I usually play a couple of games of soduko each night. I play the medium hard and play a relaxed game. I notice my times are always in the bottom 30% to 40%.
What I am curious about is if the speed rating for a game is based on players average speed or overall average speed for games played. If a few very fast players played a lot of games in this case it would skew the average if I am comparing myself.
nitpick: sudoku
I don’t play, online or otherwise, but I would think that the answer would depend on which site you’re playing on.
You really do have to base this on each site or player.
The iPhone app I use provides statistics based on each individual layout, from all players of that app. So you’ll see something like “Played 947 times. Your time was 3:25. Better than 54% of players.” It’s even supposed to group scores based on the settings you turn on or off (like whether you want it to auto-eliminate possibilities or auto-fill cells with only one possibility).
You’re all forgetting the National Sudoku Statistics Act of 2003, which mandated the establishment of a National Sudoku Statistics Database and requires all electronic sudoku software operating within US borders to constantly update and refer to said database.
Moving from IMHO to Game Room.
dracoi, I think I use the same app you do (Sudoku Joy?). It only gives the individualized stats if you have network access; otherwise it gives you stats based on the difficulty level you’re playing at. But I don’t think the histogram data for the difficulty levels has been updated in a while: I consistently get higher percentiles with network connectivity than without.
Yeah, that’s the one. I’m almost always connected when I’m playing, so I haven’t noticed a difference.
Actually, sudoku or individual apps aside, there’s a statistical issue in the OP that can be addressed. A few extremely fast players will skew the average time, but it will do almost nothing to the percentiles, which appear to be the statistic the OP is actually seeing. If you’re faster than 30% of all players, and then the fastest player suddenly becomes a thousand times faster, you’ll still be faster than 30% of the players. A figure like “faster than 30% of all players” doesn’t say anything at all about how much faster you are than those players.