"... it was actually fun."
-- Burn Unit

"... quite interesting."
-- Terpsichore

"... a frustrating hour down the drain."
-- Anonymous

SFØ STANDARDIZED EXAMINATION FEBRUARY - APRIL 2008

Donate to the cause! - Hey, it was worth a shot.
I must start off by saying a big, big...

Thank you!

... to all the participants of the SFZEROSAT. Without your help, this would not have been as awesome.

But back to formality:

The SFØ STANDARDIZED EXAMINATION (SFZEROSAT) was devised by GYØ Ben over a period of about 2 weeks, tweaking here and there afterwards. A page of questions was also donated to the cause by GYØ Adam. Lowteck handled some of the publishing costs, and for that he is in the GYØ Big Book of Awesome.

The actual test is available as a .pdf at the end of this praxis, but for now, enjoy your boasting (or maybe not):

THE RESULTS

84 players volunteered / were conscripted to take part in the test, I received 28 papers back, and here is their ranking (the top eight in terms of score were collaborated on the task):

#1: BURN UNIT - 84.5%
#2: LINCOLN - 77.5%
#3: LANK - 72%
#4: DAX TRAN-CAFFEE - 71.5%
#5: ZEMALUCO - 69.5%
#6: anna one - 69%
#7: Flash Harry - 64.5%
#8: lowteck - 63.5%
#9: GYØ Tom - 55.5%
#10: Charlie Fish - 51%
#11: Colonel Mustard - 50.5%
#12: The Actor - 49%
=12: Susy Derkins - 49%
#14: rongo rongo - 45.5%
=14: Haberley Mead - 45.5%
#16: Secret Agent - 45%
#17: Cyber Kitty - 42%
#18: annnna - 39.5%
=18: JJason - 39.5%
#20: Terpsichore - 35%
#21: Heatherlynn - 33%
#22: GYØ Adam - 32%
#23: Quirk Of Nature - 31.5%
#24: inquisitive dragonfly - 30%
#25: GYØ Daryl - 25%
#26: GYØ Neil - 9%
#27: Secret Agent Squigs - 8%
#28: GYØ Askew - 5%

BROKEN DOWN INDIVIDUAL RESULTS ON EACH QUESTION ARE AVAILABLE ON REQUEST

MORE RESULTS

- The highest ranking SF player was, of course, Lank, but was just pipped to the post.
- The highest ranking UK player was Flash Harry, in 5th place, with an impressive 65.5%. An award also goes to Flash Harry for being the person to use the words "strange" and "weird" the most in one SFZEROSAT examination, with an impressive 5 "weird"s and 6 "strange"s.

- Year of join date averages:

1st: 2006 - 64.125%
2nd: 2008 - 48.6%
3rd: 2007 - 42%

- Glasnost group averages:

1st: U of A - 49.27%
2nd: BART - 49.125%
3rd: No group (wasn't in Glasnost) - 48.6%
4th: HC - 45.5%
5th: Biome - 40.25%
6th: Equivalenz - 29.5%

So, Equivalenz stuck at the bottom again, which is a shame. Then again, it was only Charlie Fish and Squigs making that average.

- Favourite colour averages (from the information I gathered):

Yellow - 84.5%
White - 64.5%
Red - 51%
Grey - 45%
Green - 42.167%
Black - 40.833%
Purple - 40.25%

- Join date against score



Now, for this, I expected there to be a massive skew toward [the earlier you join, the more points you are going to get] - but I was wrong. Dax and Flash Harry tipped the scales by being the most new (*cough* Villain) players to join the game, and coming in 3rd and 6th, respectively, and the oldest player to take the test, annnna, coming in 16th.

- US vs UK



Sorry guys, we lost! They beat us by a considerable margin. Well played, America. Well played.

UK: 36.9444%
US: 50.6111%

If you have any more burning questions to ask regarding the statistical results, do not hesitate to ask!

AS REQUESTED BY LANKIN:

The highest scoring suggested group was... joint wins with Charlie Fish's "Imps", annnna's "Public Infrastructure Fixer Upper Group" and JJason's "Institute For Reality Study" with 8 out of a possible 10 marks each.

