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Topic: Past and future growth (Read 18885 times) |
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #15 on: Oct 4th, 2009, 6:41pm » |
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on Sep 5th, 2009, 10:58am, Fritzlein wrote:| One week in August we had 876 HvB games, which broke the old weekly record of 804, set in December 2007. |
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Well, that record didn't stand for very long. In the last week of September we shattered it with 974 HvB games.
Also I note that we have played more than a hundred total games every day for seventeen days in a row, an unprecedented occurrence.
Furthermore, on Friday, October 2, there were 73 unique human logins. We have only been tracking the number of unique human logins per day since August of 2007, but in that time Friday's number is the fourth-highest ever, surpassed only by March 17, 2008 (finals of the World Championship) and February 5&6, 2009 (during the last round of the Open Classic). To have so many people logging in when nothing special is going in is in itself special.
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megajester
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #16 on: Oct 18th, 2009, 3:42am » |
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on Sep 25th, 2009, 5:57am, qswanger wrote:
Well, at first I was just having fun with acronyms, but then after I posted this I thought more seriously and began to think: why not? Any organization with "US" or "American" in it does not necessarily preclude/exclude non-Americans from joining. I don't think the USCF or the AGA operate this way. |
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If we really want to make it an international organization I think we should call it exactly that: "international". Don't get me wrong, because I know this is a delicate subject, and I just want to have a mature discussion about this as I'm sure we all do. But just based on my life experience as a European I can definitely say that an American "we'll lead and the rest of the world can tag along" approach will do Arimaa more damage than good. I know that's not what you intended qswanger, I'm just concerned that it could be interpreted that way and harm Arimaa's international image.
Most sports, like soccer and chess for example, started having associations on a national level which then federated into an international organization. But since Arimaa launched internationally I think it would make sense for an international body to be started before national ones. So we could start with, say, the International Arimaa Association and then start sub-associations for individual countries, if we ever felt the need for it.
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omar
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #17 on: Oct 18th, 2009, 6:44am » |
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on Oct 18th, 2009, 3:42am, megajester wrote:
So we could start with, say, the International Arimaa Association and then start sub-associations for individual countries, if we ever felt the need for it.
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It's neat that you suggested 'International Arimaa Association' for the name. That's exactly what I would have suggested also  John Herr (The_Jeh) had also mention 'the IAA' in his reply to my posting announcing the Arimaa sets. I think the earliest discussions of an international organization are in this thread:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;nu m=1214335888
The thought of starting such an organization has been crossing my mind since June 2008 and I noted down once some thought on the things this organization would do and how it might be structured. But then I realized that creating such an organization and operating it is a big undertaking and I wouldn't be able make that kind of time commitment. So I've put it on the back burner for now . But if anyone is interested in taking this on, let me know.
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Fritzlein
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #18 on: Nov 5th, 2009, 12:41pm » |
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In October, more games were played on Arimaa.com than in any previous month. We didn't top the record single week from September, but had consistently high participation every week. In particular, the number of HvH and BvB games ticked upward, perhaps in anticipation of the looming 2010 tournaments.
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Fritzlein
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #19 on: Jan 3rd, 2010, 5:21pm » |
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Let me update the table from the first post in this thread:
Year New Accts Games Played
---- --------- ------------
2003 . 381 . 4722
2004 . 334 . 6018
2005 . 770 . 12221
2006 . 635 . 22447
2007 . 729 . 22031
2008 . 756 . 25331
2009 . 1052 . 37418
The best fit for the growth rate of the number of games per year turns out to be almost exactly doubling every two years (a factor of 1.996 according to Excel). So maybe Arimaa has its own Moore's Law to compete with the growth of computing power.
2009 was an amazing year for Arimaa. Here's hoping 2010 is even better!
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| « Last Edit: Jan 4th, 2010, 8:26am by Fritzlein » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #20 on: Feb 7th, 2010, 8:57am » |
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For the most part I have measured the growth of the Arimaa server in terms of the number of games played, but that is only because it is easy to query. I actually prefer the metric of unique users. Unfortunately, we don't have data that goes back to the beginning of the server. Omar only started tracking daily unique logins in August of 2007.
Nevertheless, starting with August 2007, here are the monthly averages of the daily number of unique human logins. Thus in September 2007 an average of 45 people logged in every day. Bots are not counted.
2007-08 41
2007-09 45
2007-10 39
2007-11 36
2007-12 40
2008-01 47
2008-02 43
2008-03 47
2008-04 34
2008-05 30
2008-06 30
2008-07 32
2008-08 34
2008-09 39
2008-10 39
2008-11 38
2008-12 43
2009-01 46
2009-02 51
2009-03 48
2009-04 50
2009-05 43
2009-06 42
2009-07 45
2009-08 47
2009-09 53
2009-10 62
2009-11 61
2009-12 58
2010-01 61
There is a pattern of summer months being weak, and the most logins during the tournament months of January through March. This year the spike started earlier, in October, and has gone higher. February has started out even better than January, so I expect to set a new participation record during this month. The Arimaa community is larger and more engaged than ever!
