Please help Wave Robotics earn $1,000!!!

[Tyler Olds]

CD Forum,

Wave Robotics has been selected to participate in a competition called "Coins for Community". We face off against another organization and whoever gets the most amount of votes wins a $1,000 grant!!

We are a few days behind our competition because of championships and need your help to catch up.

Please go to http://www.oshkoshareacf.org/grants_pbg.cfm to vote now!!! You can vote as many times as you want by simply dragging the coins into the Wave Robotics piggy bank and then refreshing the page!

Thank you for your support!

[AlecMataloni]

I'll help!

[BigJ]

This pig has an insatiable appetite for coins.

[R.C.]

This pig has an insatiable appetite for coins.

Agrees, that was fun. Off to school.

-RC

[Akash Rastogi]

Refresh is a wonderful tool.


Been on the refresh/feed cycle for a solid hour now. Hope you win!

[Bob Steele]

I dropped 300 in... will do more later
take care!!3 Hope you win!!
The power of FIRST....
You guys are over 12,000 now.... let's keep it up...take them to 100,000!!

:0)

[DarrinMunter]

Helped this go from around 4,000 to 7,000. And the other side maybe went up by 20.
Tonight I'll get my daughter to do this. She loves playing these simple games.

Good Luck guys!

[Kimmeh]

I stopped putting coins in so that I could reply to an email and saw that it had jumped 3,000. :yikes:

Knowing the FIRST community (and the fact that it's now off season) I think you guys have a good shot at winning. :D

[BigJ]

Aaaand Wave is caught up! EDIT: In one hour!

[Akash Rastogi]

Stopped for now after tying with them. Good luck!:)

[Robotmmm]

This is great fun! You are now ahead! 13,000 vs 11,740.

[thefro526]

This is a pretty cool way of getting votes.

When I checked before lunch, it had gone from 3,300 to 4,000. Now it looks like you're in the lead.

[efoote868]

I love the java robot class, its a wonderful tool.

[Robotmmm]

Now over 15,000! And the students haven't even seen this yet because they are in class. You will win because Firsters are the best!

[Tyler Olds]

Now over 15,000! And the students haven't even seen this yet because they are in class. You will win because Firsters are the best!

This is crazy! This morning we had 600 and we are topping 20000. Thank you cd community! Please keep it up! These contributions are from a couple of emails, a Facebook post, and this post on cd! Truly amazing!

[kwotremb]

Dont worry Tyler, Ill help a fellow 93 Alum

[Chris27]

Someone should make a script... :p

[efoote868]

Someone should make a script... :p

would you like the java source code? :D

[BigJ]

Let's not cheat, guys. Keep it professional.

[MagiChau]

Hope you guys get some exploding bacon if you guys get the $1,000. Oink Oink Boom Wave?

[Bob Steele]

33,000 + now!!!!

Wow

[Kimmeh]

Amusing trend I've noticed: Almost everyone who has commented so is either a mentor or college student.

Are we all really that bored at work? :p

[BigJ]

Yes. Also trawling CD for my post-CMP hangover

[DarrinMunter]

Are we all really that bored at work? :p[/QUOTE]



YES.

[LightWaves1636]

Been doing this for a half hour straight so far and I sent the link to the members of FRC 3320 to help out. I think it's looking good for WAVE Robotics. :)

[cpeister]

Just did 300 or so till it reached the 40k mark. They aren't going to know what hit them.

[J93Wagner]

Uh... what? Over 40k as of now? Either we all have way too much free time or something because this has just gotten really crazy (or passionate depending on how you look at it).

Eh, but no matter, I'll spend a bit of time doing this anyway.

[Grim Tuesday]

Uh... what? Over 40k as of now? Either we all have way too much free time or something because this has just gotten really crazy (or passionate depending on how you look at it).

Eh, but no matter, I'll spend a bit of time doing this anyway.

Or we just all have auto-refresh scripts...

[Andrew Schreiber]

would you like the java source code? :D

Actually yes, I'm curious how you tell where the coins are.

(Hey, it is a really cool application and I'm curious!)

[RMiller]

At the rate this is going, it might be over 1,000,000 for the total count (figure 40,000 today x 25 days). Actually, it has been the better part of 40,000 in under 5 hours!

[Jon Stratis]

At the rate this is going, it might be over 1,000,000 for the total count (figure 40,000 today x 25 days). Actually, it has been the better part of 40,000 in under 5 hours!

I think your underestimating... as students get off school this afternoon, I expect the numbers to start skyrocketing. Can we hit 100k tonight?

[bobrenjc93]

I'm so tempted to write an automated coin deposit script...

[WarpSpeed10]

And that's the 50,000th coin. You guys are awesome. Hope you win :D

[Robotmmm]

We can do it!

100,000 by midnight.

(And let's do it w/o all those slick scripts I know you guys could come up with.)

[efoote868]

Actually yes, I'm curious how you tell where the coins are.

(Hey, it is a really cool application and I'm curious!)

It took me about ~30 minutes to write this (I wrote something similar for a different thing oh so long ago).

I apologize for using magic numbers for pixel locations. Also, do not run this if you're not willing to give up the use of your computer for a minute.




/*
Copyright (C) 2011 Evan Foote

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
*/

import java.awt.AWTException;
import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.Robot;

public void robotRunner()
{
try
{
Robot myRobot = new Robot();
myRobot.delay(4000);

//get the current system time for reference on how long to run
long time = System.currentTimeMillis();

int loops = 0;

int x = 560; //coordinate of the screen in pixels where the coins appear
int y = 560;
int dx = 0; //or offset, where we're sampling
int dy = 0;
int xmax = 240; //size of the rectangle we're sampling
int ymax = 150;
int xsamp = 40; //AKA the step size between samples
int ysamp = 20;

Color c; //the sampled color

int cnt = 0; //The number of coins we've found

//run main loop for about 1 minute
while (System.currentTimeMillis() - time < 1*60*1000)
{
//iterate through each coordiante in the sample space
for (dx = 0; dx < xmax; dx += xsamp)
{
for (dy = 0; dy < ymax; dy += ysamp)
{
//snag the color where we're sampling
c = myRobot.getPixelColor(x + dx, y + dy);

//check and see if the color is something other than white (like yellow)
if (notWhite(c))
{
//move the mouse to that location
myRobot.mouseMove(x + dx, y + dy);
//increment the count so we know when to stop
cnt++;

//subtract this sample so we can check again
dy -= ysamp;

//left click the mouse, wait, drag it to the piggy bank, wait,
//release it, wait.
myRobot.mousePress(16);
myRobot.delay(50);
myRobot.mouseMove(448, 537);
myRobot.delay(50);
myRobot.mouseRelease(16);
myRobot.delay(50);

//TODO: CAN BETTER THIS CODE by:
//checking that the coin traveled with the mouse. If it didn't,
//subtract 1 from the cnt and try again.

//alright, grabbed 5 coins. click on the refresh button
if(cnt == 5)
{
myRobot.mouseMove(1109, 87);
myRobot.delay(50);
myRobot.mousePress(16);
myRobot.delay(50);
myRobot.mouseRelease(16);

//wait a second for the page to refresh. Slower internet speeds
//should wait longer.
myRobot.delay(1000);
break;
}//if count is at 5
}//if sample is not white
}//for each y pixel

//Putting this in the outer for loop so we can break from it
//as well.
if (cnt == 5)
{
//reset the count and the iteration
cnt = 0;
break;
}
}//for each x row

//if dy >= ymax, it means that we've traveled all the way and didn't
//spot 5 coins. something went bad, refresh the page.
if (dy >= ymax)
{
myRobot.mouseMove(1109, 87);
myRobot.delay(50);
myRobot.mousePress(16);
myRobot.delay(50);
myRobot.mouseRelease(16);

myRobot.delay(1000);

cnt = 0;
}

loops++;
}//while loop

System.out.println("Number of loops run: " + loops);
}//try
catch(Exception e)
{
//not sure what would cause above code to be more than exceptional, but
//if it is, I don't care and we can stop running here.
}
}

private boolean notWhite (Color c)
{
return (c.getRed() + c.getBlue() + c.getGreen() < 255*3);
}

[gyroscopeRaptor]

I suggest you remove the script. It's highly likely that the rules don't have anything good to say about macros to gain points. This could result in Wave Robotics losing by default.

