[Staff Post] Announcement: Price Increases on Points Exchange

Hello all,

We wanted to announce that we are raising the prices of prizes on the points exchange. This price increase will not affect anyone who has already claimed a prize.

Prize fulfillment has become very time-consuming as we have grown to nearly 60,000 members. We built Brilliant to help people find challenges, and practice and improve at the skills that will help you succeed in the real world. Our small team is now focused on:

improving the problem solving experience of the site, including a significant expansion of the Techniques Trainer that will be launching later this month, and that is taking up nearly all of our time at the moment
building features that expand the social, intellectual, educational, and recreational merits of the site, including allowing users to join problem solving "leagues" with other users from the same school

As always, we'll add, remove, and change things around the Points Exchange, and in the rest of the site from time to time. Thanks for enjoying what we've built so far, and stay tuned for more updates and upgrades.

-The Team at Brilliant

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Easy Math Editor

This discussion board is a place to discuss our Daily Challenges and the math and science related to those challenges. Explanations are more than just a solution — they should explain the steps and thinking strategies that you used to obtain the solution. Comments should further the discussion of math and science.

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Markdown	Appears as
`italics` or `_italics_`	italics
`bold` or `__bold__`	bold
- bulleted - list	bulleted list
1. numbered 2. list	numbered list
Note: you must add a full line of space before and after lists for them to show up correctly
paragraph 1 paragraph 2	paragraph 1 paragraph 2
`[example link](https://brilliant.org)`	example link
`> This is a quote`	This is a quote
# I indented these lines # 4 spaces, and now they show # up as a code block. print "hello world"	# I indented these lines # 4 spaces, and now they show # up as a code block. print "hello world"

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

30,000 points for a lanyard, really? I was just 1 week short of a brilliant shirt...guess that'll have to wait (really regret failing the diagnostic test and wasting 3 weeks at lvl 3/4 now)

Hopefully we will have more avenues to earn points :)

Gabriel Wong - 8 years, 2 months ago

It am shocked, it was 1000 points, then raised to 30,000!! Please give us more problems to solve so that we can earn more points.

Joseph Gomes - 8 years, 2 months ago

Um, the point of increasing the points for the point exchange was that it should be harder to get these prizes now.

Ahaan Rungta - 8 years, 2 months ago

Yup, just like me, I have 14k plus points and eager to get a shirt when my points reach 16k, but sad to say, they raised it to 50k. Tsk3x! Too bad. It will take us more months to gather points that much.

Armand Macapagong - 8 years, 2 months ago

I was 290 points short of getting a tshirt yesterday evening... i got those pts now. In for a real shock to see the points being 50000

Ashwin Venkatraman - 8 years, 2 months ago

@Ashwin Venkatraman – i was 2000 points short and could gather the t shirt in one week but no urghhhhhhhhhhhhhh

superman son - 8 years, 2 months ago

@Superman Son – Me to :(

Soham Chanda - 8 years, 2 months ago

@Ashwin Venkatraman – I had the same experience. :( :(

Remember that Brilliant is a free site. Not only do they help you compile all your challenging math problems in one place, they also reward you with free prizes for your dedication. So quit complaining about how "expensive" prizes have got and just appreciate the effort of The Team and this Brilliant website ^^

Lionslayer Lim - 8 years, 2 months ago

Wow...even the books? I do understand that lanyards and shirts are troublesome to send and all that (which may justify that humongous cost)...but surely ebooks can't be that hard to process... even at lvl 5/5 for olympiad math I barely scrape 3k - maybe 4k-5k if i get very lucky with the featured solutions - points a week.

Perhaps give us access to more than 8 problems per topic per week? The pool of problems is larger than 8 anyway - its a quick way to improve our problem solving experience for those who devour the problems in a matter of an hour or two.

That being said, brilliant would be a great site even without all those prizes, so as long as more problems and stuff gets churned out (maybe questions demanding proof rather than just answers?) im not too sad about the point targets being raised so high.

Now, time to ban all the people posting problems on stackexchange and other problem solving websites to fish for answers :D

I think they increased it due to rampant cheating.

Mirza Baig - 8 years, 2 months ago

cheating is in everyone's hearts. if u wanna learn u gotta leave cheating alone.

Nikhil TR - 8 years, 2 months ago

I am glad Brilliant is focusing on improving our problem solving experience - problems can be solved for fun, without the incentive of prizes.

Samir Khan - 8 years, 2 months ago

Albert's coming to get you.

Caterina Golner - 8 years, 2 months ago

...

Kwesi Levy - 8 years, 2 months ago

Very insightful comment, Samir K :D

Francisco Rivera - 8 years, 2 months ago

@Francisco Rivera – I appreciate your respecting my viewpoint Francisco, and not unconditionally rejecting like some of these other commenters.

Guess in 2021 I can get that t-shirt I was wanting :(

Jason Davis - 8 years, 2 months ago

Oh Brilliant.org, here our petitions. =)) I've just reached 16k, and reaching 50k is a lot more task. Though, we are not here after the prizes but the learning, it's still disappointing. You also raised the points exchange without prior notice to the members. I mean, almost all organizations doesn't work that way.

Disappointing..

I understand the need to increase points. But, maybe users could have been notified some time earlier. For instance, it will be very disheartening for a user having 14,800 points who was waiting to get the T-shirt to realise next day that the points have been increased.

I'm not complaining. I'm just conveying this with a hope because this can also be implemented now.

Sambit Senapati - 8 years, 2 months ago

Yes ... Please either introduce a NEW Subject such as chemistry or something or plz increase the number of questions ... Please !

Mihir Sriram Arnala - 8 years, 2 months ago

level 1 "students" should see more than 4 problems a week

I was really surprised to see the increase in the points for a lanyard.

Soham Dibyachintan - 8 years, 2 months ago

I think the no. of prizes should also be increased.It will take a year or so to claim a t-shirt and a lanyard .

Vinay Shikhar - 8 years, 2 months ago

Well,now everything is just so expensive. I thought I wil soon be able to exchange my point for a book but...dissapointed.

Jia Zheng Chai - 8 years, 2 months ago

This is very very sad.

Carl Joshua Quines - 8 years, 2 months ago

i claimed my t shirt a couple days ago. is someone supposed to contact me for my shirt size? could an admin check on my order please? thanks

Taylor Lau - 8 years, 2 months ago

Within the next week Bradan will contact you for your shirt size. Please direct any further questions about specific lanyard or t-shirt orders to [email protected].

Peter Taylor Staff - 8 years, 2 months ago

That's really sad, 1000 points away from the relativity book(I just claimed the King Arthur book)...

Ying Xuan Eng - 8 years, 2 months ago

I can't believe how lucky I am! I claimed my Brilliant T-shirt for 16,000 & the next day it became 50,000!!!

Sayantan Guha - 8 years, 2 months ago

Just saying, I'm pretty sure that Flatland is available for free.

http://www.amazon.com/Flatland-romance-many-dimensions-ebook/dp/B0083ZRQR4/ref=pdsimsbskstore1

Ryan Soedjak - 8 years, 2 months ago

but by earning it we can hv more fun.. nevertheless the fun is not there when it is too time consuming :(

Shu Harnn Sim - 8 years, 1 month ago

As always, we'll [...] change things around the Points Exchange, [...] from time to time.

Hopefully that'll get costs back into the 10,000's :).

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}`	$\boxed{123}$