Early April Fools Day?

I've seen two problems today from this user that were really obvious questions that had wrong answers. But the weird thing, I think, is that they have been given ratings by the staff! And it's not a problem that happens to be wrong that has been given an answer. This question is simply to find $2^2,$ which is just $4.$ And because it's been given a rating by the staff, (I didn't realize this) I was guessing to see what the proposed answer was, but my Number Theory rating dropped from $2530\text{-ish}$ to $2470.$ $60$ points! I spent a long time trying to get that rating, and it just dropped significantly on a really flawed problem. If this was April Fool's Day, I'd understand, but it's not for another month and a half.

Will someone please explain what the heck is going on? I would love an explanation.

#ProblemCreation #Question #Problem #Easyquestions

Easy Math Editor

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Math	Appears as
Remember to wrap math in `$` ... `$` or `\[` ... `\]` to ensure proper formatting.
`2 \times 3`	$2 \times 3$
`2^{34}`	$2^{34}$
`a_{i-1}`	$a_{i-1}$
`\frac{2}{3}`	$\frac{2}{3}$
`\sqrt{2}`	$\sqrt{2}$
`\sum_{i=1}^3`	$\sum_{i=1}^3$
`\sin \theta`	$\sin \theta$
`\boxed{123}`	$\boxed{123}$

Comments

Hi everybody,

We are sorry about this mess. We are working on cleaning it up. I will personally try to restore each of your ratings. Please email me (silas@brilliant.org) if you feel that your ratings were unfairly reduced.

What happened: last night, we quietly released a feature that allowed users to attach a topic and (tentative, private at first) rating to problems. This was a common feature request, especially for new topics that don't have official Brilliant problems (like Chemistry!).

As the problem is attempted by enough people, and our system is confident in the rating, the system allows the rating to become "public".

Unfortunately, there was a loophole: a user can set the seed rating high, and then if only highly rated people attempt the problem, the system mistakenly becomes confident in a high rating for a trivial problem.

What we did about it:

Stopped letting people set seed ratings above their level in a given topic.
Require greater confidence in the problem rating before we allow it to affect users' ratings.
Made changes to the underlying rating system to make changes a little less violent.

Silas Hundt Staff - 7 years, 4 months ago

The Staff needs to look to this.

Soham Dibyachintan - 7 years, 4 months ago

Post $1$ as the answer. I know it is not allowed to post answers. But this question is absolutely rdiculous.

Soham Dibyachintan - 7 years, 4 months ago

All the problems of this user are trolls....

Anish Puthuraya - 7 years, 4 months ago

Can somebody block her account? I mean seriously!

Finn Hulse - 7 years, 3 months ago

Hey Finn, I can tell you're really mad about this (as am I), but I just want to let you know that I have talked with Silas privately, and he assures me that they have plans to prevent things like this from happening again. I am sure that the admins are considering/have considered blocking the account, but at any rate, they are well aware of the problem. The best thing to do now is that if you see a problem from her on your dash, to ignore it, as it is a troll.

Trevor B. - 7 years, 3 months ago

@Trevor B. – Cool beans.

Finn Hulse - 7 years, 3 months ago

Worse, they have ratings with 2008!! However, how can some users got the correct answer? At first I thought it is a riddle lol

Christopher Boo - 7 years, 4 months ago

I guessed on the other one that the user contributed and got it right, but yeah, this is really weird, and to put it lightly, I am really annoyed that my rating went down $60$ points because of a question asking what two squared is.

Trevor B. - 7 years, 4 months ago

Oh wow. I just checked the user's profile, and there are a bunch of problems that are stupid questions that have been given ratings.

Trevor B. - 7 years, 4 months ago

So, how do you have an obvious question with given ratings by the staff? Here's a possible explanation.

1) Write a problem that is decent enough to get a rating.

2) Edit the problem and turn it into an obvious one that does not have the same answer as the one before.

And voila! You got yourself a troll question with a rating that increases over time!

I'm not sure if this was done in this way or not. But this is a possible explanation.

The user probably wanted to troll their friends but people have to realize that whatever they post is actually public. So they should be careful about that and make sure that they don't make other users' ratings by 40 points $:($

Mursalin Habib - 7 years, 4 months ago

Well, I guess I was wrong [See Silas' comment]. However, there are more than one way to do something.

Mursalin Habib - 7 years, 4 months ago

Its better to avoid such questions. I think it is easy to recognize a troll. You see an obvious problem with a mind-boggling rating, and voila! You have a troll.

Anish Puthuraya - 7 years, 4 months ago

Does the symbol means intersection of two statements? This symbol is also used in mathematical reasoning

Maharnab Mitra - 7 years, 4 months ago

Same happened with me too.

Arpit Sah - 7 years, 4 months ago

what the hell? same with me.

milind prabhu - 7 years, 4 months ago

Mee too. I didn't knew this and just read all his problems. I lost my ratings and dropped to 2548

Dinesh Chavan - 7 years, 4 months ago

25000????

Anish Puthuraya - 7 years, 4 months ago

@Anish Puthuraya – Sorry typo, I will edit it, 2548 actually

Dinesh Chavan - 7 years, 4 months ago

Lets all unfollow this troll.

Satvik Golechha - 7 years, 3 months ago

I solved many questions of him that was useless and obvious.............. Some were right but some were surprisingly wrong like 2^2 and 8^0 ............

Do ^ means something else than Exponent?????????????

Anand Raj - 7 years, 4 months ago

I am really annoyed at this. I lost about $70$ rating points for two such questions.

Fahim Shahriar Shakkhor - 7 years, 4 months ago

Grr.

Finn Hulse - 7 years, 3 months ago

The answer is apparently 1, and the guy who posted the problem is a mega troll.

A Former Brilliant Member - 7 years, 4 months ago

She has, like, a ton of those type of stupid problems.

Finn Hulse - 7 years, 3 months ago

This user should be BANNED.

Satvik Golechha - 7 years, 3 months ago

Math	Appears as
Remember to wrap math in `\(` ... `\)` or `\[` ... `\]` to ensure proper formatting.
`2 \times 3`	$2 \times 3$
`2^{34}`	$2^{34}$
`a_{i-1}`	$a_{i-1}$
`\frac{2}{3}`	$\frac{2}{3}$
`\sqrt{2}`	$\sqrt{2}$
`\sum_{i=1}^3`	$\sum_{i=1}^3$
`\sin \theta`	$\sin \theta$
`\boxed{123}`	$\boxed{123}$