[Duke461]

60,000 :D

[BrianT103]

Just dropped a few coins in for WAVE. You guys are awesome, good luck!

[Andrew Schreiber]

It took me about ~30 minutes to write this (I wrote something similar for a different thing oh so long ago).

I apologize for using magic numbers for pixel locations. Also, do not run this if you're not willing to give up the use of your computer for a minute.



Just doing a naive search if I am understanding this correctly. Does anyone feel like taking a crack at this using vision processing in Labview?

(Not badmouthing this at all, just curious if any of the FRC students want to put all that vision processing they did to good use)

[Ryan Himmelblau]

Imagine a world solely consisting of FIRST students. Oh the things that we could do.

[Emiller8]

Team 11, MORT, is helping out. I have been repeating the refresh cycle for about an hour now. I talked to our website site manager, and the link is now posted on the homepage of our team website as well as on our facebook page. With a score of 63,000 to 15,000, all of chief delphi helping you out, and calling in reinforcements, I seriously doubt that you can lose this. Good luck on getting the 1,000 dollars!!

[popnbrown]

If I vote for you guys will you make an attempt to help the technology needs at Emmeline Cook Elementary School? Or atleast help their technology education?

[WarpSpeed10]

If I vote for you guys will you make an attempt to help the technology needs at Emmeline Cook Elementary School? Or atleast help their technology education?

A robot demo for the kids would be cool. Very GP.

[popnbrown]

A robot demo for the kids would be cool. Very GP.

I voted for you guys because I believe that you guys will do something like ^ that! :D

[efoote868]

Just doing a naive search if I am understanding this correctly. Does anyone feel like taking a crack at this using vision processing in Labview?

(Not badmouthing this at all, just curious if any of the FRC students want to put all that vision processing they did to good use)

Yeah, a working search algorithm doesn't take too much time at all. I'm not exactly sure how getpixelcolor works, but its a VERY slow method. Probably a direct screenshot and some image manipulation would make it work faster. :)

[Bryany]

Brought you up to 104444! It's always fun to see that someone else somewhere is adding coins at the same time you are.

[trilogy2826]

Thanks to everyone bringing us to over 100K in, I would guess, a record short period of time.

When I first saw that we were against a Middle school technology development fund, I was apprehensive in taking away from them. Wave Robotics already has plans to demo to over a dozen schools and I will make sure that Emmeline Cook is one of them.

Plus, I have an ulterior motive to make sure tech at that Emmeline Cook succeeds as my son will be attending there in a few years.

We also do many fundraising activities and will try to get them involved directly with us.

[Unicorn_Knight]

There you go! That was fun ^.^

[Tyler Olds]

Thank you all for doing your part. I was expecting maybe a couple of thousand coins. Not over 100k!!! I am really flabbergasted to see this insane amount of coins.

Our five year goal is to have a FLL team in each school by 2014. Our opponent will be one of our new schools targeted for this.

I'm so tempted to write an automated coin deposit script...

While I appreciate your enthusiasm, please do not do this. I wouldn't consider this to be very GP.

Thank you once again! I could never have imagined this amount of support!

[Brandon Holley]

Dropped a few dozen coins in for you, good luck!

-Brando

[Dancin103]

I fed the piggy! :D Thanks again to WAVE Robotics for being such awesome alliance partners on the Curie field! :)

[rcmolloy]

Dropped a solid 200 coins in over the past two days. Honestly, with the Delphi community behind you, I would think that Wave has it in the bag. Anyway, I will keep participating until the 31st and get you guys that grant.

[BrendanB]

Dang that is one hungry piggy! With all these coins being fed I wonder if he will go boom sometime soon! ;)

[Robotmmm]

OINK OINK BOOM!

[BIGWILLI2081]

well this kept me occupied in school today, now it will keep me away from my homework, so I'd say I'm all for this.

[Vermeulen]

I'm contributing. Good luck in winning this, you guys are one of the strongest teams I've seen.

[DarrinMunter]

How did this come about? Did you have to apply to be selected?

[flaming]

another week and you'll have a million

[Robotmmm]

You are now ahead by over 100,000!!!!!!!! :yikes: :yikes:

[LightWaves1636]

FRC 3320 helped with 1000 coins this morning :)

[Mark Holschuh]

I put a bunch of coins in this week too. Do we all get our names on the back of your shirts for this?:D

[Robotmmm]

Bumping this up as the competition is going crazy and catching up FAST! Please spend a few minutes to help out Wave Robotics!

[Kusha]

Giving this a small bump.
I hope you guys win, I put in 200 or so last night.

[DarrinMunter]

Something just lit a fire under the other school, every second I'm hitting the refresh and they have about 20 coins being added.

[Jon Stratis]

Looks like Wave Robotics made their big CD push a little early... They got a ton of coins, but it also made the other school go out and start pushing real hard too :p It's like bidding on ebay... bid too early, and you'll get into a bidding war where the price skyrockets. Wait until the last second, and you'll likely get it cheaper!

[Chris27]

I put in like 30,000 coins. Now that finals are over, I really need to find something better to do...:o

[DonRotolo]

OK, I left it at 331331 vs 215019.

[pwnageNick]

I left it at 357500-228247
Team 2949 hopes you guys get this!

[Andrew Lawrence]

Do they realize they're going against the CD community? A bunch of FIRSTers who spend a lot of time on the computer? I'm surprised no one has made a program that will autonomously search the page for coins, put them in the pig, and refresh the page and repeat! I think I've found yet another off-season project!

[Alan Anderson]

I'm surprised no one has made a program that will autonomously search the page for coins, put them in the pig, and refresh the page and repeat!

Someone has made such a program (it's in post #35). But please don't use it; that would not be gracious.

[Kimmeh]

Do they realize they're going against the CD community? A bunch of FIRSTers who spend a lot of time on the computer? I'm surprised no one has made a program that will autonomously search the page for coins, put them in the pig, and refresh the page and repeat! I think I've found yet another off-season project!

Someone has made such a program (it's in post #35). But please don't use it; that would not be gracious.

To agree with Alan. It's not a gracious thing to do.

However, if you'd like to test your programming skills, Personally, I'd suggest trying to make one. Once you've gotten it done, don't use it other than just to test. Take pride in yourself that you managed to do it.

[Nemo]

A few of your neighbors in Iowa just dropped about 1500 coins in on your behalf. During the same span, your opponents added around 6000. They seem to have about 20 people working on this at the moment.

[PaW]

364905 - 262276 when I last played.

Something to do during looong conference calls ...

[avanboekel]

Just dropped a bunch in.

current score: 369831-277925

They have a bunch of people working at the moment

[DarrinMunter]

This is almost like a FaceBook game. There a goal, but at the same time, theres no end in sight. But yet I still have to put some coins in each day.

[Katie_UPS]

I'm guessing they had classes at a time in their computer lab working to bring up their coin-count:

Based on some very rough math:

At a moderate/pushing pace, you can get about 50 coins a minute. If they have 20 kids in a class (this is conservative, or at least it is compared to my elementary school classes), then 50 x 20 = 1,000 coins a minute. Do this all day, and all of a sudden their school is getting close.

Update:
To make it more fun, see how many coins you can push in a minute. My highest is 65.

[CastleBravo]

We should recruit the FLL kids to help out. :]

[Ryan Himmelblau]

We should recruit the FLL kids to help out. :]

OMG why didn't we think of this earlier. Is there a forum like CD for lego league? Otherwise we should all tell all the lego league teams we know to help wave.

BTW put in 500 for you guys b4 my finger got tired from clicking.

[74Robotmom]

Okay, I'll admit, that was fun! I'll keep visiting and filling that hungry little pig. Good luck guys!

[Debbie]

Did it... emailed my team to do it.. GOOD LUCK!! I'll try to remember to keep voting!

[Robotmmm]

SOS!!!

The school is getting serious today and putting in tons of coins!

Please help out!!!!!

