I played around with Excel last night and came up with a way to predict the contest winner. Basically, by downloading all the data pertinent to this contest such as the title of the essay, how many posts, the community rating, the public rating, how many community ratings and how many public ratings, and one more column for a combination of all the ratings and how the essay judges are likely to weight all the columns with respect to eachother, it spits out an answer.
With all those numbers, I sorted on each column and changed the color of the top 10 essays in each column. Then when it was all done I just looked for the "most colorful essay".
And the winner (will likely be)...
Open Peer Review to Save the World by Philip Gibbs
#2: Recognizing the Value of Play by Jonathan J. Dickau
#3: Bohr-like model for black holes: the route for quantum gravity by Christian Corda
#3 wins the slot because the contest judges will want to be science-minded. That's why Corda will likely win out over the Honorable Mention
How to save the world by Sabine Hossenfelder
because #3 is very science-y and #4 is a bit more of a preachy title without as much of a hint towards what the essay is about.
Well, there's my prediction. It was enjoyable to participate in this contest. By my own criteria, my essay wasn't "colorful" at all. Maybe the judges will score highly on ease of understanding and practicality? Nahh, the guys who are at the top of this list still do very well in such categories.
Good luck to you all.
Kevin O