I tried to make this scenario more involved than past D&D.Sci scenarios, and to ensure that there were multiple things you could figure out rather than just one way to succeed. Given that this challenge ended up with noticeably fewer answers than previous ones, it looks like I went a bit too far with the complexity. Interested in feedback on this. What level of complexity do you want to see? Were you planning to do this challenge until you got scared off/gave up? What did you like and what did you dislike about this scenario?
I have participated in (almost?) all past D&D.Sci scenarios, but not this one. Here are the reasons:
complexity—it was very obvious upfront that spending “a little” time would not feel satisfying to me (whether that’s true or not I don’t know). In particular I guessed that while there were plenty of patterns to find, the true satisfying thing (again, for me) here would be tackling the survivorship bias, which didn’t seem very tractable without lots of prior work
activation energy—I didn’t really reach a point at any time when I actually felt motivated to go get the data into a nicely analyzable state. Contributors: 2D data, hex vs square, routes. (some things were nicely analyzable from the start; I didn’t want to spend time unless I knew I could look at everything though)
other commitments—I said I’d write my own, so I’ve already got D&D.Sci [stuff] going on
other other commitments—happened to have a lot going on, exacerbating all of the above
My ideal complexity is probably just barely above the average past complexity. A note: I have written many puzzles for many puzzle events, and seen others write, and an extremely common mistake is to add complexity until it feels about right for you, but since you’re the one writing the puzzle and have internalized a lot of the inferences and approaches already, you misjudge how complex it actually is and actually feels to people not already involved with the puzzle. And unless you’re careful about getting feedback, you might not even notice, because some people will engage and get past the activation energy hump and love it and tell you it was great. Survivorship bias. :) These aren’t puzzles, but they feel to me a lot like “data analysis puzzles”.
All that said, thank you for making this! It looks like several people did engage fairly deeply, and if not for commitments I might well have been among them! I enjoyed most of your choices, after reading the solution, and those that I didn’t, I think I’d root-cause to “adds more complexity”. And reading yours caused me to finalize a decision I was making for my own in favor of the way that makes the data easier to “just start using”.
I have participated in (almost?) all past D&D.Sci scenarios, but not this one. Here are the reasons:
complexity—it was very obvious upfront that spending “a little” time would not feel satisfying to me (whether that’s true or not I don’t know). In particular I guessed that while there were plenty of patterns to find, the true satisfying thing (again, for me) here would be tackling the survivorship bias, which didn’t seem very tractable without lots of prior work
activation energy—I didn’t really reach a point at any time when I actually felt motivated to go get the data into a nicely analyzable state. Contributors: 2D data, hex vs square, routes. (some things were nicely analyzable from the start; I didn’t want to spend time unless I knew I could look at everything though)
other commitments—I said I’d write my own, so I’ve already got D&D.Sci [stuff] going on
other other commitments—happened to have a lot going on, exacerbating all of the above
My ideal complexity is probably just barely above the average past complexity. A note: I have written many puzzles for many puzzle events, and seen others write, and an extremely common mistake is to add complexity until it feels about right for you, but since you’re the one writing the puzzle and have internalized a lot of the inferences and approaches already, you misjudge how complex it actually is and actually feels to people not already involved with the puzzle. And unless you’re careful about getting feedback, you might not even notice, because some people will engage and get past the activation energy hump and love it and tell you it was great. Survivorship bias. :) These aren’t puzzles, but they feel to me a lot like “data analysis puzzles”.
All that said, thank you for making this! It looks like several people did engage fairly deeply, and if not for commitments I might well have been among them! I enjoyed most of your choices, after reading the solution, and those that I didn’t, I think I’d root-cause to “adds more complexity”. And reading yours caused me to finalize a decision I was making for my own in favor of the way that makes the data easier to “just start using”.
If I cannot manage to serve as a shining example, at least I can serve as a cautionary tale.
Both IMO. It takes guts and grit to create and clean up something like this and you did it.