ANSWERS

Here are the answers to the questions, you can open the .pdf document below and go down, checking off which ones you got right, and kicking yourself for the ones you missed.

1.
a)
i) Lincoln
ii) lowteck
iii) Lank (half mark would be given for The Villain)
b) decided by how awesome/relevant the pictures were

2.
a) Level 5
b) 3040
c) 2 marks for mentioning the three ways of playing already stated; 1 mark for drawing conclusions between the three; 1 mark for mentioning a method of playing not already stated; final mark for a "wow" factor

3.
a)
9/9 - 5 marks
7 or 8/9 - 4 marks
5 or 6/9 - 3 marks
3 or 4/9 - 2 marks
2/9 - 1 mark
0 or 1/9 - 0 marks

SAM LAVIGNE ! = BART PA
Ian Kizu-Blair = Humanitarian Crisis
Sean Mahan = Biome
GYØ Daryl = Biome
Dr Subtle = University of Aesthematics
meta tron = BART PA
Darkaardvark = University of Aesthematics
The Revolutionary = Humanitarian Crisis
GYØ Ben = Equivalenz
b) marks decided by how well portrayed the finished product was

4.
a) California
b) SFØ Roadtrip
c) Earth Song (half mark given for "Tuning Fork" mentioned)
d) St. Stephen's Tower
e) Hot air balloon
f) Capitol Records Tower
g) Jerusalem, Israel
h) Any three from: Tiny Clanger, Sue Taylor, Gill Smith, Chris, Brett, James, George, Storer, Jordan, Vicki, Watmuff, Katie, Elliot, Askew, Neil, Jason, another Chris, Kieran, Zoë
i) Any three from: Spidere, Kprime, Eccoglyph, FZ!, Momotiki, Nan O'Fith, Doodle Maier, Mike Hellstrom, Flying Duckmonster, Shannon, Mudlock, Jayna Dubrey

5.
a)
i) Cameron
ii) Spidere
iii) BlueberryMascarpone
iv) Yellowbear
b) Jeremy Cezanne
lowteck
zemaluco
anna one
Lank
avidd
p00n
Yellowbear
Rainbow Bright
Eddy
Shalaco
[Bigglesworth] - sort of a trick question


6.
a) 1 mark for name, 1 mark for colour, 3 marks for trajectory, 2 marks for logo, 3 marks for anything extra or particularly awesome
b) 1 mark for title, 1 mark for group, 3 marks based on rating of how good the task is

7.
a)
Cameron
lowteck
piratey monkey
Oliver X
avidd

[I MESSED UP THIS SECTION, SO HOWEVER MANY SENSIBLE ANSWERS WERE GUESSED (REGARDLESS OF HOW RIGHT OR WRONG THEY WERE), A MARK WAS GIVEN (SIMILAR TO THE RULES IN THE U.K. FOR SATs)]

b)
Charlie Fish
Lank
GYØ Tom
Burn Unit
GYØ Adam
c)
Lincoln
Rongo rongo
GYØ Tom
JTony
Burn Unit


8.
a) Ian Kizu-Blair
b) anna one
c) Darkaardvark

9.
One mark per valid reason, or total out of 5 marks for something particularly cool

GENERAL HAPPENINGS

Envelopes



The envelopes that people sent stuff in were pretty damn awesome, just check out these ones! There's also one by The Actor that I can't lay my hands on at this moment in time, but I will post it should I find it.

Susy Derkins



As a bribe, Susy Derkins sent me a big envelope full of Mexican candy. There are also these packets of salty powder, that go sweet, then sour, then salty again. ITS DOORS ALBUMS IN A PACKET. Craziness. We are scared of the Mexican candy.

--
Margin defacing



The Actor took it upon himself to cut and stick the lyrics of The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air down the margin... just to disobey the rules. And JJason did this:


--
Squigs



Squigs was entered into the contest via anna one... and ended up beating Askew by sheer creative talent.

--
One Cent



I got sent two lots of One Cent praxis from the players. Great idea, guys!

--
Vena's sampler



Vena Nightmare sent me an amazing sampler of my username. It is now my tasking sampler. You will see it in all future praxes.

HIGHLIGHTS

The proof photos contain some highlights that I personally like from the test.

