Bidding game
Page outline
Introduction
What better way to conclude a project than with a fun game? :-)
This game is where everything comes together: the CDs your web crawler retrieved in phase 1, the additional data you got from your consortium and the web shop from phase 2, and the different web service interfaces from phase 3.
The best part of it: it's 100% voluntary, so you can't lose, you can only win.
Rules of the game
First a few general points:
You have a budget of CHF 500.00 to spend for bidding on other teams' articles. If you surpass this threshold you are disqualified from the evaluation. (However, this has no effect on bonus points you may have earned.)
Obviously not every bid will be successful in the end because other teams may outbid you for certain articles. It is therefore normal that some of your money may be left over at the end.
Note that you can always review your placed bids including statistics on the money you have spent using the Bidding log application.
Teams that try to cheat in any sort of way will be disqualified from the game. Cheating only refers to circumventing the measures put in place by the project team (e.g. the authentication scheme). If you find weaknesses in our implementation please let us know. If you find bugs in each other's implementations feel free to let the affected team know or use them to your "financial" advantage. :-)
Auction type
There are many different types of auctions. For this bidding game we use the 21st century version of the "silent auction", i.e. we've replaced the paper with a few web services and databases. :-)
To be more concrete:
- All bids are secret. The only entities that know about each bit are the bidder, the seller, and the trusted agent.
- The bidder does not know whether his bid is currently the highest bid.
- Bidders can always submit another bid for a given item as long as the price is higher than all previous bids he has placed. (Note that this does not consider bids submitted by other parties.)
- A placed bid that has been accepted by the trusted agent cannot be retracted.
- Teams cannot place bids for their own articles.
Technical requirements
For successful participation in the bidding game you must have the following two applications running:
A Vendor server web service that allows other teams to bid for articles that can be found in your web shop.
A Bidding client application with the help of which you can bid for articles that you find in other teams' web shops.
Time frame
Start of the bidding game: Monday, 2005-06-13, 1200. The database with the fake bids from the test phase will be flushed. At the same time we will disable our bogus vendor server (vendor ID 0) and bids for your own articles will not be considered valid anymore.
End of the bidding game: Wednesday, 2005-06-15, 1800. The trusted agent will be shut down and we will start the evaluation.
Evaluation
The evaluation of the bidding game will lead to the nomination of two winner teams (who may be one and the same):
Selling winner: The team with the highest net profit. The net profit is calculated as the sum of the differences between the list prices and the selling prices.
Shopping winner: The team that buys the highest amount worth of articles with their budget. What counts is the total list price of the bought articles.
The results of the game evaluation, including the winner teams, will be presented during the last lecture (Friday, 2005-06-17).
Rewards
Price The winner teams in selling and shopping both receive a real-world price. At this point its more specific nature shall remain a secret but chances are it is remotely connected to the project. ;-)
Bonus All teams that participate actively in the game receive a bonus on their phase 3 grade. This bonus is based on the average number of placed bids. We assign a bonus of 0.3 points to every team having achieved the average number of bids. Fractions of this bonus are calculated using a linear scale and rounded to the closest multiple of 0.1. However, the maximum amount of bonus achievable in this phase is 0.4 points. Teams that have not placed any bids at all do not receive a bonus.
The good feeling that for once the correcting assistants of your project are not the only ones to see the fruits of your work, but that you can amaze an entire class of fellow students. :-)
Webshops and endpoints
As promised, an updated list of all webshops and endpoints
Game results
Buyer's table
The table shows the total sum of placed and accepted (ie highest and confirmed) bids. Obviously, some groups did not check the proposed bid with their actual price which results in the fact that some groups were able to buy items below their list price. This results in a positive gain for some groups. Another issue that has influenced this table: some groups did not set any validation (password) for their servlets. This helped some to place bids on their own server.
Buyer # | Placed Bids | Original Price | Gain
-----------+---------------+-----------------+-----------
7 | 362.40 | 9285.05 | 8922.65
3 | 291.96 | 2872.87 | 2580.91
17 | 828.50 | 2851.80 | 2023.30
5 | 289.63 | 2098.45 | 1808.82
2 | 990.54 | 984.61 | -5.93
15 | 480.71 | 470.18 | -10.53
4 | 840.19 | 825.59 | -14.60
6 | 1058.18 | 1000.66 | -57.52
8 | 165.00 | 82.76 | -82.24
14 | 7060.00 | 6683.00 | -377.00
19 | 752.98 | 23.80 | -729.18
13 | 1099.00 | 44.86 | -1054.14
-----------+---------------+-----------------+-----------
Vendor's table
This is the counter-part of the buyer's table. The original idea of the game was to make profit. Unfortunately, some groups did not check the bidded price against their list price which results in some huge losses.
Vendor # | Received Bids | Original Price | Gain
-----------+---------------+-----------------+-----------
3 | 3796.12 | 1361.61 | 2434.51
4 | 1337.00 | 1273.04 | 63.96
9 | 879.08 | 864.59 | 14.49
15 | 239.86 | 238.47 | 1.39
19 | 107.92 | 122.01 | -14.09
7 | 6382.02 | 8658.00 | -2275.98
18 | 340.44 | 2825.20 | -2484.76
17 | 1136.65 | 11880.71 | -10744.06
-----------+---------------+-----------------+-----------
Final words
To sum up, we'd like to thank everybody for participating in the game and also for the good work some groups delivered during this project. We hope, that you've learnt something from this project you might be able to use in your professional future life. Now, there's nothing left to say except from wishing you all good luck for the final exam!
For the project team: Martin and Patrik
Copyright © Martin Rubli & Patrik Bless –
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