News - Project Euler

As generative artificial intelligence (genAI) tools continue to advance, so too must we. Most higher educational institutions have now accepted that it is part of how we work and what we do, and like them, we recognise the need to revisit and refine our own approach. Consequently, we have updated our policy to align ourselves with those around us by focusing on "responsible use".

Although the changes only impact the final Q&A, they do represent a shift in where we now stand. So, if you are currently using genAI, you are planning to use it, or you are concerned about other members who might be using it, we would ask that you carefully read the updated policy: Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools Policy.

To help the community feel more alive and to provide an additional level of engagement as you journey through the problem set, we are proud to announce the introduction of ranks. Those of you who were around in the earliest days of Project Euler will have a sense of nostalgia.

Members with public accounts will now be assigned to ranks: Tetrahedron, Cube, Octahedron, Dodecahedron, Icosahedron, and the top 100 members will be placed among the legendary Spheres.

It was felt that a more meaningful measure of progress than just the raw number of problems solved was needed, which is simply a measure of the number of correct answers entered. Consequently, solve counts will no longer be visible in any public tables and ranks will appear in their place. Although progress through the ranks is related to the number of problems solved, it factors in thoughtful engagement with the problems and the length of time you have been an active member of Project Euler.

For newer members, you will be assigned to the rank of Tetrahedron once your account reaches an established status. Thereafter, you can see your progress from one rank to the next on your Progress page. Please note that your account must be switched to Public status to be ranked and ranks are updated on a daily basis.

We hope that you enjoy these changes and as always if you notice any issues, please report them at the alternative forum: https://projecteuler.chat/viewtopic.php?t=8051.

During the summer break last year we began exploring a new system to replace the difficulty metrics, which we felt suffered from two problems: heavy reliance on the fastest solvers to obtain the measure of a problem's difficulty, which meant the metric was skewed by more experienced problem solvers, and its static nature meant that it was unable to adapt to the evolution of programming languages; that is, not all X% difficulty problems are equal.

After arriving at a system which we felt had the capability of properly representing the entire Project Euler community, and running the system against test data, we feel that we have been able to develop a system that is going to provide a far more meaningful measure of problem difficulty. But please note, as the new system tracks encounters between members and the problems they solve to help calibrate the difficulty metric for each problem, our privacy policy has been updated to reflect these changes.

Instead of using difficulty percentages, the problems are now given a difficulty level, similar to your own level of progress. Essentially, the entire problem set is ranked by this new metric and then grouped into blocks of twenty-five to create the difficulty levels from level 0 upwards. The Archives table will colour code the levels from green to a light red to show you which problems are most suitable for you to tackle at your current level. This is not something that will work for everyone, but we hope it helps to guide most members on which problems to tackle and which ones to currently avoid.

It is worth noting that, due to the dynamic nature of the new system, which continues to learn the difficulty of each problem, the difficulty level for some problems may change slightly. The good news is that observing the data during this test period indicates that problems quickly find their place and many are now very well established. The challenge will be problem visibility. That is, those problems "in the middle" that do not receive as much attention as others. Over time as they are tackled they may rise or fall, pushing other more established problems up or down respectively. But we felt that these shifts would be limited and it was a small price to pay for a system that was continuously providing a measure with increasing accuracy.

To assist differentiating those with a stable rating versus those still in a state of less certainty, you will see a small coloured bar below the difficulty level for each problem. Green indicates a high confidence in the difficulty level, orange indicates that it is probably in the right place but may shift slightly, and grey indicates less certainty.

In addition to the new difficulty system, the awards have undergone some changes. Upon review we decided that a primary objective is that each award should be reasonably achievable. So you will notice that a number of awards have been removed, like Gold Medal. In the case of this award, we felt that earning the top spot in any fastest solver table was reward in itself. We know that some of these decisions might frustrate members who have worked hard to earn awards that have now been removed, but we hope you agree that the ultimate purpose of awards is to support and encourage all of our members as they work through the problems.

However, with that potentially disappointing news, there is some really good news. All awards are now permanent. To accommodate this, you will see this has been reflected in the slight changes to criteria for some of the existing awards. For example, Master of Archives now requires you to solve fifty problems in ten grids. Still challenging, but achievable.

There are a few other changes you will notice. The Problems tab on your Progress page now uses a more vibrant coloured heat map to show the levels. We have even provided a switch that lets you turn on/off the entire heat map.

As you can imagine, these many changes will undoubtedly lead to bugs. So if you notice any issues, please report them at: https://projecteuler.chat/viewtopic.php?t=8042

We really hope that you appreciate the considerable time and effort that the team have put into these changes to allow Project Euler to continue providing an enjoyable place for everyone to solve a diverse collection of high quality, interesting problems.

Sorry if the extended downtime today interfered with your plans to solve problems. As some of you know, 2038 marks the end of the Unix timestamp. So with 2038 fast approaching (; a large back end update was carried out today to shift all of the internal time/date DB values from Unix timestamps to DateTime objects. This has taken a number of weeks to modify all of the scripts on my local machine to handle the new DateTime objects throughout the site. It has also required significant changes to the DB tables.

I have done as much testing as possible to ensure that everything is working but until the site undergoes extensive use, it is unlikely that I will have covered all possible interactions. If you notice any issues, I would be very grateful if you took the time to report the issue at the alternative forum: https://projecteuler.chat/viewtopic.php?t=8026

I wish the changes today brought something more exciting, but it was a necessary change. So I would like to thank you for your patience and be assured have already begun thinking about how to handle the end of DateTime objects at the end of year 9999.

The technological world has changed beyond our wildest imaginations in recent years with the widespread access to generative artificial intelligence tools. Whereas this is mostly for the good, a small number of members have possibly been using it inadvertently in a manner that conflicts with the mission of Project Euler. So as to be absolutely clear, we have added some additional guidelines that can be found in our Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools Policy.

For most members, it will be business as usual, but there are a tiny minority of members that might need to review how they have been solving problems when it comes to competing for places in the public tables and any materials posted in the problem threads.

We really hope that you appreciate our efforts and we will update the policy as and when it becomes necessary to ensure that it aims to protect the integrity of everything we do here.