[Techhexium]

I think we're still doing good. I just helped dump in some coins. When I saw the counter raise by 1000, the school has only dropped about 550 coins.

[Robotmmm]

Closing in on a MILLION!! :)

If everyone throws a few coins in the pig we can cross that mark today!!

[Borobo]

only 85000 to go

[Dancin103]

I'm still voting! I love this fundraiser. I've been at it for an hour, it's a great thing to do while you're watching tv! :D

[Debbie]

993446 ... getting closer... :) We are trying to spread it on FB too... Good luck!!!

[nighterfighter]

The 1,000,000 mark was broken, but not by me. :(

Congrats!

[DonRotolo]

1027424 versus 670797 at the moment.

[Navid Shafa]

Between Mr. Steele and I, Skunkworks Robotics Team #1983 has dropped a total of 1,983 votes/coins and we're still going! Glad to help out another team! You guys are over 400,000 coins in the lead. If it ends up getting even relatively close, just keep CD posted, I'm positive we can ensure that you win!

It was fun playing in the same division as you guys this year, you have a nice themed bot, I love the wave cut outs everywhere :P

Good Luck in the contest and your future endeavors, again glad to be of help!

[Navid Shafa]

So, I came back and tossed in god knows how many more coins. I've put in upwards of 4,000 alone...

I decided to run some numbers. At 4:00 pm (Pacific Time) today, on 5/30/11 the score was:

1145320 vs 697526

This has Wave leading by 447,794 coins. Assuming the end is tomorrow night at midnight, there is only 32 hours left.

Therefore, they would need to put in roughly 13,994 coins an hour, to just tie with Wave. Which comes out to roughly 233 coins a minute.

Thanks to Katie, we know a reasonable top speed:
At a moderate/pushing pace, you can get about 50 coins a minute.

Even if they had 5 people sitting at a computer for the next 32 hours straight at max speed, they might be hard pressed to even out the score.

I'll drop a few more in if I the need becomes urgent, but I think the gap is too great to recover. That being said, never take your enemy small. If they get a 30 kid class tomorrow to work at full speed, they could theoretically catch up in around 5 hours. Get a few classes to work on it simultaneously, and they could catch up really quickly.

By 4:00-ish local time tomorrow, I'm guessing another check is in order. If we see the gap closing, then we know we need to act tomorrow to make sure Wave makes it out on top!

Good luck, glad to help!

*Edit: Oshkosh is in Central time, so my number are slightly off. Considering the small time change, if the contest closes at midnight their time, the gap will be even harder to close.

[Debbie]

I'll drop a few more in if I the need becomes urgent, but I think the gap is too great to recover. That being said, never take your enemy small. If they get a 30 kid class tomorrow to work at full speed, they could theoretically catch up in around 5 hours. Get a few classes to work on it simultaneously, and they could catch up really quickly.

.

1146505 to 697546 at 1:00 pm est..

Looking good for wave.. but put a shout out on here if it starts to change and I'll mass out to my team and get them voting again... Good luck!

[Navid Shafa]

Well, it's finally over and the results have Wave winning by a landslide. Congratulations!

[Tristan Lall]

So, if a person can deposit 50 coins per minute, and therefore 3 000 per hour (assuming they can work continuously), achieving the million-and-a-half coin total was the equivalent of something like 380 to 400 hours worth of coin-depositing (a.k.a. mindless crap1).

If you paid a person the minimum wage in Wisconsin ($7.25/h) to do that work for about 390 hours, that would be over $2 800. My conclusion is therefore that we need a way of sending small cash payments to Wave Robotics with minimal overhead—and then we need to convince ChiefDelphi users to stop wasting time and just pay up! The world is better off that way, because those ChiefDelphi users get to donate to a good cause, their employers get the benefit of the hours of labour that underwrites their donations, and the Oshkosh Area Community Foundation gets to keep its money.2

Now, I'm pretty sure this was actually won—and lost for that matter—by programmers and their dueling scripts, so the net loss to society could be smaller than that $2 800 figure. On the other hand, how many of us would be happy at a wage rate of $7.25/h? (I'm thinking that this enlarged the loss to society, given the calibre of participants in this thread.)

So next time someone posts asking you to click on something repeatedly or do some other menial task, and the sheer absurdity of it doesn't dissuade you from helping out, either: Automate it out of a combination of expediency and protest. (The problem-solver's solution.) Consider that once you've impulsively accepted the "challenge" of dropping virtual coins in a virtual pig as a means of contributing to the team, you'd actually be better off checking if Wave Robotics has a "Donate with Google Checkout (https://checkout.google.com/seller/npo/)" (or other equivalent) button on their webpage.
Actually, the real problem-solver's solution is this: figure out a way to overcome the frictional effects of small financial transactions (e.g. impulse control, authentication, etc.), and account for the (minimal) recreational benefits of playing this game, with the overall objective of making donations as attractive as spending time dropping coins in a pig. That way everyone actually wins.

1 Full disclosure: Minesweeper is fun too. But I'm deliberately keeping my time-wasting labour to myself, so that nobody knows how much time I'm wasting.
2 Practically speaking, I know that income and labour aren't often this granular, but I think the point about more productive uses of labour stands.

[Tyler Olds]

Thank you to all who helped Wave Robotics recieve this $1,000 grant. It is amazing to see how much the CD community came through to help out a fellow team and it will definately not be forgotten. I look forward to seeing many of you at IRI swapping stories of how you "fed the pig".

Thank you once again.

[Jon Stratis]

Now, I'm pretty sure this was actually won—and lost for that matter—by programmers and their dueling scripts, so the net loss to society could be smaller than that $2 800 figure. On the other hand, how many of us would be happy at a wage rate of $7.25/h? (I'm thinking that this enlarged the loss to society, given the calibre of participants in this thread.)

I really hope not. Multiple people (including people from WAVE) posted here that using such scripts simply isn't right. It's cheating, it's likely against the rules of the program and, if caught, would DQ Wave, and finally it's not GP to try to go around the purpose of something like this.


So next time someone posts asking you to click on something repeatedly or do some other menial task, and the sheer absurdity of it doesn't dissuade you from helping out, either: Automate it out of a combination of expediency and protest. (The problem-solver's solution.)

While certainly a creative and educational way to tackle the problem, I suggest the next time someone asks you to do something like this, you think of the purpose behind it, the sponsor(s) behind it, and how doing something like that is likely to go completely against the intent and values of the program you are attempting to support.

I certainly encourage people who want to tackle a project like automating something like this to attempt to do so... it's a great educational tool and you'll learn a lot doing it. But to please, please not actually use it.

Big mammoth corporations (Like Activision, for example) have spent millions of dollars combating scripts like those you suggest in their multiplayer games. Pick your favorite online multiplayer game, and think about the repetitive stuff you have to do to improve your character/team/account/whatever. Creating a script to do it for you seems very tempting... but doing so also gives you an unfair advantage over everyone else playing. To equate this to FIRST... it's like a team going into a competition this past year with 6 CIM motors. It's against the rules and gives them an unfair advantage... but if they bury them in the robot so they aren't visible and no one catches them, they win, right?

[Tristan Lall]

I really hope not. Multiple people (including people from WAVE) posted here that using such scripts simply isn't right. It's cheating, it's likely against the rules of the program and, if caught, would DQ Wave, and finally it's not GP to try to go around the purpose of something like this.



While certainly a creative and educational way to tackle the problem, I suggest the next time someone asks you to do something like this, you think of the purpose behind it, the sponsor(s) behind it, and how doing something like that is likely to go completely against the intent and values of the program you are attempting to support.

I certainly encourage people who want to tackle a project like automating something like this to attempt to do so... it's a great educational tool and you'll learn a lot doing it. But to please, please not actually use it.

Big mammoth corporations (Like Activision, for example) have spent millions of dollars combating scripts like those you suggest in their multiplayer games. Pick your favorite online multiplayer game, and think about the repetitive stuff you have to do to improve your character/team/account/whatever. Creating a script to do it for you seems very tempting... but doing so also gives you an unfair advantage over everyone else playing. To equate this to FIRST... it's like a team going into a competition this past year with 6 CIM motors. It's against the rules and gives them an unfair advantage... but if they bury them in the robot so they aren't visible and no one catches them, they win, right?Believe me, I'm aware of the issues surrounding cheating in FIRST, and I make a conscious distinction between the obeying the rules in FIRST (and other sports/games), obeying the law in real-life challenges, and obeying nebulous constraints in pointless activities.

