I Spy a Red Ballon!

[Greg Needel]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

Greg Needel will not be pleased.

I am never one to be discouraged. I think that competition is a good thing and different groups will have different tactics for solving the problem. Good luck to you and your group tomorrow.

for those interested in another group you can also check out http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/gr...d=163627713147

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by Greg Needel

I am never one to be discouraged. I think that competition is a good thing and different groups will have different tactics for solving the problem. Good luck to you and your group tomorrow.

for those interested in another group you can also check out http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/gr...d=163627713147

For those interested in the better group

[IKE]

Ineresting group working on this:
http://www.openredballoon.com/

So far they have probably 100 locations for 10 ballons. CAn someone help me with the math on this?

[NickE]

A MIT Team has won.

https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/

[Molten]

Originally Posted by NickE

A MIT Team has won.

Just curious, how did they do it? Anyone know?

[BrendanB]

They probably use their Alumni association to help out with their findings. They must have alumni all over the country. Send out mass emails and phone calls. They had every town covered.

Oh darn... eventually FIRSTers will out number them.

[Greg Needel]

Originally Posted by Molten

Just curious, how did they do it? Anyone know?

They set up a web system that incentified the recruitment of people to give balloon info to them. Ie. The person that finds the balloon first gets 2k. The person who referred them gets 1k, etc. I did not see another group (including mine) that had this system in place, most other groups just gave prize money to people who specifically found the balloons.

[IKE]

Originally Posted by Greg Needel

They set up a web system that incentified the recruitment of people to give balloon info to them. Ie. The person that finds the balloon first gets 2k. The person who referred them gets 1k, etc. I did not see another group (including mine) that had this system in place, most other groups just gave prize money to people who specifically found the balloons.

This technique is very insightful. While not everyone will have the opportunity to see a red balloon, everyone would have the oportunity to invite others (dump their contacts) to the group. Very clever. It kind of reminds me of the 6 degrees to everyone. Which by the way would have paid out 2000/2/2/2/2/2/2 or $31.50 If each level had 10 unique contacts that registered/ participated, that would be 1 Million people.

In theory there should ahve been some remainder left from their payout system. I wonder how large that remainder was and who got it? If the original contact found the balloon they would only spend $2K of the up to $4K per balloon payout.