Folding@Home Team Credit

[Miket482000]

I was looking at the Team stats.  I noticed that there is something odd about Credit, Work Units, and Team ranking!  There are people that have done 1 work unit, and they have Thousands of Credit points and others that have done hundreds of Work Units that have Tens of Credit points! That begs the question of How are the Work Unit, Credit points and Team rank calculated!  There does not seam to be any reason to the Credit value of a Work Unit?  As an example the #1 rank person has 6,790,958,125 Credits with 56,985 Work Units, yet the #5 ranked person only has 2,244,429,209 Credit Points, but they have 320,467 Work Units completed almost 6 times more Work Units as the #1 ranked person but 66% LESS Credit Points!

[minibois]

1 minute ago, Miket482000 said:

I was looking at the Team stats.  I noticed that there is something odd about Credit, Work Units, and Team ranking!  There are people that have done 1 work unit, and they have Thousands of Credit points and others that have done hundreds of Work Units that have Tens of Credit points! That begs the question of How are the Work Unit, Credit points and Team rank calculated!  There does not seam to be any reason to the Credit value of a Work Unit?  As an example the #1 rank person has 6,790,958,125 Credits with 56,985 Work Units, yet the #5 ranked person only has 2,244,429,209 Credit Points, but they have 320,467 Work Units completed almost 6 times more Work Units as the #1 ranked person but 66% LESS Credit Points!

Unfortunately I don't know how exactly the value of  WU is calculated, but I do know different WU's can have wildly different point amount.

Typically higher performance parts will have larger point sized WU's, compared to to lower performance parts and GPU WU's will have a (much) higher point count than CPU WU's.

 

It isn't uncommon for people who are running CPU WU's, to split their CPU in a couple different parts, especially during WU droughts, to make sure their system is always doing something.

3 minutes ago, Miket482000 said:

As an example the #1 rank person has 6,790,958,125 Credits with 56,985 Work Units, yet the #5 ranked person only has 2,244,429,209 Credit Points, but they have 320,467 Work Units completed almost 6 times more Work Units as the #1 ranked person but 66% LESS Credit Points!

the #5 ranked user is 'Anonymous', which basically is "everyone that didn't sign up with a username". This group of people will be very varied in terms of folding setup. Some will be running on both their CPU and GPU, some only on one, etc.

This group of users will have high-end, but also low end equipment as well. This will make the average points per WU ranking varied and thus very average.

 

The #1 F@H member on this forum - @Den-Fi - is running some higher end newer videocards, so on average will be able to crunch larger WU's and thus will have a higher points per WU average.

[Spotty]

1 minute ago, minibois said:

the #5 ranked user is 'Anonymous', which basically is "everyone that didn't sign up with a username". This group of people will be very varied in terms of folding setup. Some will be running on both their CPU and GPU, some only on one, etc.

This group of users will have high-end, but also low end equipment as well. This will make the average points per WU ranking varied and thus very average.

Anonymous users are also not eligible for the Quick Return Bonus, which contributes a significant portion of points per WU. This means that Anonymous users typically have much lower points per WU.

[Guest]

Yeah, @Gorgon uses more, but lower power hardware than I do.

I also don't CPU fold which churns out a lot more, but lower point value WUs.

[Miket482000]

Ok, so how are the Credit points calculated?  What are the Criteria?  I have seen that there are varied point values based on speed, work unit difficulty, etc, but I still have not seen an explanation of how it is all put together!  Like I said in the original post there are people that have turned in 1 work unit that have 8,000 points, and other that have turned in 300 Work Units that have 15 points, !!!  It is something That I personally want to know as it does not seem even remotely fairly distributed!  A work unit should be a set point value!  If your are running faster equipment your have a higher score because you did MORE Work Units, end of story!  Applying speed bonuses is not relevant as faster equipment doing more units gives a larger score by default with no need for a bonus of any kind!

[Spotty]

5 minutes ago, Miket482000 said:

Like I said in the original post there are people that have turned in 1 work unit that have 8,000 points, and other that have turned in 300 Work Units that have 15 points, !!!

People who show 300 WUs and only 15 points most likely failed to submit the WUs. Either dumped them or they expired. It can sometimes still count as a WU though. At least that is what I've seen to cause that in the past.

 

6 minutes ago, Miket482000 said:

A work unit should be a set point value!  If your are running faster equipment your have a higher score because you did MORE Work Units, end of story!  Applying speed bonuses is not relevant as faster equipment doing more units gives a larger score by default with no need for a bonus of any kind!

The quick return bonus encourages work units to be completed and returned more quickly, which helps them progress through their research faster.

 

You can check their FAQ for more information about points.

https://foldingathome.org/support/faq/points/

Quote

The prompt completion of Work Units (WUs) is very important for the science we’re doing. In order to study the proteins we’re interested in, we need be able get the results back quickly. A faster turnaround also means that we can launch projects that are larger and more difficult than ever before. So in 2010 we introduced the Quick Return Bonus (QRB), which gives extra points to users who rapidly and reliably complete WUs. The QRB has been fairly successful in aligning points with scientific value, and we will continue to use it.

[givingtnt]

>Points to that time I used college computers to boost my output throughout the first folding month

Back then, NaCl folding was still a thing (basically, folding through your browser, no installer required) and it just did CPU folding which was a lot easier.
I pumped out a LOT more WUs than anybody else. I put out 4181 units while @Den-Fi put out 2788.  

But in terms of points, I got 5,982,261 while he got 249,018,046.  not even close.


See for yourself here :
https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/978596-ltt-official-folding-month-2018/?do=findComment&comment=12051573

 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, givingtnt said:

>Points to that time I used college computers to boost my output throughout the first folding month

Back then, NaCl folding was still a thing (basically, folding through your browser, no installer required) and it just did CPU folding which was a lot easier.
I pumped out a LOT more WUs than anybody else. I put out 4181 units while @Den-Fi put out 2788.  

