New rankings now in place

You will notice big changes in the rankings between last week and this week.

Over the weekend, we put into place a modification to the algorithm by which we score and rank players.

Before going into the details of the change, please note that on the Rules page we say:

"We reserve the right to change the scoring and ranking algorithms at any time; such changes may be applied retroactively in the current quarter. We guarantee, however, that the algorithm will always be applied equally to all players."

We don't make such changes lightly, but in this case it was required - and the result is a much more accurate reflection of the way players compete on the PL/SQL Challenge.

Some background: in the process of analyzing quiz answer data, we noticed that many players were visiting the quiz page more than once in a day. That is, you log in, press Take the Quiz button and then "I'm Ready! Start the Quiz Now" button, at which point you see the quiz for that day. But these players were not submitting their answer at this time. Instead, they were coming back later in the day to go through the same steps and then press Submit Answer.

Of course, in many cases, this is happening because a player might lose a connection or have to "get back to work!" (so sayeth the unenlightened manager). But in several other cases, we have players who routinely "double visit" the quiz page - which can offer a significant advantage, and might even be considered a form of cheating.

Putting aside the issue of cheating for a moment, we decided that we can and should adjust our algorithm to take this behavior into account by changing the way we calculate the number of seconds used to answer the question. Previously, the number of seconds was computed as the amount of time between pressing the "Start the Quiz Now" button and the "Submit Answer" button, in that same session (this will be referred to as TQ below).

From now on, the number of seconds will be computed as follows:

FV = Time of first visit to quiz page
LV = Time of last visit to quiz page

Number of seconds = (LV - FV) + TQ

The downside of this change is that if you visit the quiz page and then lose your connection and cannot return for a long time (or some other similarly innocent scenario), you will receive a greatly-reduced score. If this happens you can contact us via the Feedback button and request "forgiveness" for that gap in time. We will likely make the adjustment if it happens only very rarely.

The upside is that the score now much more accurately reflects the time that a player takes to figure out the correct answer to a quiz.

We hope you agree with these changes; if you have any questions of concerns, please reply to this blog or provide feedback through the PL/SQL Challenge site.