of movies I've clicked on and try to calculate the number of clicks per the number of points I've accumulated and how much of this and how many of that, ad nauseum? Suffice it to say that my events file is very large and there is also a correspondingly large number of 'possible idp" notations in it--enough to tell me that I'm not only doing something right but doing it well. And so my question to you is, wouldn't your time be better spent in concentrating on 'dusting' and tending to your own events file? Otherwise, we will never be able to bring this project to fruition and I will never get my frog pond rebuilt. Please don't hate me because I'm blunt.
greuti
Posts: 200
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 10:11 am
Location: Switzerland

Post by greuti »

Hi Timothy,

I do not know who sent you an e-mail. Yesterday I sent you a PM with the same request, but it is still in my Outbox.

Hope you do not get angry about it much. My intention was/is simple, I am interested in the things that the collector could gathered and that you have already found. I do not have your great patience to search in the same intensity, so my hope was/is to get a good insight in this way additionally. By the way, did you see that thread about it in the community forum?

If you do not feel like to show it, ok, I am with you!

Greuti
Post Reply