Spectrum Economics Challenge 2 – Results

Hi Everyone,

It’s time to announce the results of Challenge 2. The voting has been very close. Again we have two posts that have racked up far more votes than all the others. Before I get into the details of the results let’s have a quick recap of the challenge.

Quick recap of the challenge

For Challenge 2, participants were required to write a post explaining how they go about getting the most out of their life. This could be an explanation of what they do on a daily or weekly basis or how they enjoy special events. This challenge was intended to get participants to focus on what they truly value in life. In economics we call that optimising utility.

Participants were given the freedom to be as creative as they like in terms of describing what they have done or would do. Participants have been advised to apply economics to their recommendations but have also been recommended to explain these recommendations using terminology easy for the everyday reader to understand.

Here is a link to the original Challenge 2 post

Quick recap of the prizes

So here is a just a quick recap of the prizes up for grabs for this challenge.

• Top post based on votes wins 6 SBD
• Second post based on votes wins 3 SBD
• Spectrum Economics favourite post or highest alternative scoring (I will explain what this means for each individual challenge) wins 16 SBD. For challenge 2, I will select my favourite post for the prize.

Participants

I would like to thank all six participants for entering and taking the time to write posts. The participants are as followers.

• Entrant 1 @blackempror
• Entrant 2 @toyinbaruba
• Entrant 3 @the-fundraiser
• Entrant 4 @luisveco88
• Entrant 5 @wireless07
• Entrant 6 @deewhy07

I would also like to thank those that took the time to read the participants entries as well as vote for our winners.

Results from Challenge 2

The winner of Challenge 2 with a total of 57 votes is @luisveco88. In second place with 56 votes is @the-fundraiser. @the-fundraiser had a higher raw count of votes but because of voters changing their votes I have been forced to remove several votes from the @the-fundraiser. Congratulations @luisveco88 you have won 6 SBD and @the-fundraiser you have won 3 SBD. I will get this prize money to you shortly.

In addition to the prizes based on voting, I get to select my favourite post. After careful consideration, I have chosen the post from @luisveco88 as the winner of the Spectrum Economics Best Post Award. Congratulations, it appears you are a double-winner. When I first read your post I was impressed how you managed to address the key aspects of the question. I love how you focused on key intangibles of life such as family and friends as well as travel. Your post was also well constructed and was easy to understand and follow. Your photographs were also good and brought your post to life. You did not delve into economic concepts but you demonstrated understanding of utility maximisation, the most relevant economic concept for this challenge. In many ways, I think our non-economist audience would find your post appealing. Congratulations you win an extra 16 SBD. This gives you a grand total of 22 SBD for this challenge.

Other Challenges

Challenge 3 has just finished and the price video is currently being worked on. Challenge 4 is currently underway, see the link below. Challenge 5 will be ready in a few days. There is still a lot more fun to have in this challenge series.

Challenge 3 – Trading Game

Challenge 4 – Investment Game

Warning about future contests

I feel very disappointed that people keep trying to abuse the voting system. I say this every time with voting. Voters need to vote based on the merit of the post not based on relationship, nationality, race, etc. with the participant. I go to great efforts with my meme contests to make the participants anonymous. Yet every time I see voting based on following or followers. I cannot make the participants for this challenge series anonymous as voters are required to access the participants’ posts in order to judge. Even so, I still expect integrity in voting, that is why I provide a small upvote to the voters for making this effort.

This round of the challenge has been particularly bad for attempted vote manipulation. From what I can see, all participants are guilty. The changing of votes after submission from several voters is particularly bad. To resolve this problem I am going to start a blacklist. If you are on this blacklist, you are banned from entering or voting in any of my contests. It makes me sad to take such actions but I need to preserve the integrity of my contests.