HLS Contest: And the winner is...

Early December, the Catapult team launched the HLS Bluebook Contest. Our intent was to bring the community together around a fun yet challenging event and give people an opportunity to learn about HLS and test their skills in this area.

Today, 4 months, 3 rounds and 15 questions after the grand opening, we are very happy to announce the winners of the contest, the four only individuals who score perfectly on the third and decisive round.

Congratulations for their outstanding performance to:

       Lee Bradshaw         United States
Philip Chambers      Australia
Paul S. D'Urbano     United States
Jerome Lachaize      France

We started the contest with a first round of 5 questions, and the response was overwhelming with 1,144 initial participants! The average score on this first round was 3.63 and 63% of the participants scored a 4 or a 5 (perfect score).
 
Given the many positive comments we got through email, it seemed obvious people were game. So we decided to continue with a second round, upping the difficulty level. Everyone who scored 4 or more was invited to participate in this next round.

Round 2 started February 10^th. With slightly more difficult questions, the average score was still a solid 3.58 and but only 184 people scored 4 or more. From the initial 1,144 contenders, we were now down to top of the crop. It was time to hold the final round.

Round 3 started March 9^th and 121 finalists lined up for the showdown. Once again, we had raised the bar with even more complicated questions. The moment had come for our final winners to shine! In this final round the average score dropped to 2.47. Only 17 finalists managed to get a 4, tying for second place. And of course the 4 winners emerged, scoring perfectly on this decisive round. Once again, a big bold “Bravo” to them and to all the finalists. 

HLS Contest - Round 3 Results

It was also very interesting to see where people tripped. We had designed the last question (n.5) to be more challenging and indeed only 19% got this one correct. But it turned out that the first question was the hardest one as only 15% got a good answer there. 

HLS Contest - Round 3 Results by question

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I am reproducing this first question below and will develop on it in upcoming blog posts. But before I give the answer and the explanation, what would you have answered?

HLS Contest - Round 3, Question 1

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