Hi, I was having this question, since it is really strange. In this blog post it says is ELO-based.
I think that the post is old or wrong. Please note that this is not a complain or anything just an observation, but with the statistics at hand, score distribution does not follow an ELO-like distribution. The score gained in the first 5 spots is just big compared to all the other scores.
Maybe there is a point bonus for the first spots?how much? And a point bonus for each problem?
edit: Although ACRush’s case is notorious, because 5 winning streaks and now he has almost twice the score as the second person, what really brought my attention is the last page in the rankings
My opinion is the long contest rating has not got too much information.(I think my rank is overestimated too…) I feel when I check somebody profiles and I see the rating graph, I couldn’t read too much infromation from this…Maybe I feel this because the y axis is changing every month. (I mean I feel every month (in the top 50-100… everybody get +200-500 points at least, so the y rating range is moving…) For example if I compare this with the topcoder there are not moving the y axis (significantly), and when I check somebody profile, and rating graph I feel it contains lot of information. So I think in the user profile instead of the long contest rating graph, the codechef should show the performance os rank graph (e.g. x -axis is the month/y -axis is the place in that month or the long contest rank).
Oh, I see, and I think I see the problem. I don’t have N, but let’s take it the most accepted problem.
The most accepted problem in DECEMBER 2010 (ASTRGAME) had 91 Accepted. Meanwhile DECEMBER 2012 (GRANAMA) has 1830.
I think here lies the problem. Maybe the bonus factor has too much weight nowadays compared to the regular factor. I think there should be some adjustments. Do you know if it was ever adjusted?
But if you see the first comment, rudradev commented to take k as a decreasing function , which I assume they must have implemented.But I agree , still there has to be changes made , otherwise top few contestants will become unreachable
I agree with you and I think it would be nice if profiles were more informative (like showing the position in the contest). Still, a more representative rating would also be nice.
No only top 50-100 get +200-500 but rarely people get negative score. It weird that people in top 20 do only 6 problems and their score don’t decrease.