In sports, the rules are obeyed because all the participants are aware of the expectations, and follow them. What ideally results is an entertaining spectacle that is representative of the skill of the competitors. I'd tend to put FIRST in this category.

But you mentioned a computer game, and this lends itself to an exploration of some situations where the logic above doesn't completely apply. Under less-than-ideal circumstances, some people will decide that their own experience may be improved by (for example) automating tasks in an RPG. Insofar as that actually ruins the game for others, it's clearly a breach of the expected standards of conduct. But what if the game has potential, but is flawed enough that the only enjoyable way to play it is by making modifications that are not sanctioned by the free-spending developers/publishers? I'd say there's a situation in which it may not be wrong to break the rules, at least from the perspective of the user's experience. (There are other considerations that enter into that example, like copyright, and maybe this question has the potential to spawn a Chit-Chat thread—for now, I introduce this as evidence that it's important to understand why you're following rules, and to be aware that sometimes breaking a rule can be the right thing to do.)

In real life, the laws are obeyed either out of fear of the consequences, or better still, out of trust that they will ensure a more equitable outcome. The implication here is that laws and customs ought to be beneficial to society as a whole, and not unduly exploitative of any of its members.

In an online piggybank, there may be an implied constraint against feeding it in a scripted manner. On the other hand, this contest, even when played straight, provides neither an entertaining spectacle, nor an equitable result—as I described, it's probably a significant net loss to society, because feeding a piggybank is by definition among the least productive uses of labour. And that's to say nothing of the layers of perversity embodied in choosing the winner based on that process. It is clearly open to manipulation, and the organizers of the contest have failed to impose even modest safeguards against that possibility (they didn't even post a conspicuous notice, as they ought to have if this was important to them). It is not representative of the true needs of the community—at best it encourages the two organizations to mobilize their bases of support, and therefore is little but a comparison of the marketing skills of two worthy organizations. (It's not even a popularity contest, because the competitors self-select the majority of the participants.) In fact, intentionally or not, it allows the granting organization to dodge the (more difficult) question of how to allocate resources based on need or merit, instead substituting a quasi-democratic exercise that resembles a vote, but doesn't really have anything to do with the will of the people.

I'll allow the possibility that the Oshkosh Area Community Foundation is of limited capabilities, and is therefore unable to tackle the problem of allocating resources in a reasonable way. In that case, if the only alternative was not to disburse the funds, then sure, a silly Flash game would be better than nothing. But under those constraints, they could just have given $500 to each candidate organization, and moved on. So I can only hope that they're of the belief that by organizing this song and dance, they can counteract the overall negative effect of the program by drumming up enough support to encourage other sorts of contributions to the team—like someone seeing the pig, and thinking, "I could do this so much better if I just wrote the team a cheque". That's why the real solution is to figure out a way to eliminate the middleman, and get the team some money that isn't tainted by hundreds of wasted person-hours.

So, failing that, because this is obviously not a democratic exercise (unless the franchise is actually supposed to be defined by "how many fake coins you can manually deposit into a virtual pig"), is it actually wrong to use a script to automate the process in favour of the organization you believe most worthy? Aren't we just relying on preconceptions of voting behaviour that don't actually apply to piggybanks? And isn't there room for legitimate protest in response to the absurdity of it all? Perhaps something along the lines of causing someone to realize "these million votes from the same IP address can't be real...maybe we ought to re-think our strategy for disbursing funds".

Now of course, it might be better to simply communicate these concerns directly to the donor, rather than engage in a script war. If they're willing to respond on a policy-based level, then you've won the battle without firing a shot.

There's actually one other interesting fact about this particular contest: if you were depositing scripted coins of your own volition, Wave played no part in causing you to do that (except maybe introducing you to the contest). So if Wave got disqualified because of your actions, it would expose another inequity in the competition's design—punishing an innocent party for the sins of another isn't fair. In fact, if you knew this was a potential consequence, you might deposit millions of coins in the "opponent's" piggybank, in the hopes of getting them disqualified. (Malice aforethought probably makes you complicit in the stupidity, but it's an equivalent demonstration of the flawed system.)

And you know what: getting Wave disqualified early in the contest would probably have been a better overall outcome than letting the contest run its course. That would have avoided the waste of the majority of those person-hours, and guaranteed that Emmeline Cook Elementary School would win $1000. Now that's an insane situation: even if you "cheat", and get caught, and get thrown out, society is better off.

[Thermal]

That's some really strong feelings over supposedly using 2800 dollars worth of man hours to produce 1000 dollars for a team. Your argument is so asinine I really cannot begin to fathom why you feel so strongly about it to post essay length rebuttals.

I'll debunk your argument by simply saying that all man-hours are not of equivalent worth, and what people do in their leisure time is their own business.

To finish, i'll leave this here.

"Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will!"

[Akash Rastogi]

And you know what: getting Wave disqualified early in the contest would probably have been a better overall outcome than letting the contest run its course. That would have avoided the waste of the majority of those person-hours, and guaranteed that Emmeline Cook Elementary School would win $1000. Now that's an insane situation: even if you "cheat", and get caught, and get thrown out, society is better off.

Tristan, I usually love your posts, but I cease to understand why you care or what you're mad about.

Let those who "wasted" their time doing this worry about themselves. If you didn't feel the need to contribute to helping a team, why are you posting this?

[thefro526]

Congrats to Wave on earning the grant.

I'm glad to see the 10 minutes a day I spent dropping coins in didn't go to waste.

Keep up the awesome. :D

[DonRotolo]

Sigh. Someone please close this thread.

[Tristan Lall]

That's some really strong feelings over supposedly using 2800 dollars worth of man hours to produce 1000 dollars for a team. Your argument is so asinine I really cannot begin to fathom why you feel so strongly about it to post essay length rebuttals.

I'll debunk your argument by simply saying that all man-hours are not of equivalent worth, and what people do in their leisure time is their own business.I don't dispute it's a person's right to choose how they spend their leisure hours, and donor's right to disburse their funds within reason. I'm just opining that for all the talk of what's right and wrong, we seem to have forgotten to ask whether this contest is even a responsible way of accomplishing the goals of the donor organization. Just because people are willing to participate doesn't make it a good idea. And conversely, is it always wrong (or even illegal) to fail to honour the ad hoc terms that people invented above?

Since I don't think the Oshkosh Area Community Foundation's goal was to destroy more value than they've created, I think they've erred, even as they write a $1 000 cheque to a good cause. The point is to highlight an opportunity for better fundraising practices, not to castigate individual coin-depositors (who may not consider their actions a waste of time).

(And by the way: if we're talking in economic terms, leisure hours are more valuable than working ones, because you would demand a very high wage to convert that leisure into labour.)

Tristan, I usually love your posts, but I cease to understand why you care or what you're mad about.

Let those who "wasted" their time doing this worry about themselves. If you didn't feel the need to contribute to helping a team, why are you posting this?It's like those schemes where someone collects two million pop tabs, and then tries to exchange them for a wheelchair. Even if they do get a wheelchair out of it (and usually they don't (http://www.snopes.com/business/redeem/pulltabs.asp)), they've wasted so much effort that could have been better applied to something else.

This is just another version of the same sort of problem, except that we're talking labour instead of scrap metal (and in this case, the payout is certain, but in all likelihood smaller than the expenditure).

Sigh. Someone please close this thread.Sorry Don...I wanted to wait until after the fundraising drive had run its course, to avoid the (wholly erroneous) perception that I might be trying to sabotage their efforts. I may have been just a little too forceful in a thread that was expected to soon reach the end of its natural lifespan.

[Thermal]

(And by the way: if we're talking in economic terms, leisure hours are more valuable than working ones, because you would demand a very high wage to convert that leisure into labour.)

Except in the case where people donated their leisure hours into some pseudo form of labor for this team.

