Stat Challenge goes on the DL
Posted by Andy on June 25, 2010
The Stat Challenge has gone on the disabled list, due mostly to lack of participation. I will likely bring it back in some form in the coming weeks. Week 5 winners will be posted next week.
June 25th, 2010 at 9:13 am
Andy--
I participated each week, and I am just going to take a guess here. i think participation deteriorated because people didn't know where they stood. I made the leaderboard once during the "preseason", but never in the regular season.
It was frustrating to not know whether I was close, in the middle of the pack, the worst player ever or where I stood.
I realize that this creates a bit of extra work for you, but I think if you did a focus group this (and the summer vacation season) would be the two reasons that participation dropped.
At any rate that's for providing the game.
June 25th, 2010 at 9:15 am
Bill, you're probably right. It was just too much work for me--too hard to maintain the rest of the blog, which has more meaningful content, and also my actual real life. But it will return at some point and in some similar form.
June 25th, 2010 at 9:33 am
Andy-
My participation dropped because I had trouble finding the posts. If I missed the day it was first posted, it was usually buried a day or two later. Maybe if it had a separate feed?
June 25th, 2010 at 10:28 am
Andy, I participated every week (somewhat poorly), and enjoyed it. I know where you're coming from, though; so I just hope it comes back sooner. That, or perhaps someone better at the interwebs that I can come up with an easier method to do it.
June 25th, 2010 at 11:26 am
Week 5 was the first time I participated! lol.
June 25th, 2010 at 11:59 am
I never saw the week 5 contest. It must have came and went real quick in the blog box on the main page. Rather than go looking for it, I opted to skip Week 5. Maybe the challenge posts can be pinned next time?
June 25th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
I am enjoying the stat challenge. I missed week 4 because the post wasn't tagged under stat challenge as I have a seperate bookmark for the blog posts marked stat challenge. Hope this is on a 15-day stint and not a 60-day one!
June 25th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Real bummer. It was fun to see how we stack up against one another. Here's a suggestion... Don't have your week run Monday to Sunday. The entries were often made available on Friday afternoon. Anyone who's away from the computer all weekend doesn't think to come back and enter before the games start on Monday. If you do decide to stick with Monday to Sunday, make sure the entries are available on Thursday evening.
It would also be cool if there was a way to provide daily updates to the weekly standings. I imagine that could be done pretty easily if there's a single query you can make for the answer to a question. (And if there's not a single query to be made, then you could probably stand to ease up on the effort you put into the questions.)
Just my 2 cents.
June 25th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
My guess on this one is that people {such as I} probably chose this inopportune time to take a vacation.
I'd say this is my two cents, but thanks to inflation, my two cents is only worth a penny.
June 26th, 2010 at 1:00 am
I really enjoyed staying up late the night before the entry was due to get mine in so it's sad to see the challenge go on the DL. I had heard of Baseball Reference and poked around the site but once I started participating in the challenge I was hooked and now subscribe so I can really dig into the data. I too hope it is a short DL stint but certainly understand not being able to keep up.
Thanks again...
June 26th, 2010 at 10:03 pm
Nice game. Thanks anyway.
June 27th, 2010 at 11:08 am
to Nr.8
this is defintly not necessary as the weekly winner will appear on Top as soon as the last game is played. The reason is very simple as if you are in the lead after 5 days you guessed right for only 5 gamedays and not the whole 7. Therefor i prefer not to come close to the top position éarly:)
The only method to show a daily update is to calculate the stats for a 7 day interval such as if one team has 6 games in the 7 days and actually played 3 and got 12 runs vou can calculate them to about 24 runs expected and with this calculated stats you can show a more likely outcome.
June 27th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
I know I missed 2 of the 5 weeks just because I had forgotten about it :/ It was still a really fun game to play. I'm definitely a stats guy, as I'm sure we all are here, and I used to sit down and do my research in my spare time to TRY and make an educated guess. I'm here with everyone else when I say that I hope it's a speedy recovery for the Stats Challenge!
June 27th, 2010 at 9:27 pm
I'll echo the others - I really enjoyed participating so I hope it comes back soon, but I also understand how time consuming it must be. I missed Week 5 as I was coaching my son's 10-yo team at a tournament in Cooperstown and got to visit the HoF for a nice 4-hour visit!
June 28th, 2010 at 1:15 pm
I never saw week 5, either. I've participated almost every other week, including the preseason. I'll echo the others that it was frustrating to not know how I had done in weeks I didn't make the top finishers. Even if it wasn't tabulated for me, there was no way to go back and see what my submissions were.
July 1st, 2010 at 9:53 pm
I really enjoyed this feature. If nothing else, it seemed like it added a sense of community to the site. I hope it comes back, and when/if it does, I shall pick up playing it again.
Offhand, is there any way to set up your spreadsheet to tabulate the answers for you based on the actual results? If so, I would imagine that would make things much easier on you.
July 2nd, 2010 at 11:33 am
I look forward to seeing its return, hopefully with a dedicated link or some way to remind people of its existence and make it easier to find...