Also I found interesting that the geek students considered this trivial formula a revelation. Does fall out of the context of the brilliant hacker culture :) When we needed a ranking system several years ago, I came up with this in half an hour, then figured out it already exists, is called Elo, and used everywhere, so we just copied their coefficients.
I had that reaction too... though I suspect that in "real life", geek students didn't consider this a revelation, just a good approach. Anyone who writes anything down in mathy notation in a hollywood movie is a "genius", worthy of mysterious background music.
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Also I found interesting that the geek students considered this trivial formula a revelation. Does fall out of the context of the brilliant hacker culture :) When we needed a ranking system several years ago, I came up with this in half an hour, then figured out it already exists, is called Elo, and used everywhere, so we just copied their coefficients.
I had that reaction too... though I suspect that in "real life", geek students didn't consider this a revelation, just a good approach. Anyone who writes anything down in mathy notation in a hollywood movie is a "genius", worthy of mysterious background music.