This release introduces the new rating feature, with rate_difficulty, rate_quality, and rate_random; or rd, rq and rr. These allow you to rate problems and the bot aggregates data in an ELO-style ranking system which allows for comparison of quality and difficulty between different problems.
Minor bug fixes were also made in this release.
Current difficulty scale used for OpenPOTD
These problems should not require any ‘Olympiad knowledge’ to solve, they should be approachable to an absolute beginner (though that is not to necessarily say they should be trivial for an absolute beginner). The difficulty of these problems, relatively speaking should be in the range of AMC12 Q1-15, or SMC Q1-20. Furthermore, they should not be particularly involved outside of a basic idea or problem mechanic.
These problems should bridge the gap between Olympiad problems and absolute beginners, they may only require fundamental ‘Olympiad techniques’ to solve, and should for the most part still be completely accessible to someone just starting out. Conceptually these problems should still be straight forward. The difficulty of these problems, relatively speaking, should be in the range of AMC12 Q16+, AIME Q1, SMC Q20+ or even an easy BMO1 Q1.
At this difficulty solvers should be expected to solve - what may be considered to be - easy to medium Olympiad problems. That is, the problems may be more conceptually involved, but still only require fairly well known methods. The difficulty of these problems, relatively speaking, should be in the range of AIME Q1-5, BMO1 Q1-3).
Hard problems should have little in the way of restrictions on content, they should be challenging to a majority of attempters. The difficulty should equate roughly to something akin to AIME Q6-15, BMO1 P4-6 and BMO2 P1-2.
The difficulty of these problems may be anywhere from a BMO2 P3-4 to IMO 2/5.\
We’re looking to make some changes. The first of which is that we are looking for 2-3 people to join the Problem Selection Committee. You can apply using this Google forms link - everything you need to know is in there. [We have now closed submission]
Our second announcement is that in line with the Problem Selection Committee changing, we want to know how we can better optimise the structure of the seasons to be more enjoyable and fun for all. Here you can find a link to a Google forms page that takes approximately one minute to complete. We want to hear your feedback and suggestions!
Lastly, we have created a form so that people can submit problems easier, so you don’t have to DM us. You can find the link here, but it is also available on the sidebar of our website.
Thank you for reading, The OpenPOTD team
Preliminary release notes for the 1.0 release of OpenPOTD.
Multiserver:
Other:
To start off, we’d like to apologise for the noticeable drop in quality for the past two seasons (Trigonometric Troubles & Piboi’s 14 Combi Problems). This has mostly been a result of us being busy with other things at the moment (university interviews, finals, etc.) Consequently, we have not had the time to properly plan seasons in advance, and in the case of the last season, test-solve. In conjunction with us not being able to put in the time, we got carried away in terms of focusing on things like flavour-text and themed seasons. We can see how this may have alienated people who were confused by a particular problem statement, didn’t enjoy the topic of the season, and so forth. We will try to eliminate these issues by planning seasons ahead, and in more detail. However, to do this, there may be times when breaks happen in between seasons. Furthermore, from now on we plan on keeping the seasons varied topic-wise, and any seasons of a thematic nature will also have varied problems.
On what happened this season: We would like to say we completely dropped the ball with it, and in no way is Piboi responsible for that. As aforementioned, the quality of this season dropped so much mostly due to us not having the time to sort things out beforehand, and thus, we did not rigorously review the questions and solutions. This was particularly evident in the first question of the season, and again today. After careful deliberation, we have decided to void this season and start again with a new one starting on Monday, we will be less negligent in future.
Finally, We appreciate all of the support, and are deeply sorry that there have been many issues over the past week or two, and hope that you continue to support the QOTD’s. We will do our best to prevent the issues which have cropped up in the past two weeks, and in doing so improve the quality of the QOTD’s so it’s enjoyable for everyone.
We’ll be opening up a little consultation over the weekend where you can give us some suggestions on any changes you’d perhaps want to see for future seasons, be it technical changes or changes to the format, we want to hear it. We’ve added a channel on the OpenPOTD server where you can add them - alternatively you can DM any of us.
Thank you for reading, sincerely