[Ancients] It’s Time! The Second Annual Coin Imperator Tournament (2018)

You're going to have to start charging a consulting fee @TIF I think 7% is the going rate.

 

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I would be ready to pay more than that to hire @TIF as a consultant

Q

 

Tournament Update:
All of our Round 2 matches are up and we are ready to close out this round with a resounding BANG! Some really cool content and some beautiful coins on display in our last two groups of the round.

Group 3

[Poll-21] #4 ancientcoinguru vs #13 frankjg (Round 2) CIT 2018
The Sicilians are testing their luck in battle against the... Thracians? Yup, bet that was the first time that sentence has ever been written. Regardless, come check out this cool match up between a coin that has 4 heads and one that has none!

[Poll-22] #8 Bing vs #24 Pavlos (Round 2) CIT 2018
One coin tries to shake hands while the other dismissively takes a sip of water. Come check out this fun match up between Roman and Greek coins that features fantastic write ups of two beauties I would love to own.

Group 4

[Poll-23] #21 Ryro vs #28 Terence Cheesman (Round 2) CIT 2018
This is a really cool match up that promises to be extremely close in the polls. A great historical figure meets an iconic piece of ancient architecture. If you haven't voted you should. Every vote will count in this one.

[Poll-24] #22 panzerman vs #27 Severus Alexander (Round 2) CIT 2018
A peerlessly beautiful gold coin meets a coin with a peerless history. This is a thread that I guarantee you will enjoy whether you vote or not... but vote, okay?

A Note to Participants - Round 3 Schedule
I like the thought of giving the board (and the participants... and me ) a breather between the rounds to recharge. As such we will give it a week or so before we start with the third round. Lets aim to restart, say... Wednesday August 29th. We will make that a tentative date based on when we get the entries back. If I get all the entries back before then we will start sooner. If someone needs more time we can go that way too.

However, if you already know what you will play and have your write up ready please feel free to send it in whenever.

Get Excited!
It's time to get excited folks! The winners in the next round are guaranteed to win a medal; either Bronze, Silver, Electrum or Gold! Only 8 participants left!

Also, keep posted for another summary of statistics after our Round 2 matches

 

Tournament Update
We have reached one of the most exciting periods in the tournament… The Elite Eight! There are only 8 players left in the tournament and all the matches going forward will be to decide who earns a (digital) medal and of what (digital) metal it will be: Bronze, Silver, Electrum or Gold. Below are the players that have advanced to Round 3!

Team USA – @iamtiberius , @Ryro , @ancientcoinguru

Team Canada – @Jay GT4 , @Severus Alexander

Team France - @Cucumbor

Team Greece - @Pavlos

Team Singapore - @zumbly​

We are guaranteed to have at least 3 different countries earning a medal with 4 countries a possibility. Team USA is the only team guaranteed a medal with the winner of the @Ryro vs @ancientcoinguru match moving into the Final Four.

Just as with the last round I have composed a list of statistics for the general amusement of the board.

Round 2 Results



Statistical Breakdown of Round 2 Matches
Types of Coins Played

Metal Type

Below is a breakdown of the metal types played in Round 2 and in the tournament. I have added a “Billion” designation for this round. I am aware that the line between silver, bronze and billion can be blurry but I have been more or less following the description of the coin as presented by the player for the below.

Round 2

Bronze – 7
Silver – 6
Gold – 1
Billion – 2​

There were 6 matches this round where coins of different metal types went head to head. Win percentages for each metal type are listed below.

Bronze – 60% (1 of 3 vs silver, 2 of 2 vs billion)
Silver – 75% (2 of 3 vs bronze, 1 of 1 vs gold)
Gold – 0% (0 of 1 vs silver)
Billion – 0% (0 of 2 vs silver)​

Figure 1 - Number of Coins played by metal type in Round 2 (left) and results by metal type in Round 2 (right)

Tournament

Bronze – 19
Silver – 25
Gold – 2
Billion – 2​

Figure 2 - Number of Coins played by metal type in the entire tournament (left) and results by metal type in the entire tournament (right)

Culture (i.e. Roman, Greek etc.)