TESTIMONIALS

"Standardized tests have always come easily to me, so this one was pretty straightforward.

There were a couple things I didn't remember or had to totally guess at--like members of other-cities-zero, or who was in what group, or the exact order of the leaderboard. I've always looked at the leaderboard probably more than is healthy for a person, so I really feel like I know that. But when it came down to it, I had to stare real hard at those blanks on the test.

I tried to spice it up by recording myself taking the test in real time--and to prove I wasn't cheating-- and about 35 minutes into it my camera shut off and it crashed or something because I couldn't get the video out of it. That wold have been pretty funny. Especially my diagram of the groups, which wound up being a mess because I tried to remember all the stuff I'd said about it into the camera and write them down on the sheet.

The subjective parts were pretty fun -- making tasks, making groups, drawing pictures. I kind of ran out of time on the last question so I drew something hasty there. Like you guys said in the podcast, I've been around a while, not to mention I spend a lot of time on the site and I have a good memory for small trivial details. So I'm going to know this stuff pretty darn well. I think I'll stack up.

In any case, the difficulty of the exam wasn't ever a concern, I'm just glad it was actually fun." -- Burn Unit

"My mummy says you better give me a good mark or she'll f***ing 'ave you." -- Charlie Fish

"Well, what can I say? I think Ben deserves a standing ovation from all of SF0 for the sheer amount of drive he has put into this Task. You can tell that the test was made with love, and distributed with great determination. After the work that has gone into this, it seems as though the paper of every exam is inlaid with his blood, sweat, toil and tears... actually, it's a wonder it got through customs and excise smelling like that.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who's going to say this, but that Test was piggin' difficult! Even for the grizzled veterans of the site, but especially for players like myself, who had only joined in the past few months. That being said, he did a fantastic job in returning me to the days of my GCSEs, in both good and bad ways. A marvellous Task, expertly done – its things like this that remind why I love this game so much." -- Haberley Mead

"it was quite an interesting exerience. i generally dislike taking tests to begin with, especially ones in the same vein as the SAT (i find them to be an inaccurate way of measuring a person's knowledge on a subject), and i must say that this was no exception. i chose to take it, however, because i thought it was an ingenious way of getting people to take a look around the website and a great collaborative task that would, in a way, unite players throughout
the nation. i also enjoyed that you included the section about what sf0 means to us. all in all, it was a very well written and thorough exam. thanks for making it!" -- Terpsichore

" I think the only thing that puzzled me about the test was that it wasn't multiple choice! Most of our standard tests here do tend to be that way.

It would be been quite entertaining to run one of the Latent Semantic Analysis algorithms that they use for machine grading standardized test essays on these, but I guess the test people probably keep those algorithms strictly secret. (Another thought I had was that it would have been entertaining to have a magazine style quiz - you know, "what is your SF0 style" or something that tries to tell you something about your personality by asking what sort of ice cream you prefer.)" -- rongo rongo

"The problem was that you made a test that very quickly made new members of SF0 feel alienated and ignorant, making the test much less of an entertaining endeavor and instead a frustrating hour down the drain." -- Anonymous

ERRATA

Page 3: Question c) should not have a question mark.
On three of the exams, page 10 has an extra "]" placed randomly within the word "one".
Ben is thick: He didn't realise that the leaderboard changed over time, so question 7 should read "at the end of the era, who were the top 5 players?" or something similar. A mark was given per sensible answer on that question, because I messed up, sorry guys.

RANDOM FACTS ABOUT THE SFZEROSAT

- The entire layout was based on a mock science paper from Ben's school.
- The entire cost at Ben's end came to £64.85 (around $75 postage + $50 for ink). If you'd like to make a donation, click here.
- On the LocalCityZero page, there was a question about NYØ not being an official CityZero. Then a week later, it was made official. This question was quickly redacted.
- Adam's task "Dance, Maggot, Dance" from the SFZEROSAT paper then got accepted a few days later as Insect Choreographer.
- All your suggested tasks you created for question 6b have been submitted with credit given to you.

ENDING NOTE

Well. Thanks again, and I look forward to more epic tasking with you soon.

Uber-praxis over.