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Fritzlein
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #21 on: Jan 1st, 2011, 5:57pm » |
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Year New Accts Games Played UU/day
---- --------- ------------ ------
2003 . 381 . 4722
2004 . 334 . 6018
2005 . 770 . 12221
2006 . 635 . 22447
2007 . 729 . 22031
2008 . 756 . 25331 . 38
2009 . 1052 . 37418 . 51
2010 . 1194 . 36121 . 63
The year 2010 was basically flat in terms of total games played on arimaa.com. On the other hand, the size of the community continued to grow steadily. Not only did we have more new accounts created than ever, an average day also saw 63 unique human logins. My interpretation is that we are collectively spending slightly less time bot-bashing while spending slightly more time being sociable. The chat room was occupied a much higher percentage of the time in 2010 than in 2009, we had more live commentary, and we had events such as the Arimaa World League and the Online Festival.
I'm truly proud to be part of a community that doesn't just enjoy its sport individually, but instead multiplies the fun by enjoying it collectively.
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rbarreira
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #22 on: Jan 1st, 2011, 6:04pm » |
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on Jan 1st, 2011, 5:57pm, Fritzlein wrote:
The year 2010 was basically flat in terms of total games played on arimaa.com. On the other hand, the size of the community continued to grow steadily. Not only did we have more new accounts created than ever, an average day also saw 63 unique human logins. My interpretation is that we are collectively spending slightly less time bot-bashing while spending slightly more time being sociable.
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What's the easiest way to find the number of HvH, HvB games? That might confirm your theory.
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Fritzlein
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #23 on: Jan 1st, 2011, 6:14pm » |
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on Jan 1st, 2011, 6:04pm, rbarreira wrote:| What's the easiest way to find the number of HvH, HvB games? That might confirm your theory. |
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The game database is available for download here: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/download/gameData/
Once you have the game database, it is a simple query. However, my database is both months out of date and also located on my other computer.
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JoeHead
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #24 on: Jan 10th, 2011, 2:41pm » |
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It is a pity that growth of the number of new accounts or the number of games played is linear. Exponential - I wouldnt even dared to wish, but maybe cubic or at least quadratic would be fine...
Maybe I am wrong and we are just at the bottom of triple exponential curve 
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Fritzlein
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #25 on: Jan 10th, 2011, 7:00pm » |
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Why do you say it is linear growth in the number of games played? Can't you get a better fit to this data with an exponential curve?
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Oystein
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #26 on: Jan 11th, 2011, 12:53am » |
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I have added a column with the result from linear regression for both new accounts and game played.
The growth seems pretty linear to me.
Year . New Accts . Games Played
---- . ------------ . ---------------
2003 . 381 ~ 343 . 4722 ~ 3682
2004 . 334 ~ 454 . 6018 ~ 8631
2005 . 770 ~ 565 . 12221 ~ 13580
2006 . 635 ~ 676 . 22447 ~ 18529
2007 . 729 ~ 787 . 22031 ~ 23478
2008 . 756 ~ 898 . 25331 ~ 28427
2009 . 1052 ~ 1009 . 37418 ~ 33376
2010 . 1194 ~ 1120 . 36121 ~ 38325
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| « Last Edit: Jan 11th, 2011, 12:55am by Oystein » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #27 on: Jan 11th, 2011, 9:08am » |
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This is a sort of thing that is hard to eyeball. Here I have added exponential growth to the new accounts:
year act lin exp
---- --- --- ---
2003 381 343 380
2004 334 454 447
2005 770 565 527
2006 635 676 622
2007 729 787 733
2008 756 898 864
2009 1052 1009 1018
2010 1194 1120 1200
It isn't obvious to me from looking at the list which is a better fit. Are you able to eyeball it? But it turns out that that R^2 value is slightly higher for linear than for exponential, both for new accounts and for games played. I guess I could have just done the math in the first place rather than being lazy and asking whether linear or exponential was a better fit. Then I could have peacefully acquiesced to the "too bad it is linear" comment.
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Oystein
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #28 on: Jan 12th, 2011, 2:13pm » |
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I have to agree that eyeballing is hard.
What I should have said was that the linear model fits the data well. There is no reason to reject it. But I guess you have never claimed anything close to that. I was reading more into your previous post than I should. Exponential model do also fit well, better than I thought. It is to much noise in the data to decide the best.
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: Past and future growth
« Reply #29 on: Feb 4th, 2011, 11:34am » |
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I have updated the games played graph for the first time in over a year:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/Image:GamesPerWeekSmoothed.png
The number of human vs. bot games seems to have plateaued over the past two years, but we are currently at a record level of human vs. human games. The World Championship itself accounts for sixteen HvH games per week, but we are averaging over fifty, so there is a lot of extra-curricular activity going on as well.
Also we set an all-time record for bot vs. bot games in early December, presumably due to an assignment in somebody's computer science course. Then again at the end of January we spiked again, partly due to the Computer Championship qualifying and partly due to briareus and clueless testing changes. The graph shows a more sustained peak of BvB games in 2006, but that was due to Omar automating server bots to play each other. We eventually decided that it wasn't worth the server resources. Anyway those games were sever bot vs. server bot, so they didn't represent the kind of community activity that developer bot vs. server bot represents.
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