Tribute to Miles - Able Seaman, Jonathan Bullock

This Tribute figure is for our resident arch-mage statistician, spreadsheet guru and top-of-the-heap brushmeister, Mr. Miles Reidy. 

Miles has been an enthusiastic participant of the Challenge since it's second incarnation, back when I only accepted historical submissions (can you imagine the cheek!). On top of being one of the most prolific painters I know, Miles is also incredibly generous both with his time and encouragement to others. Being a 'financial services professional' he is also a shameless enabler.  I believe it was last year that he sent me several pounds of espresso to tide me through the Challenge. I still have some residual muscle twitch from that...

For Miles I've painted this rather pugnacious Napoleonic British seamen who is in the midst of boarding an enemy vessel. I've named him Jonathan Bullock, Able Seaman. He is closing for close action armed with cutlass, pistol butt and 5-days growth of stubble. In an attempt to fit in with the rest of Miles' collection,  I've clipped away his metal base and mounted him on a plain MDF base, which I simply scored with a hobby knife to resemble a ship's deck.

Thanks so much again Miles! Your work was instrumental in maintaining our record-keeping in fighting trim (despite my best efforts to muddle it up with outlier 'purple entries').  Also, congratulations on making it to the top of the points heap this year - that was no small achievement considering your worthy compatriots. 

I hope Jon Bullock finds a good home clearing the deck on the USS Wasp. ;)

You Are Invited to Select Your 'Choice of the Challenge'

Hello everyone! 

First, thank you for forwarding me your nominations for the 'Choice of the Challenge'. The gallery can be found on the Bonus Theme page. 

Yes, I've done a bit of re-branding from our previous 'Challenger's Choice' and 'People's Choice' awards in order to streamline the process and make its administration a little easier.

I have organized the nominations first by Challenger name, then as

- individual titled submission, or

- if they received nominations for more than one submission (but not their whole body of work) I have listed them as 'Selected Work', or 

- if they have been nominated for their entire 'Body of Work' I have organized all their nominations under that single heading.

As in previous rounds you can vote for as many candidates as you like, just visit the right-hand navigation bar, or go to the following this link here. Remember that you don't have to be a member of the Challenge to vote for your favourites - we love hearing from all our visitors.

I will give awards for the top three Challengers (excluding myself, of course) next Sunday along with the other prizes.

Finally, I wish to say that I really had a great time putting all this together - I think it provides a wonderful retrospective of this year's Challenge. I hope you enjoy it as well.  

Curt

From MilesR: The Final Stat Round Up NEW & Improved!

Now with MORE Russia!

Yes dear friends, it's time once again for me to don the garb of a mysterious "Mathamagician" and delve into the dark arts of statistics to divine if our efforts have pleased or angered those capricious painting gods.  Gather round our virtual campfire and gaze, amazed, upon my efforts.  I shall call upon the the power of light with the use of addition and subtraction.  I shall contest the powers of darkness through the use of multiplication and division.  I shall raid your retirement funds through the use of financial mumbo jumbo - oops wrong ritual - lets forget that last line, shall we?

So how did we do this year?  A total of 72 out of 88 registered participants produced a total of 64,690 which essentially equals what was produced last year, despite this year being 2 weeks shorter in duration.  That's pretty impressive.

What, you want, nay, you crave more inane details?  Well I'm just the guy you need to see about that.

First, lets discuss score distribution:

Score Dist	IV	V	VI
Top 5	25%	26%	20%
Top 10	41%	42%	33%
Top 20	62%	63%	56%

I was very surprised to see the scores more evenly distributed in Challenge VI - with the Top 10 contributing 33% of the points vs 41-42% in the previous years.

Points production per day was relatively constant with the exception of the last day which saw almost 6,000 points get submitted - wow.  Most of the big spikes over 3K are caused by our grand and illustrious leader entering the bonus rounds in bulk and sadly without scale detail AKA "the Purple Stain".  I am sure his data accuracy transgression will not have please the painting gods.