[Debbie]

Congrats Wave!!!!! I'm happy that everyone came together to help you!

[Brandon Holley]

It's like those schemes where someone collects two million pop tabs, and then tries to exchange them for a wheelchair. Even if they do get a wheelchair out of it (and usually they don't (http://www.snopes.com/business/redeem/pulltabs.asp)), they've wasted so much effort that could have been better applied to something else.

This is just another version of the same sort of problem, except that we're talking labour instead of scrap metal (and in this case, the payout is certain, but in all likelihood smaller than the expenditure)

This is where I cannot follow your argument.

Sure, maybe if only a few people had spent all that time depositing coins in the piggy bank you can say that those persons couldve been more productive with their time. However, the beauty of the process was that it only required a few minutes from each person in a large group of people to accomplish the same task. Trying to roll all of that time up into collective man hours is in my eyes, apples and oranges.

Many people are more than willing to spend 10 minutes or so doing a task like that to help someone out. That doesn't mean you can take 48 people's collective 10 minutes each, add them together and get an 8 hour day of coin dropping. 1 person simply would not do that for an 8 hour day, which is why I cannot follow your argument.

-Brando

[trilogy2826]

I would like to shore Tyler's thanks to the CD community. Overall, I thought this was a fun and engaging (albeit repetitive) way of awarding a grant. I spent a lot of nights "feeding the pig" while on travel testing robots for my other (not FIRST) job. I chain emailed at least 50 people outside of CD and our team and they in turn passed the word on. At the very least, we cast our FIRST net further than we did before.

To address Tristan's comments: I am with Akash and Brandon so far as being confused by your logic and derisiveness toward this effort. Every year I personally put over $800 cash and easily 500-600 hours of my "leisure time" into Wave Robotics. All of our team members and sponsors donate their cash and energy to different degrees. Almost every fundraiser we have ever done would cost more than we would gain if we were to pay our volunteers even minimum wage. I know from talking to many other teams in the past, this is similar in their estimation. The coin donation effort was no different in this regard than every other effort every team has put into making their team more than just a collection of people.

So why do we do this year after year? Why did CD step up to the plate and help our singular team to get this grant? IMHO, we are all givers to the core. We take solace in the fact that what we are doing provides something, that if it didn't exist, would make our community a worse place.

This reply was not generated to continue an argument. It was generated to exemplify to the CD community how proud I am to be part of FIRST and CD. This entire organization was partially founded on creating something out of nothing and enabling people and eventually the greater society to be more responsible toward their fellow humans.

Again thanks to the CD community for helping in this effort. I encourage every team to go to their local Chamber of Commerce or community involvement center and see what is out there. I would love to see another one of these grant games on CD soon.

[Tristan Lall]

To address Tristan's comments: I am with Akash and Brandon so far as being confused by your logic and derisiveness toward this effort. Every year I personally put over $800 cash and easily 500-600 hours of my "leisure time" into Wave Robotics. All of our team members and sponsors donate their cash and energy to different degrees. Almost every fundraiser we have ever done would cost more than we would gain if we were to pay our volunteers even minimum wage. I know from talking to many other teams in the past, this is similar in their estimation. The coin donation effort was no different in this regard than every other effort every team has put into making their team more than just a collection of people.It's not about the team paying anybody minimum wage—so I think you're misunderstanding.

It's simply about recognizing that first, what's most advantageous for the team may not be equivalent to what's most advantageous to society, and second, that if team members could raise more money by working longer at their ordinary jobs (hypothetically at minimum wage, because that's a conservative estimate) and just donating the extra wages to the team1 (rather than staging fundraisers), that might be a more productive use of time, if they're so inclined. (Maybe there are difficult-to-quantify benefits like camaraderie and publicity that are built by fundraising in your chosen manner—but if you fundraise more efficiently, you'll have time left over that you can dedicate to other forms of team-building.)

Except in the case where people donated their leisure hours into some pseudo form of labor for this team.That's not actually an exception. If you give your leisure to your employer, and then donate the wage you earned to the team, the team is better off. And so is the rest of society, because you've underwritten your personal loss (difference between the value of labour and your wage) as part of the donation, so nobody but you suffers for it.

By contrast, if you give your leisure to the piggybank, and let it dictate the donation to the team, nobody is any better off than in the previous scenario. Not you, not your employer, and certainly not the team. That's why—compared to the alternatives—this is a bad choice when you consider society as a whole.

So, however you give away that time, you've made the choice to forego something of value (free time), in exchange for something else (money or the team's well-being).

The crucial difference is the rate of return. If you take the money you earn for working an extra hour, and donate it to the team, the rate of return is wage:leisure. If you take the time off, and use it to volunteer for the team, the rate return is proportional to your value in that capacity (for that duration). If you take the piggybank, the rate of return is low in absolute terms, and actually diminishes as the number of coins deposited increases.

In gross terms, if many people take their excess wages for a total of 400 h and donate them, the team could stand to make a lot of money (based on whatever the wages are for those people). If the team receives 400 h of mentorship, that might also be very useful (but mentorship often requires physical presence, which isn't so easy to subdivide). If the team wins the piggybank contest, their return is $1 000, no matter if 0.001 h or 400 h were needed to reach a winning total—and given equal publicity-seeking abilities, the team's expected return is only $500.

Surely for 400 h of labour—even other peoples' labour—they could do better than $500? (Or $1 000, if they're assured of the win.)

When both prospective recipients are trying hard to win, this also means the marginal value of each deposit in the piggybank is infinitesimal—every time you contribute, you're giving the team ≈ $0—and the marginal cost is high—you're foregoing > $0 in wages.

Many people are more than willing to spend 10 minutes or so doing a task like that to help someone out. That doesn't mean you can take 48 people's collective 10 minutes each, add them together and get an 8 hour day of coin dropping. 1 person simply would not do that for an 8 hour day, which is why I cannot follow your argument.That's a fair point, and that's part of the reason I mentioned that a better crowdsourced fundraising solution would involve making it simple to transfer small amounts of money (equivalent to the relatively low value people place on 10 min of their time).

But let's be clear: I'm not arguing that someone should spend 8 h dropping coins. I think that would be a bad idea for the same reasons it's a bad idea to have hundreds of people divide the work amongst themselves—and maybe it's even worse, because a person's tolerance for menial tasks probably diminishes with repetitiveness.

(And yes, I am recognizing the irony of spending an inordinate amount of time discussing this topic, when perhaps I could be doing something more productive.)

1 Assuming for the purposes of this example that their employers will let them work on that basis. If salary is fixed no matter how much work you do, then this becomes more complicated—but the minimum wage should be a reasonable lower bound for the purposes of illustrating the point.

[Tristan Lall]

Let me lay out a straightforward comparison, in the hope of divorcing this somewhat from the rates of return and other complexities.

Pretend you're a worker in Wisconsin, making the minimum wage of $7.25/h. You're employed for 40 h/wk, and have the option of working up to 5 h/wk overtime at your normal wage. (Overtime beyond that requires supervisor's consent, and is paid at 1.5 times the normal wage.) You're paid weekly, and your work is tracked by a timeclock.

Consider two scenarios, A & B, for one particular week:
You work 40 h in total. Every day, you spend a few minutes with the pig, totalling 1 h.
You are paid $7.25/h × 40 h = $290.00 Your employer gets 40 h of productivity from you ($productivity/h × 40 h). You give up 1 h of leisure as a donation (so no loss to society). Wave Robotics makes $1 000.00 if they win, $0.00 if they lose. (Expected value to Wave is $500.00.) Society gets $1 000.00 + $productivity/h × 40 h either way. You work 41 h in total. You donate 1 h worth of wages ($7.25) to Wave. You are paid $7.25/h × 41 h = $297.25 Your employer gets 41 h of productivity from you. (They are better off.) You give up one hour of leisure (of your own accord, so no loss to society). Wave gets some amount, based on the number of donors. The benefit to society is variable, and can be represented as $donated + $productivity/h × 41 h.
Let's assume for simplicity that the extra productivity in B is small, and can be neglected.

