Folding Progress

I'm quite enthusiastic about Folding@Home. My own folding just passed a milestone that means something, at least to me.

F@H awards points for finishing work units (WUs) on time. You can sign on with a user name, even join a team, and watch your individual contribution to science grow. Are points really pointless? Yes, but they appeal to our competitive urge, so they help keep people participating.

So my personal milestone - my number of points is now more than my standing on the leader board! Yes, comparing to different quantities, I know. It happened somewhere between 65,000 and 70,000. Since there are more than 1.2 million folders (not all active right now), I'm in the top 5% of contributors to F@H. Yeah, me! Also, Team Deloitte is in the top 5% of all folding teams. Pretty good for only three guys.

Actually, there are two other lessons you can draw from this progress. 1 - most people who do fold, fold anonymously. 2 - a lot of people tried folding, then forgot about it.