In terms of points by scale, it's clear that 28mm continues to dominate with with 55% of the attributes points.  The actual number is likely closer to 70% but we'll never know due to the abomination of the Purple Stain.  Why some people hold on to the delusions that anarchy is somehow better than rigid adherence to rules is beyond me.  Perhaps I can ask Mr Trump to consider adopting "making points calculations great again" part of his platform?  Given all the random crap he's coming up with it's not as farfetched as one might think.

But enough statistical foreplay, lets get on to the main event - the big, the intimidating, the astounding AHPC VI Key Performance Indicator tracking table - to tell you the truth "big data tables" make me feel a little giddy and light headed.  Some of you with more delicate quantitative constitutions may feel the need to swoon now - it's ok we'll wait a few minutes....

Ok, everybody ready - lets go!

KPI's:
Weeks Completed		2	4	6	8	11	13
Weeks Remaining		11	9	7	5	2	0
Participants w/ a Submission		41	61	67	67	70	75
Total Submissions		98	231	359	478	590	811
Total Points		6,392	18,328	30,252	39,812	51,599	64,690
Participation Rate		47%	69%	76%	76%	80.0%	85%
Average per Submitter		156	300	452	716	716	863
Avg per Submission		65	79	84	100	100	80
Submitter % of Target Completed		16%	34%	51%	77%	82%	99%
Projected Points
Submitters		38,352	54,984	60,504	60,889	60,872	64,690
Remaining Bouns Rounds		12,300	10,250	7,750	3,750	2,500	0
Non Submitters @ 25% / wk8@10%		10,075	4,056	2,370	780	302	0
Projected Total Points		60,727	69,290	70,624	65,419	63,613	64,690
Figures Painted
28MM
Inf		927	2,042	2,983	3,657	4,319	5,676
Cav / Art		34	140	326	386	471	537
Vehicles		19	40	67	74	82	111
15MM
Inf		14	239	568	867	1,293	1,728
Cav / Art		3	25	106	193	230	294
Vehicles		20	28	62	100	143	225
6MM
Inf		208	1,153	1,372	1,932	2,124	2,576
Cav / Art		106	180	234	315	362	409
Vehicles		97	133	136	191	205	317
Score Distribution
28MM		82%	67%	63%	48%	53%	55%
15MM		3%	4%	6%	6%	8%	9%
6MM		6%	6%	4%	3%	4%	4%
Bonus Round "Bonus Points"		0%	11%	11%	9%	10%	12%
Other Scales		9%	13%	16%	33%	24%	20%
Total		100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%

What can we derive from this mathematical masterpiece of obfuscation?  First I was surprised to see 15mm really not have that big of an impact in terms of points - it's 28mm or go home in this competition.

Production per biweekly segment was relatively constant excluding the mad rush at the end.  During the competent there were 811 total entries at an average point level 80 points each.  The total point forecasting model proved to be rather accurate and honed in on the total point production by week 8.  To be honest, I'm rather surprised it worked because I used the same model I had in 2008 forecasting mortgage delinquencies and that didn't work out all that well.

Given that we have the spreadsheet of doom tracking everything (and I mean EVERYTHING Ray R - you should be ashamed of yourself) we can also look at participation and productivity on a geographical basis:

  The UK has both the biggest number of participants (23) and the largest point contribution (17,097), followed by the US at 12 /12,491 and Canada at 9 / 7,539.

If we look at national unit productivity, we see a much different picture with Russia at the highest and  the US taking a decisive lead over it's former colonial tormentors.  It's also nice to see the wonderful island nation of Ireland tower over it British neighbors in productivity.  To paraphrase from Audi, "There is truth in painting".  I'm pretty sure that Audi and their VW parents aren't using that tagline for awhile.

Australia doesn't do so hot but then again the weather's nice right now.  