So in A, Wave needs to mobilize enough supporter-deposits to win the contest. In B, Wave needs to attract enough donor-hours to match the expected value from A (69, if the odds are even that they will win or lose, so the expectation is $500), or enough donors to match the benefit to society (138, for $1 000).

At 50 coins/min, or 3 000 coins/h, the tipping point between a net benefit and a net loss to society is at 138 h × 3 000 coins/h = 414 000 coins. If you can win with fewer coins in play than that, it's a net plus to society, and you should play the game. If you can't, then an alternative was a better solution.

In terms of statistical equivalence, you only need to make more than the expected value for the team to come out ahead. So it's best for the team to put the tipping point at 69 h × 3 000 coins/h = 207 000 coins. That's why the right choice for the team isn't necessarily the right choice for society.

So, as it actually played out, you used something like 1.5 million coins to win (plus your opponent had a million and change, and those have to be accounted for too). At those wage rates, it would have been a net loss to society. Hopefully, that's a clear statement of what I'm trying to get across.

Now, to add in one more complexity: in case B, the benefit to society is variable. That means, if Wave fails to attract enough donors, they could actually ruin their entire effort and make society worse off than in A (where the payout is guaranteed). So I guess you could call case A a form of insurance against insufficient donors—you accept a lower (fixed) return in exchange for certainty.

But that's where the perversity of A comes in: since society always makes $1 000 from the grant, all you have to do is make sure your own actions don't harm society. Unfortunately, while every coin that you deposit helps Wave—at 414 000 total coins (the sum for Wave and the opponent), you start harming society. (That's why it's not crazy to say that "cheating" and getting kicked out could actually be better for society than playing the game.)

[Jon Stratis]

Now, lets assumed you're a salaried worker, and make the same amount regardless of working 40 hours or 41 hours or even 80 hours a week. Suddenly your whole argument collapses because that extra hour of leisure time spent wouldn't have made you anything if you spent it at work. In fact, you could argue that it detracts from your hourly wages, as you're putting in more time for the same amount.

Now, lets assume an employer's view of hourly workers. Likely they'll want to cap people at 40 hours/week, otherwise they have to pay them overtime (it's law in most, if not all, states). I know - back in the day (high school/college) when I was hourly, I wasn't allowed to work more than 40... and my boss would literally be standing there at the end of the week if I was pushing the limit to ensure I clocked out on time. Now, the difference between working 40 hours and 41 hours is.... not computable, as you aren't allowed to work 41 hours!

Now, what about students sitting in class? doing a mindless task like this during class for many people is perfectly acceptable, as they can still pay attention to the material being presented. This is a period of the day they physically can't be working, as they are obligated to be in class.

So in many cases, working that extra hour and donating those wages really isn't possible. How does that figure into your calculations?

[Alan Anderson]

Pretend you're a worker in Wisconsin, making the minimum wage of $7.25/h. You're employed for 40 h/wk, and have the option of working up to 5 h/wk overtime at your normal wage.

If most of the people involved in this pig-feeding game were hourly employees with the option of donating an extra hour's worth of pay, I'd be inclined to take your very detailed and very clear analysis at face value. However, I suspect that the vast majority of coinpiggage was done either by students who don't fit that category at all, or by salaried folk who don't make any more if they work more. Your argument seems to hinge on the opportunity cost of spending a few minutes of time playing the game, and I don't think you're considering that the "cost" for most of the players is vanishingly small.

[GaryVoshol]

I understand Tristan's point. Way back in HS I gave up some work time so I could participate in a car wash fundraiser for choir. We were thrilled with the total amount we made. Then my mom asked how much that would be per person to offset travel costs - and it turns out I only earned 1/2 or 1/3 of what I could have made if I went to work.

Now in the productivity and cost equations, suppose the piggy-bank-stuffer was doing it while at work ... :rolleyes:

[DonRotolo]

Sorry Don...I wanted to wait until after the fundraising drive had run its course, to avoid the (wholly erroneous) perception that I might be trying to sabotage their efforts. I may have been just a little too forceful in a thread that was expected to soon reach the end of its natural lifespan.No worries Tristan. Your point is well-stated and has generated civil discourse so far. Unless it gets out of hand - my fears have decreased - carry on. And I agree, it was gracious of you to make your point after it was over.

[Tyler Olds]

Can a moderator please close this thread and open up a new one pertaining to fundraising and methods involved?? I would appreciate this discussion being held with no specific teams involved.

To others who did this because it was fun or out of the generosity of their heart, thank you once again for making the decision to help out a fellow team.

P.S. If anybody would like to donate $$$ instead of participating in a fundraiser like this because it is not worth the time / money ratio, please feel free to contact me anytime. Wave Robotics is 501c3 exempt through our local community foundation (which provided this contest) and would be more than willing to help you reduce your tax liability.

[Tristan Lall]

Now, lets assumed you're a salaried worker, and make the same amount regardless of working 40 hours or 41 hours or even 80 hours a week. Suddenly your whole argument collapses because that extra hour of leisure time spent wouldn't have made you anything if you spent it at work. In fact, you could argue that it detracts from your hourly wages, as you're putting in more time for the same amount.

Now, lets assume an employer's view of hourly workers. Likely they'll want to cap people at 40 hours/week, otherwise they have to pay them overtime (it's law in most, if not all, states). I know - back in the day (high school/college) when I was hourly, I wasn't allowed to work more than 40... and my boss would literally be standing there at the end of the week if I was pushing the limit to ensure I clocked out on time. Now, the difference between working 40 hours and 41 hours is.... not computable, as you aren't allowed to work 41 hours!

Now, what about students sitting in class? doing a mindless task like this during class for many people is perfectly acceptable, as they can still pay attention to the material being presented. This is a period of the day they physically can't be working, as they are obligated to be in class.

So in many cases, working that extra hour and donating those wages really isn't possible. How does that figure into your calculations?You'll note the footnote a couple posts up where I referred to those assumptions. I'm not ignoring them—but describing them does make things quite a bit more complex. To help make the point, let me introduce the economic concept of utility: basically, think of it as a currency that indicates how useful something is (to you, to someone else, or to the world). The trouble is, the exchange rate with dollars fluctuates with the circumstances—sometimes you need an Allen wrench, so the utility of a Phillips screwdriver is nearly zero at that instant. (But obviously that screwdriver could be useful under different conditions.) Figuring out the exact exchange rate is complicated—in fact, it's basically impossible. But that doesn't mean we can't make good estimates based on the conditions at hand. (It's perfectly reasonable to call the accuracy of a particular estimate into question, but that's an argument over details rather than the validity of the model.) Previously, we'd been assuming that since you were donating an hour of leisure, its exact value wasn't important. Here, we'll have to compare that value with an amount of money, and calculate losses, so it needs to be converted using the utility exchange rate.

In the next two cases (C & D), assume that there's no value to working more than normal...so you don't. You can think of the hourly case as a simplified version of the salaried case. They're basically the same, except that for the salaried case, your wage is also a variable (which depends on the work you had to accomplish during that particular week, and your productivity). That just makes everything very complex, but you'll see that the same trends hold.

You work 40 h in total. Every day, you spend a few minutes with the pig, totalling 1 h.
You work 41 h in total. You donate 1 h worth of wages ($7.25) to the team.
You work exactly 40 h as an hourly worker. You donate $7.25 to the team.If your employer allows you to work exactly 40 hours per week, no more and no less, and won't listen when you explain that it's for a good cause, then option B isn't available to you. So instead, you might substitute option C where you donate $7.25 from your own pocket (so now, the employer gets exactly 40 h of labour, but you keep 39 h worth of wages). Now you're worse off than before; let's say you'd be happy to give up utility equivalent to what you would have donated in B, but that the additional loss of utility makes you unhappy. That means that there is a loss to you, and therefore an incremental loss to society. Depending on the utility exchange rate (i.e. how strongly you value that loss—is that money you can't save for retirement, or does it mean your family will not eat tomorrow?), it shifts the tipping point higher. But unless that hour's wage is of extreme importance to you (or to society), the results are similar: the cash donation is still a better option than clicking the pig for an hour.

