

Hunger Games: Game theory programming competition - skhim
https://brilliant.org/competitions/hunger-games/

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jmilloy
>The teams with the most deserving algorithms will then have a short video
interview with Brilliant staff, which will qualify them to compete in the
final game.

Strange; why not a tournament style? Prejudging based on something other than
survival is a strange choice.

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skhim
Hi I'm Dave Mattingly, the creator of this competition. A couple reasons:

1) The algorithms will be run against each other tournament-style. The
interviews are a cheater-prevention mechanism. We wanted to make sure people's
work is their own, since there are prizes and glory on the line.

2) One of the grand prizes is reserved for the best algorithm, and is purely
objective. We are giving contestants clear rules to optimize around, and it's
only fair to select a winner who wins based on that set of rules. But keeping
some of the other prizes flexible lets us select other winners for other
criteria of excellence as well. My larger goal with Brilliant is to create
more meaningful problem solving challenges and assessments that reward
creativity and critical and analytical ability, rather than rote learning.
(Also discussed by the CEO in a recent TED talk:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnQCYZ8Oz8Q&feature=em-
share_...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnQCYZ8Oz8Q&feature=em-
share_video_user))

[Update] I changed the wording on the site to make 1) more clear.

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jmilloy
Cool, makes sense Dave! Thanks.

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eren_bali
Looks really interesting. It would be nice if we can use javascript, ruby etc

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ryancarson
I love this idea :)

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jameshowardwang
this looks really fun!