For the purpose of these statistics I have considered Roman to include the following sub-categories; imperial, provincial, imperatorial and republican. I have also considered a coin minted in Babylon as belonging to the Greek tradition and so for simplicity have listed it under Greek.

We had 7 Round 2 matches where coins of different cultures went head to head. Win percentages shown below. Note that head-to-head matches between coins of the same culture are not reflected in the figures.

Round 2

Greek: 75% (3 of 4)
Roman: 67% (4 of 6)
Chinese: 0% (0 of 1)
Medieval: 0% (0 of 2)​

Figure 3 - Number of Coins played by culture in Round 2 (left) and results by culture in Round 2 (right)

Tournament
I think it is interesting to note that just over half of the coins played in the tournament have been Roman (52%) while over a quarter (29%) have been Greek. Below are the tournament win percentages in head-to-head matches between coins of different cultures.

Greek: 78% (7 of 9)
Roman: 54% (7 of 13)
Chinese: 0% (0 of 3)
Medieval: 33% (1 of 3)
Phoenician: 0% (0 of 1)​

Figure 4 - Number of Coins played by culture in the entire tournament (left) and results by culture in the entire tournament (right)

Breakdown by Category

Number of Categories Won

In Round 1 the winner of a match won 1 category (6 matches) as often as 2 (6 matches). In Round 2 all winner’s won at least 2 categories.

Eye Appeal

Round 2
Average Margin of Victory = 32.75 Votes

Participants who won the Eye Appeal category won their match 62.5% of the time.

Tournament
Average Margin of Victory = 28.71 Votes

Participants who won the Eye Appeal category have won their match 58.3% of the time.

Historical or Numismatic Interest

Round 2
Average Margin of Victory = 19.13 Votes

Participants who won the Interest category won their match 75% of the time.

Tournament
Average Margin of Victory = 25.46 Votes

Participants who won the Interest category have won their match 66.7% of the time.

Greatest Bargain

Round 2
Average Margin of Victory = 19.38 Votes

Participants who won the Bargain category won their match 87.5% of the time.
The less expensive coin won the bargain category 75% of the time.
The less expensive coin won the overall match 62.5% of the time.


Tournament
Average Margin of Victory = 19.38 Votes

Participants who won the Bargain category have won their match 62.5% of the time.
The less expensive coin has won the bargain category 83.3% of the time.
The less expensive coin has won the overall match 54.17% of the time.

Some Takeaways
Round 2 saw a sharp decrease in the margin of victory for the interest category as players all did a great job in their write ups making a case for the interest component of their coin.
Greek coins continued to perform very well in Round 2 against coins of any other culture.
The less expensive coin has won the bargain category an overwhelming percentage of the time. However, the win percentages of coins of higher vs lower value indicate that there is not an obvious advantage to playing either a high or low value coin. It seems to be much more match dependent.

Voter Participation

Voter participation held fairly steady in Round 2 from what we saw in Round 1 with an average of 176 votes per match. I found this to be somewhat surprising as I anticipated we would see a bit of a “sophomore slump” effect that would begin to reverse itself as we got closer to the tournament championship matches. I am happy to report that the final two matches of Round 2 saw a big upswing in participation with our final match of the round accounting for a new participation record: 214 votes and at least 72 people weighing in.

Below you can see a graphical breakdown of voter participation across all rounds.


Figure 5 - Number of votes plotted against margin of victory and number of comments to the thread (Tournament).

Yet More Random Statistics

• The highest score by a winning player in Round 2 was 129 votes.
• The lowest score by a winning player in Round 2 was 83 votes.
• The highest score by a losing player in Round 2 was 92 votes.
• The lowest score by a losing player in Round 2 was 47 votes.
• @Severus Alexander has captured the highest score in both Round 1 and Round 2 (no pressure buddy )
• Between 2011 and 2015 six Americans were shot by their dog... so don't forget that extra scoop of Kibbles 'n Bits next time .
• If your office has 367 people that work in it there is a 100% chance that two of those people share the same birthday.
• If your office has 70 people that work in it there is still a 99.9% chance that two of those people share the same birthday.
  