The benefit to society is $donated + $productivity/h × 40 h − $loss. So numerically, given equal productivity in cases A and C, the donation is good value when $donated − $loss > $1 000.00. Expressed another way, that means that the tipping point is based on whether or not you accumulate enough donor-hours to overcome $1 000 + $loss. Unless the loss is huge (i.e. unless you really need that money, and thus probably shouldn't be donating it in the first place), it doesn't shift the tipping point by much.

So basically, unless you really need that money you're donating, case C is very similar to case B (and hence it doesn't really matter that you can't work 41 h).

You work as much as necessary as a salaried worker. You donate $7.25 to the team.Your rate of pay diminishes with the number of hours you work (you're expected to get the job done, using whatever reasonable number of hours it takes). You can think of this in two ways: one is basically the same as C above, one is ridiculously difficult to deal with at a practical level.

In the first sub-case (D1), let's just pick a number for your average rate of pay—you might be making roughly $29.00/h instead of $7.25/h, because on balance, the salaried workers around here tend to be compensated at several times the minimum wage. This is likely to imply that what you lose by giving money to the team (e.g. $7.25, or 15 min worth of wages) will not result in a major loss of utility to you. So again, the benefit to society is $donated + $productivity/h × 40 h − $loss, where loss is probably relatively small.

In the second sub-case (D2), which I would consider to be impractical to compute under virtually all circumstances, you now treat productivity and wage as variables, and actually identify what you're earning and how efficiently you're working at the exact moment in question. Assuming you want to be a good employee, you always have a choice between being thorough, or being slightly less thorough and taking more time as leisure. Your concept of that work-life balance is going to depend on a number of factors, including how badly you want to demonstrate that you're worthy of future advancement (thoroughness is likely correlated with being selected for promotion, and with higher future salary), and how much you value various other things in your life (including doing work in support of charity). Similarly, unless you work for the Mafia or something, thoroughness in your job is likely correlated with societal benefit—though the exact rate is very difficult to nail down, because your own productivity fluctuates. (It's probably safe to say that for all reasonable cases, you're a net benefit to your employer, and furthermore a net benefit to society.) In case B, we ignored the extra productivity you give to your employer, because it was small and difficult to quantify. Here, we need to think about it, and it comes down to this question: with respect to the productivity variable, would society be better off with you being a bit more thorough at work (and therefore improving your future prospects, and therefore having more lifetime income to donate to good causes), or instead with you just doing a sufficient job (and reducing your lifetime income, but having more leisure time to spend filling a pig). If you donate directly, the benefit to society is still $donated + $productivity/h × 40 h − $loss. That's obviously not easy to answer when everything's in flux, but I think that instead following the D1 method and taking a best guess at what your hourly wage is this week will yield a very good estimate, without the computational nastiness.
You're a student in class. You feed the pig when you're not otherwise busy, eventually depositing as many coins over the week as a person could do in an hour.
It's possible that the class you're taking is slow enough that you can operate the piggybank during class without diminishing your comprehension of the lesson. Furthermore, hopefully the teacher is easygoing enough that they won't be offended by you feeding the pig. And maybe you can even do so without distracting other students. And let's say you're in the United States, where gambling online for money is frowned upon (much more so in class)—so basically you are not able to convert that class time into cash that could be donated instead. If there really is no practical alternative, then sure, I guess you should play the Flash game. But do you actually envision this being the case? (And if so, isn't that some sort of damning indictment of the school?)
⁂

I think that a lot of the problem I have with this system is that the payout is not proportional to the effort. The harder you try, the less you get for each quantum of effort. While slogging through diminishing returns is probably necessary to win the FRC championship, that's something for which there's no practical alternative—who would pay you so that you don't need to compete? Equally, if it were a case of "this or nothing", it would make sense to persevere despite diminishing returns. But given that there are alternatives, why not explore those instead?

And as for the "cheating" angle, if the payoff was proportional to the effort, then yes, scripting coin deposits would cause an actual financial loss to the donor, beyond what they may have reasonably expected from humans alone. I think that's the point where the question of right and wrong really becomes meaningful. But as it stands, there's no loss to society, other than the time you expend trying to win the game.

Now in the productivity and cost equations, suppose the piggy-bank-stuffer was doing it while at work ... :rolleyes:Productivity decreases, so they'd have to work harder to reach the tipping point...in other words, when dealing with the benefit to society, there's no free lunch. (But note that there is a potential free lunch when only considering the benefit to the team.)

Can a moderator please close this thread and open up a new one pertaining to fundraising and methods involved?? I would appreciate this discussion being held with no specific teams involved.How about we just stop referring to Wave by name in the examples?

[Thermal]

You feel as though time is a commodity. It's not. Time (measured in hours of human labor) has value differentiation. Massive levels of value differentiation. A worker in Wisconsin will be paid $7.25 for a single unit of time (measured in hours of human labor). Meanwhile, a poker pro could be paid $64,000 for his unit of time. People who partook in this exercise of... lets call it "coinbanking"... were reimbursed for their time equal to the exchange rate of $1000.00/(hours of time spent by the winning team). You come into this thread and post up massive arguments essentially saying that the exchange rate was much too low (2.8x lower than it should be) and that people who partook in this exercise should of simply done something else for equivalent time, received a higher exchange rate for their product (hours of human labor), and then traded the exchanged good (currency backed by the United States government) to the team. And only if they done this would "society" be prosperous and much better off!

Now, the flaw in that argument is that you guarantee that a person would be able to very simply, find something/somebody to exchange their resource (hours of human labor) into currency at a rate higher than this website, using equivalent units of time. If that was the case, everyone on this planet would be trillionaires. Nobody would be jobless, everyone would be rich, and this planet would massively prosperous selling a non-tangible commodity. I'm really quite unsure why you can so readily accept the fact that time can be exchanged at a rate higher than the minimum hourly wage of a Wisconsin worker, but cannot in turn be exchanged at a rate lower than that (and still see benefits to "society")

Unfortunately, the world doesn't work in a way where I can just walk down to the Time Exchange Office and turn in some hours for American Dollars. Society(a term you so readily throw around, and I still don't know what you mean by it) does not work this way.


Disclaimer: I'm not an economist, i'm not taking classes in economics, this post is opinionated, even in cases where I present things as fact. (trustatus: The factyness of these facts could quite easily be debated, and if your recent posts are to be used as examples, i'm sure they will be)

[Tristan Lall]

Disclaimer: I'm not an economist, i'm not taking classes in economics, this post is opinionated, even in cases where I present things as fact. (trustatus: The factyness of these facts could quite easily be debated, and if your recent posts are to be used as examples, i'm sure they will be)Sure, why not....

(By the way, I'm no economist either, though I have taken a few classes in it. I'm not intending to say that mine is the final word on the subject.)

You feel as though time is a commodity. It's not. Time (measured in hours of human labor) has value differentiation. Massive levels of value differentiation. A worker in Wisconsin will be paid $7.25 for a single unit of time (measured in hours of human labor). Meanwhile, a poker pro could be paid $64,000 for his unit of time. People who partook in this exercise of... lets call it "coinbanking"... were reimbursed for their time equal to the exchange rate of $1000.00/(hours of time spent by the winning team). You come into this thread and post up massive arguments essentially saying that the exchange rate was much too low (2.8x lower than it should be) and that people who partook in this exercise should of simply done something else for equivalent time, received a higher exchange rate for their product (hours of human labor), and then traded the exchanged good (currency backed by the United States government) to the team. And only if they done this would "society" be prosperous and much better off!Not "only". (I'm describing an alternative, not every alternative.) But otherwise, yes, that's essentially what I'm saying. There existed a reasonable alternative use of that time, for which the team and society would have been better off.

The fact that time has different value to different people is relevant to the extent that each person's donation is going to be determined by how they value their time. For simplicity and for conservativeness I was using the minimum wage, because I think it's a fairly good lower bound for the average wage a person will receive. But of course, if you're soliciting donations from rich poker players, and they're willing to contribute an equal number of hours' work, then you'll make a lot more money per person. (Though of course, they're not really hourly or salaried, so we're talking average wages here.) Similarly, if you solicit donations from the unemployed, you're unlikely to get much money.