	Total Points	Participants	Pts/Participant
UK	17,097	23	743
USA	12,491	12	1,041
Canada	7,539	9	838
AUS	6,212	9	690
NZ	4,515	5	903
GER	3,185	5	637
Russia	2,760	1	2,760
N/A	2,519	10	252
Netherlands	2,158	4	540
Ireland	1,833	2	917
FINLAND	1,672	2	836
France	1,380	2	690
SPAIN	1,135	3	378
Italy	194	1	194
Grand Total	64,690	88	735

Economic Impact

I'll end this tome with the part you've all been waiting for - what's the economic impact of the Challenge?  Or should I say.....

Yeah, baby, SHOW ME THE MONEY!

First a word on the methodology,

The total points (64,690) are adjusted into the equivalent number 28mm infantry figures by dividing by 5, which gets us 12,938 miniatures,  

Next a cost to produce that painted figure is estimated and then applied to the the projected number of figures

Direct Figure Cost          $2.25 (some are plastic / some are metal, all are expensive)

Paint Basing Supplies     $0.75

Painting Time                  $8.00 per figure (a little over 30 minutes per)

  Total Cost                      $11.00

Total Direct economic impact of the challenge is 12,938 time $11.00, which equals $142,318 - a tidy little sum.

But wait there's more, none off us replace one figure with another so there's a multiplier effect for every figure we paint we have this irresistible urge to replace it with 4 more - that's an economic velocity factor of 4 that needs to be applied to the direct benefit (trust me, I'm a financial services professional).  So the true economic impact of the Challenge for this year is $569,272 !!!!!!!!

But what if we totaled the cumulative economic impact of all six challenges to see the true economic juggernaut that Curt has unleashed upon our sleepy little hobby - well through the awesome power of the spreadsheet we can and we did:

It adds up to $1,922,708 - oh hell we're all friends, lets just round it of to a cool $2 Million buckaroonies.  If only Curt had taken my advice about adding in the revenue share cut in the terms and services disclosure.....

Look an obligatory pie chart...

 

Summary Tables								Cummulative
	I	II	III	IV	V	VI		Total
Participants	6	24	48	61	72	88		299
Total Points	2,245	30,565	42,079	59,935	65,105	64,690		264,619
Equivalent 28mm Inf Figs	449	6,113	8,416	11,987	13,021	12,938		52,924
Economic Value Created	14,211	193,476	266,360	379,389	500,000	569,272		1,922,708

I think Peter Gabriel put it best:

Hey wake up! - this is exciting stuff.

The Hall of Heroes:

As we bring this year's statistical wrap up to an end (I'm sure all of you want more) we must pay our respects to the Hall of Painting Heroes in Vallejohalla:

Highest Individual Scores	Rank	Challenge	Name	Score
	1	II	RayR	4,940
	2	II	KentG	4,724
	3	IV	AndrewS	4,180
	4	V	DaveD	4,138
	5	III	ChrisP	4,076
	6	V	MarkO	3,854
	7	III	JamesB	3,761
	8	II	TimB	3,385
	9	VI	MilesR	3,306
	10	VI	MartinC	3,292

Yet again we see RayR perched at the top of the heap sunning himself like a beached elephant seal for all to see - ugh I deeply apologize for the visual images.  Despite societal mores about public display, his mark of 4,940 points in a single challenge may well stand forever.  Yes RayR is the true "alpha painting male" in our little subspecies.  I shall let each of you ponder those implications to our collective chances on the evolutionary scale.

Scandal! Shame!

It is my sad duty to report that the arcane rules and special incantations required to be performed to award the coveted Greatest Improvement in Miniature Painting (the GIMP Award!) have been confiscated by PETA due to their narrow minded concerns about animal sacrifice.  Without completing the entire ritual it is impossible to make the award this year.  According to both the bylaws of the League of Challenge Painters and our deep sense of Fair Play, the recipient of last years award retains the title for this year - Congratulations Millsy, your are our GIMP and retain both the title, honors, duties and uniform that go along with that august mantle.

Yes, I do think the painting gods are happy with us, don't you?