My intuition at the start was that this was a “get a vague sense of how the dataset behaves, account for anomalies and sample biases, then throw ML at what’s left of the problem” kind of challenge, and it looks like I was right on the money. It’s a pity I didn’t have time to do the last step, but still, I’m happy with my “unspectacularly guarantee I don’t get fed to a chair” outcome.
Reflections on the challenge:
This is very good. In particular, it’s a masterclass in how to do a D&D.Sci game as fanfiction. I’m also pleased to see it has a HTML interactive attached, so future players can easily evaluate their results.
I do think the structure of the challenge made it more complicated than it had to be. Getting a reliable solution requires players to figure out at least four layers: how SCPs behave, how our predecessors acted, what predicts team success, and what predicts profit. Finding some not-entirely-unreasonable contriavance to remove one of those layers (“we removed the last guy when we found out he was picking targets entirely at random”?) could have made the game more approachable, though I admit it would have cost some depth and realism.
Reflections on my attempt:
My intuition at the start was that this was a “get a vague sense of how the dataset behaves, account for anomalies and sample biases, then throw ML at what’s left of the problem” kind of challenge, and it looks like I was right on the money. It’s a pity I didn’t have time to do the last step, but still, I’m happy with my “unspectacularly guarantee I don’t get fed to a chair” outcome.
Reflections on the challenge:
This is very good. In particular, it’s a masterclass in how to do a D&D.Sci game as fanfiction. I’m also pleased to see it has a HTML interactive attached, so future players can easily evaluate their results.
I do think the structure of the challenge made it more complicated than it had to be. Getting a reliable solution requires players to figure out at least four layers: how SCPs behave, how our predecessors acted, what predicts team success, and what predicts profit. Finding some not-entirely-unreasonable contriavance to remove one of those layers (“we removed the last guy when we found out he was picking targets entirely at random”?) could have made the game more approachable, though I admit it would have cost some depth and realism.