If we wanted to be more precise (and had the means to do an experiment), instead of assuming a single (low) wage and running with it, we could ask each donor how many hours of depositing they'd be willing to do, versus how much they value their time. I'm estimating that when you aggregate their responses, and divide by the number of donors, you're going to get something that isn't lower than the minimum wage. (As to why that's right, consider a thought experiment of several case Bs, each with a different wage. Given that it's unlikely that people will be making less than the minimum wage, and basically impossible for them to be making less than zero, but entirely possible for them to be making several times the minimum wage, the distribution of wages is not going to be symmetrical. Imagine a histogram: it will probably be almost empty from $0.00 right up to $7.25, then will have a lot of people for a while, and then will taper down as the wages get higher. The mean of that distribution is going to be larger than $7.25.)

Now, the flaw in that argument is that you guarantee that a person would be able to very simply, find something/somebody to exchange their resource (hours of human labor) into currency at a rate higher than this website, using equivalent units of time. If that was the case, everyone on this planet would be trillionaires. Nobody would be jobless, everyone would be rich, and this planet would massively prosperous selling a non-tangible commodity. I'm really quite unsure why you can so readily accept the fact that time can be exchanged at a rate higher than the minimum hourly wage of a Wisconsin worker, but cannot in turn be exchanged at a rate lower than that (and still see benefits to "society")I'm not guaranteeing anything, but I do assume (as described above) that the average person could reasonably easily find a way to exchange their marginal unit of labour for what amounts to the minimum wage. (When I say "marginal", I'm talking about the relevant quantum of labour—that which is being used to allow them to make a donation—for which the minimum wage is a fair estimate. We're not talking about the 1st hour or the 81st hour of labour, which could be said to have very different instantaneous valuations.) It's undeniably true that this is not the case for some people, and it is equally true that many people can do much better.

However, it does not follow that just because the average is above the minimum wage (or positive, or whatever), that everyone will therefore have virtually-unlimited prosperity. I'm not sure how you're reaching that conclusion.

Unfortunately, the world doesn't work in a way where I can just walk down to the Time Exchange Office and turn in some hours for American Dollars.That's actually a good approximation of a job. As I demonstrated previously, it doesn't matter a whole lot if you can ask for an extra hour of work, or if you just take the proceeds of an existing hour and donate them. By being employed, you are turning in hours, and receiving money.

Society(a term you so readily throw around, and I still don't know what you mean by it) does not work this way."Society" is exactly what it sounds like: everybody, or to narrow it down a little as a practical matter, everybody who has a conceivable interaction with you. By saying society is better off, I'm saying that holding all other factors equal, the benefits to everyone outweigh the detriments to everyone.

I've also been trying to work in examples of why it's absolutely vital to consider the effects on society, rather than just the effects on the team. The economic concept of a negative externality—a cost that is borne by someone outside of the model—applies here. If you only care about your team (or your family, or your town, or your political donors, etc.), those negative externalities can build up, and make what looks at first glance to be a positive thing (within a team-centric model, it's a free chance at $1 000), into something that's actually worse for society (what is given up to achieve that $1 000?).

[Andy Baker]

I respect the folks involved in this debate, but I don't want to invest the time into participating in the economics debate itself.

If I had the choice between:

spending 10 minutes of my time between making a direct impact on helping a team - or -
spending 10 minutes of my time considering if it was worth it or not


I would choose to help the team with 10 minutes of my time. In this case, I would feed the piggybank for 10 minutes. Then, I would get back to work.

Andy B.

[AlecMataloni]

Let's not forget the money you could've been making while you were planning and typing out immense tl;dr posts on Chief Delphi...

Tristian, you've got a point, but I think one post expressing your concerns would suffice.

[lemiant]

I just thought I'd do a shameless plug for python:

import urllib
import urllib2
import time

url = 'http://www.oshkoshareacf.org/gameend.cfm';

values = {'GameID': '15',
'Player2Score': '0',
'PlayerID2': '32',
'Player1Score' : '5',
'PlayerID1' : '31'}

headers = {'Host': 'www.oshkoshareacf.org',
'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0.1 FirePHP/0.5',
'Accept': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0.1 FirePHP/0.5',
'Accept-Language': 'en-us,en;q=0.5',
'Accept-Encoding': 'gzip, deflate',
'Accept-Charset': 'ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7',
'Keep-Alive': '115',
'Connection': 'keep-alive',
'Cookie': 'CFID=6467245; CFTOKEN=19355325; __utma=68525711.2050307234.1305435022.1305435022.1 307141491.2; __utmz=68525711.1307141491.2.2.utmcsr=chiefdelphi. com|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/forums/showthread.php; __utmb=68525711.9.10.1307141491; __utmc=68525711',
'x-insight': 'activate'}

data = urllib.urlencode(values)


for i in range (0, 1200):
req = urllib2.Request(url, data, headers)
response = urllib2.urlopen(req)
print i
print "done"

It is for the current set (I only just found this thread), and it can handle about 3000 coins per minute. With only a rudimentary knowledge of python you could pull this off. You probably don't even need the headers, I just put them in so that if they store each request and all its information (which is very unlikely), they won't be able to detect the subterfuge.

EDIT: After reading through this thread I ran it again for the other side so as to not influence the outcome. Seriously though, you guys SIGNIFICANTLY underestimate the power and overestimate challenge of scripts. If two of me were fighting this out, the number would be in the tens to hundreds of millions (or, more likely, the site would crash).

[lemiant]

Actually, the real problem-solver's solution is this: figure out a way to overcome the frictional effects of small financial transactions (e.g. impulse control, authentication, etc.), and account for the (minimal) recreational benefits of playing this game, with the overall objective of making donations as attractive as spending time dropping coins in a pig. That way everyone actually wins.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Mechanical_Turk

[Tristan Lall]

I would choose to help the team with 10 minutes of my time. In this case, I would feed the piggybank for 10 minutes. Then, I would get back to work.
Let's not forget the money you could've been making while you were planning and typing out immense tl;dr posts on Chief Delphi...

Tristian, you've got a point, but I think one post expressing your concerns would suffice.
(And yes, I am recognizing the irony of spending an inordinate amount of time discussing this topic, when perhaps I could be doing something more productive.)Yeah, I know.1

I probably shouldn't have led off with a numerical example that begat more examples, as people objected to the simplifications in it. Gary actually made one of the underlying points quite effectively with his brief anecdote—which wasn't open to the same kind of argumentation, given that he was describing a real event.

In my defence though, all too often people don't want to run the numbers, because conventional wisdom can be so much more convenient. I'm glad I did, because it allowed me the chance to verify that my initial instinct was justifiable (at least to me). I'm absolutely not going to say that it's always worth it to spend time calculating things out or formally describing things like that, but when the consequences of making a faulty economic decision are significant, it's a useful technique to be aware of. (Legislators should try it more often....)


It is for the current set (I only just found this thread), and it can handle about 3000 coins per minute. With only a rudimentary knowledge of python you could pull this off. You probably don't even need the headers, I just put them in so that if they store each request and all its information (which is very unlikely), they won't be able to detect the subterfuge.If you were actually doing it for real, I don't think you'd want to leave consistent referrer metadata pointing to ChiefDelphi...that's like asking to get blacklisted (if they do indeed disapprove of scripted input).
EDIT: After reading through this thread I ran it again for the other side so as to not influence the outcome. Seriously though, you guys SIGNIFICANTLY underestimate the power and overestimate challenge of scripts. If two of me were fighting this out, the number would be in the tens to hundreds of millions (or, more likely, the site would crash).Interesting that the rate at which you were able to submit was so high; I figured that because it was done through Flash, it actually had to completely execute all the animations before registering the next coin. I guess that was a shoddy assumption on my part. (Actually, from playing a lot of Flash games (http://media.y3.com/games/files/stickman-shootout.swf) in the early 2000s, I should really know better.)

I still think this was at least significantly scripted, perhaps using a less-efficient technique, or perhaps running for less time.

1 My preceding posts in this thread run about 5 400 words, which is worth somewhere between 10 and 20 pages of text. ::rtm::

[Aren_Hill]

Tristan has spent a few hours of his time helping create more aware individuals, (myself included). So in my mind he's doing just fine with using his time productively.