• Even if there is only 23 people in your office the probability of two of those people sharing the same birthday is 50%!

Because the people need to know...

This one is for you Jay!

What is the average air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

I originally thought answering this question was going to take a good deal of physics review and estimation based on the average mass, wing length and assumed flight efficiency of a swallow.

As it turns out that is entirely unnecessary because the good folks over at the Journal of Experimental Biology (Park, Rosen et al) have conducted a study on the kinematics of (European) barn swallows using a wind tunnel [1]. Sweet!!

The article itself is linked below. The article doesn't directly measure what the average air speed of a swallow would be but we can make some logical assumptions based on their findings. The most pertinent piece of information is shown in the graph below.



It seems logical to assume that a bird would tend to fly at the air speed that required the least amount of effort. This occurs at the air speed with the lowest frequency in Hertz, which is a measure of how many times the swallow must flap its wings in a second to remain airborne at that speed. The graph shows this number is somewhere between 8 and 10 m/s at a frequency of about 7 Hz.

Setting frequency (f) as a function of velocity (V) and fitting a polynomial equation to the data set above yields the following.

(Bird 1)


(Bird 2)

Taking the average of the above results yields;

Average air speed of an unladen swallow = 8.75 m/s = 19.57 miles per hour

It would appear that this answer can only be approximated for the European barn swallow as there has been no kinematic study of any of the African species of swallow that I could find. Trying to estimate the velocity based on the Strouhal number may be difficult as the above results show that a swallow flies much more efficiently than most birds... and who said there are no great questions left for future scientists?


A European swallow

[1] http://jeb.biologists.org/content/204/15/2741

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strouhal_number

 

Time to buy some cheap, pretty Greek silvers...

 

Its not a matter of where he grips it, it's a simple question of weight ratios. A 5 oz bird couldn't carry a 1 pound coconut!

 

It could be carried by an African swallow!

 

I think the numbers for the Chinese coins in this case are somewhat misleading. Two of the Chinese coins lost by very thin margins and were up against very tough competition. Chinese coins have consistently won the bargain category and done well in the interest category. It would not have been shocking to see Chinese coins with a winning record.

Either way I learned a lot from those three matches

 

Great stats @Curtisimo

My entry for round 3 should be brought to you by an european swallow very soon, check the sky above your house !

Q

 

Welcome to Round 3
Who is ready for some more tournament fun!?? Well... ready or not here it comes

We have gone from 32 players down to 8 with the winners of this round moving on to our semifinals! We have some great matches and some fantastic content lined up over the next few days. See below for the updated bracket.


Tentative Schedule
I have been out of town for work and to top it off I have been sick with a cold the last few days so I have been a bit behind on tournament duties. As such, we are starting a little bit later than I had previously posted.

As with the last round the below schedule is tentative and subject to change as needed.

Sunday September 2, 2018
#4 @ancientcoinguru vs #21 @Ryro

Monday September 3, 2018
#10 @Cucumbor vs #15 @Jay GT4

Tuesday September 4, 2018
#14 @iamtiberius vs #27 @Severus Alexander

Wednesday September 5, 2018
#24 @Pavlos vs #32 @zumbly

 

Forget Shark Week!!!



Here we go!!!

 

Get well soon, @Curtisimo! I look forward to an entertaining Sunday and Monday followed by some serious nail biting.

Go Jay!!

 

What ?

Go Iamtiberius, go !!!!

Q

 

Go Cucumbor!




Look forward to the challenge. I knew I'd have to pull out the big guns! I think it will be a tough battle for everyone at this point!

 

Go Zumbly?!! Am I doing this right?
Anyway...

USA, USA

 

Go Banana!

 

Errr, I’m kinda still rooting for Doug?

 

As the tournament moderator it would be inappropriate for me to root on any particular team...

USAUSAUSAUSAUSAUSAUSAUSAUSA
USAUSAUSA
USAUSAUSAUSAUSAUSAUSAUSAUSA
USAUSAUSA
USAUSAUSAUSAUSAUSAUSAUSAUSA

USAUSAUSAUSAUSAUSAUSAUSAUSA

Is it weird that a part of me is still rooting on @Alegandron though?