Calculating scores…

So, if you have climbers of different weights carrying different payloads and having different times to complete the run, how do you come up with a fair way to judge who the winner is?

The way Spaceward has done this is to give preference to climber speed and to payload ratio (the amount of payload vs. the weight of the climber).  In the latest post on the Official Site of the Space Elevator Games, we learn that the formula used to calculate this is:

The speed of the climb (in meters/second) times the payload (in kilograms) divided by the weight of the climber (again, in kilograms).

This formula allows the user to normalize the results; i.e. put them in a format where you can do an ‘apples to apples’ comparison.

Plugging in the numbers for LaserMotive’s best run yesterday, you get a score of .45.  Other teams will try to beat this.

(Update Nov 11 – Reader Joel Polowin points out an obvious mistake I made.  The speed factor is meters/second, NOT total elapsed seconds.  My bad.  I fixed the post.  Thanks Joel…)

2 thoughts on “Calculating scores…

  1. Tom Nugent

    I know that the judges have been recording various tidbits about weights and times etc. which people have been too busy to convert into official scores. I think our values for Wednesday were payload = 0.6kg, climber = 4.6kg, speed ~ 3.73 m/s, which would put our score at 0.487. Not a huge difference from what was reported, but 8% might wind up being important!

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