July 3 2002 RussCon Report

News

More number crunching news, as I have incorporated useful feedback on the new ratings system, and this issue inaugurates it. Thanks particularly to JeffF, Dan, and PJ for feedback. Dan suggested doing the log transform, and JeffF pointed out a crucial glitch in last week's proposal, which led to a nifty insight and a more elegant system. Now your rating is simply the product over all games you played of P(you'd do that poorly)/P(you'd do that well). (Where P(x) means "probability of x occurring", for you non math geeks.) The key point was getting the notion of "given this was the distribution of ranks/ties, what is the probability you would do this well (or poor)?" The actual devil points no longer enter into the formula as such. The new method (like JeffF's proposal last year) does have the new property that your rating can grow arbitrarily high or low, instead of being bounded between -1 and 1. Maybe that's ok. It does mean that someone who tends to do even a little better than expected value can get an arbitrarily high rating just by playing lots of games. Oh well. Despite that, I still like this new system more than the previous additive systems which have served us well but are ready for retirement. I'd reproduce the relevant email discussions here, but that would be lengthy, and I'm too lazy to make a separate page for them, and most people reading this saw it on the mailing list anyway. :)

Several of us saw Dagon as an unusual way to celebrate July 4... instead of watching fireworks, we watched unspeakable horrors in a pretty empty theater. Not a movie for the squeamish, but fans of Stuart Gordon should definitely check it out.

Happy Anniversary Dudley and Deborah, who were married by Allen a year ago. And now all 3 of them come to RussCon. Coincidence? I don't think so!

Meta Party Game

Whoever is ranked lowest on the new Russcon "Devil" ranking is the new meta devil. I was going to suggest that whomever performs the most unspeakable acts on a Russcon attendee becomes the new metadevil, in honor of the new H.P. Lovecraft movie release, but... uh... well... oh, nevermind...

Aaargh!!!

New Multiplicative Rank Ratings:
 7.7063 2222.2222 Steve (8 games played)   
 7.6089 2016.0000 JP (11)
 3.8712 48.0000 William (5)
 2.8904 18.0000 JeffF (3)
 2.5337 12.6000 JonathanC (6)
 1.7021 5.4857 Tim (4)
 1.3863 4.0000 BradS (3)
 1.3863 4.0000 Jerrie (3)
 0.6931 2.0000 RussW (7)
 0.4055 1.5000 Daniel (3)
 0.2231 1.2500 Greg (12)
-0.3365 0.7143 Sarah (4)
-0.3773 0.6857 Carly (7)
-0.9808 0.3750 Allen (4)
-1.4271 0.2400 Whendy (5)
-2.7036 0.0670 Dan (6)
-2.7726 0.0625 Deborah (6)
-3.1781 0.0417 Alex (3)
-3.6889 0.0250 Dudley (5)
-4.3944 0.0123 MarkY (9)
-7.3132 0.0007 Clayton (5)

New Multiplicative Win Ratings:
 5.3391 208.3333 Steve (8)
 5.0594 157.5000 JP (11)
 2.3953 10.9714 Tim (4)
 1.6946 5.4444 JonathanC (6)
 1.5686 4.8000 William (5)
 1.2809 3.6000 JeffF (3)
 1.2448 3.4722 RussW (7)
 1.1394 3.1250 Carly (7)
 0.8109 2.2500 BradS (3)
 0.8109 2.2500 Jerrie (3)
 0.8109 2.2500 Daniel (3)
 0.6286 1.8750 Sarah (4)
 0.1178 1.1250 Allen (4)
-0.7340 0.4800 Greg (12)
-0.8630 0.4219 Alex (3)
-1.0749 0.3413 Clayton (5)
-1.1394 0.3200 Whendy (5)
-1.2277 0.2930 Dan (6)
-1.3626 0.2560 MarkY (9)
-1.8563 0.1563 Deborah (6)
-2.1848 0.1125 Dudley (5)