[CQ-Contest] Kudos to CQ WW for Busting Packet Cheaters!

[Bill Turner]

On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:39:44 -0700 (PDT), Ward Silver wrote:

>Do it cleverly enough to avoid detection and the advantage conferred by
>the proscribed behavior, by definition, vanishes :-)
>
>Said in less turgid prose, if nobody can tell the difference between the
>cheater's log and a legit log of a similarly equipped station, then the
>cheater hasn't gained an unfair advantage.  All the effort that went into
>cheating balances a legitimate effort.

_________________________________________________________

I don't see how you figure.  If the cheater is clever enough to
evade detection and manages to pick up some mults he wouldn't
have otherwise gotten, he's ahead of where he would have been had
he gone legit.  If those mults are enough to beat out a legit
station, he wins by cheating.  Had he not cheated, the legit
station would be hanging the certificate.

Right?  Tell me where I'm wrong.

Bill, W7TI


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>From Mike" <W4EF at dellroy.com  Wed Jul 25 09:58:21 2001
From: Mike" <W4EF at dellroy.com (Mike)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 01:58:21 -0700
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Kudos to CQ WW for Busting Packet Cheaters!
References: <sl1slt415jc8vk5e6o9sa4gin7f37coro3 at 4ax.com> <Pine.OSF.3.95.1010724173631.10930B-100000 at gonzo.wolfenet.com> <od9slt8g32s294h4k8k3tv06nogp4sjf57 at 4ax.com>
Message-ID: <00ad01c114e8$03b44ac0$6401a8c0 at neptune>


I would agree with Bill. Thirty "bonus" mults in the ARRL DX contest can
make a big difference in score (~10% for SOAB). That is less than one ill
gotten mult per hour. Since a legitimate single op will inevitably work
some new multipliers just after they are spotted by coincidence (false
detects), there will be a region of statistical overlap between the legitimate
operator and the cheater which will force the log checkers to set the 
threshold of disqualification high enough so as minimize the chances
of disqualifying a legitimate competitor who by sheer chance has 
accumulated a statistically high number of packet spot correlations. This
is the region of uncertainty that a shrewd cheater could use to pad his
or her score by hedging against the committees desire not to DQ false
positives. Of course, one could argue that the average cheater is lazy,
so they probably wouldn't want to go to the trouble of picking and
choosing when to make the cheats (too much like work). This is 
especially true when you consider the prize money at stake :) :). 

It would be interesting to compare the packet correlation statistics of 
known packet users (M/S, M/M, and SOAB(A) stations) with those of 
known legitimate single op unassisted stations over a large number of 
contests to see how much "space" there is between the packet users
and the non-packet users. 

73 de Mike, W4EF...........

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Turner" <w7ti at dslextreme.com>
To: "Ward Silver" <hwardsil at WOLFENET.com>
Cc: "Bill Coleman" <aa4lr at arrl.net>; <cq-contest at contesting.com>; "Marty Tippin" <martyt at pobox.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 6:55 PM
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Kudos to CQ WW for Busting Packet Cheaters!


> 
> On Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:39:44 -0700 (PDT), Ward Silver wrote:
> 
> >Do it cleverly enough to avoid detection and the advantage conferred by
> >the proscribed behavior, by definition, vanishes :-)
> >
> >Said in less turgid prose, if nobody can tell the difference between the
> >cheater's log and a legit log of a similarly equipped station, then the
> >cheater hasn't gained an unfair advantage.  All the effort that went into
> >cheating balances a legitimate effort.
> 
> _________________________________________________________
> 
> I don't see how you figure.  If the cheater is clever enough to
> evade detection and manages to pick up some mults he wouldn't
> have otherwise gotten, he's ahead of where he would have been had
> he gone legit.  If those mults are enough to beat out a legit
> station, he wins by cheating.  Had he not cheated, the legit
> station would be hanging the certificate.
> 
> Right?  Tell me where I'm wrong.
> 
> Bill, W7TI
> 
> 
> --
> CQ-Contest on WWW: http://lists.contesting.com/_cq-contest/
> Administrative requests: cq-contest-REQUEST at contesting.com
> 


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