But in terms of points, I got 5,982,261 while he got 249,018,046.  not even close.


See for yourself here :

 

Why does this thread feel like I'm being called out for having an unfair amount of points?

[givingtnt]

Just now, Den-Fi said:

Why does this thread feel like I'm being called out for having an unfair amount of points?

 It's not like you didn't have the computing power to do so. If anything, I cheated lol

[Miket482000]

So you think that by giving a bonus that a given computer is going to see that and say hay I can get more points if I work these faster?  I find it hard to believe that such a bonus has actually shown any effect at all, as the greatest majority of people running this program on their machines never actually look at how it is doing, and when they do they do not dig into the numbers to ever find that they have received a bonus or not!  I for example check my numbers at least once a month, and I never knew that there were varying point amounts awarded until I looked at the Team listings and only then did I find a difference!

[Guest]

Just now, Miket482000 said:

I find it hard to believe that such a bonus has actually shown any effect at all, as the greatest majority of people running this program on their machines never actually look at how it is doing, and when they do they do not dig into the numbers to ever find that they have received a bonus or not!

This system is designed for the very active folding communities that exist.

It's a reward systems that costs them little to implement that serves as a marketing tool of sorts for the cause.

I think you are reading way too deeply into it and making it something it is not.

 

It's merely valueless points to encourage community building. And it works like a charm.

[Kilrah]

4 minutes ago, Miket482000 said:

So you think that by giving a bonus that a given computer is going to see that and say hay I can get more points if I work these faster?  I find it hard to believe that such a bonus has actually shown any effect at all, as the greatest majority of people running this program on their machines never actually look at how it is doing, and when they do they do not dig into the numbers to ever find that they have received a bonus or not!  I

 

You should look at past event threads. Even just here there are always dozens of people babysitting and upgrading their machines, digging up old ones from the closet, making sure there's nothing holding up one and causing it not to run etc... so yeah it works. For everyone no, but I'd bet that all the biggest contributors do "play the game" to some extent.

[Miket482000]

Sorry, I do not believe that it is making that much of a difference for the VAST majority of the people contributing to this project!  The fact that it is a valueless point system gives even more reason for people to not go out of their way to spend time and money setting up boxes to do nothing more than run this and other distributed programs.  Those people are few and far between and represent a seriously small fraction of the people participating!  By skewing the points to advantage those individuals that have resources that other do not is unfair and in efficient!  The idea that people are dumping work units is not very convincing as like I said the vast majority of people rarely even look at the thing to even see how they are doing.  I have over 90 people that I have talked into running this on their computers and only 2 of them ever look at it to see what is happening and none of them ever mess with it beyond looking at the totals!

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, Miket482000 said:

Sorry, I do not believe that it is making that much of a difference for the VAST majority of the people contributing to this project!  The fact that it is a valueless point system gives even more reason for people to not go out of their way to spend time and money setting up boxes to do nothing more than run this and other distributed programs.  Those people are few and far between and represent a seriously small fraction of the people participating!  By skewing the points to advantage those individuals that have resources that other do not is unfair and in efficient!  The idea that people are dumping work units is not very convincing as like I said the vast majority of people rarely even look at the thing to even see how they are doing.  I have over 90 people that I have talked into running this on their computers and only 2 of them ever look at it to see what is happening and none of them ever mess with it beyond looking at the totals!

If you're claiming only the people that care about it look at it, then you've just identified exactly who it's for. Not the vast majority. You've stated exactly why it doesn't need to be in your argument, so I really have no idea what your gripe is. If people want to do it, let them do it.

 

If they don't want to do it, they're not doing it.

[TVwazhere]

4 minutes ago, Miket482000 said:

I have over 90 people that I have talked into running this on their computers and only 2 of them ever look at it to see what is happening and none of them ever mess with it beyond looking at the totals!

That's fine, because for those users its about donating to a cause and not about how fast it's done, how efficiently or how much total is donated. They just run it on their system and sleep soundly knowing they're helping and that's okay.

 

Then there are users like on the fourms, who use the points as bragging rights between other teams in a race to see who can outpoint who. It's no different than any sport that donates winnings to charity. We spend our actual money on GPU's and systems just to do nothing with them but donate them In The Name Of Science.

 

Kinda feels like you're just looking for a bone to pick a this point. More points are awarded for WU's that are completed faster, and as time and projects have increased, so have the corresponding point awards for each WU completed. Thats why one user had 2 billion points, yet nearly the same amount of WU's as Gorgon, because the WU's he completed werent completed as fast and didnt have as high of a value (each project has it's own point value associated with it, so some WU's have higher PPD's than others). 

[zeusthemoose]

52 minutes ago, Miket482000 said:

So you think that by giving a bonus that a given computer is going to see that and say hay I can get more points if I work these faster?  I find it hard to believe that such a bonus has actually shown any effect at all

I disagree. For people like me who only have 1 machine and cant leave it folding 24/7, I fold when I am away from my computer and aspects like that encourage me to wait a few minutes to let the wu finish before stopping it so I can play games.

 

40 minutes ago, Miket482000 said:

The idea that people are dumping work units is not very convincing as like I said the vast majority of people rarely even look at the thing to even see how they are doing.

I have personally let a few go. Not on purpose, but when I am away from my computer and forget to have it start folding again for however long it is, it will count the wu as abandoned and give it to someone else. It is completely plausible that that is what happened to those people with high wu counts and very low points.

[marknd59]

For me it's all about the science, but I do have a every invested interest in the science. The points are just a way to keep things interesting and give you some thing to aim for and brag about.