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Let's say I want to motivate people to contribute to a quantifiable target but I do not want to disclose the value of the target. Example: we need to build a brick wall. Each student can, based on his or her skills, time availability and any other factors, lay an X number of bricks. We know when we set the target how many bricks we need to build the wall. Each student will know how many bricks he or she added to the wall. These will be one time contributions.

Is there any way to provide a feedback to the student on the value of his/her contribution to reaching the target without actually disclosing the target?

MiniMe
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  • I guess it depends on what you mean by "value of their contribution". – DanielV Jul 28 '16 at 17:20
  • by that I mean some sort of feedback which should indicate how much closer to the target we are or anything of this sort. They need something to encourage them but not to discourage them if the target seems way too far. – MiniMe Jul 28 '16 at 17:41
  • Well then I suggest approaching it from the point of view that you don't even know how large the wall will be. If your encouragement depends on your knowledge of the wall, then the size of the wall will be deducible from your encouragement. Video games do something similar by having rewards for community contribution to a goal, sometimes with the amount of reward dependent on the % contributed or on the rank of the contribution (1st, 2nd, 3rd...) – DanielV Jul 29 '16 at 01:43
  • @DanielV: Your comment should be an answer (though this question isn't really mathematical). SE does precisely what you suggest; percentage of total contribution and also rank. – user21820 Jul 30 '16 at 08:35

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Here's an amusing way:

Your contributions have quickened the completion of the wall by XXX minutes/hours/days.

You can compute this based on the rates at which that one person and all the other people are contributing, but he/she won't be able to figure out the final goal without knowing the total rate of others' contribution. Presumably this is not easy to find out exactly even if it can be guessed.

user21820
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  • the first three contributors can find out immediately what the target is. By your method they will be able to figure out an average target which defeats the purpose of not disclosing how big the wall is :-) – MiniMe Jul 28 '16 at 17:15
  • @MiniMe: Only the first contributor can, and that's if he/she knows there are none before. =) Secondly, I meant that the feedback is based on an estimated rate of contribution of others, which is not going to be exact since we're estimating how much they will continue to contribute in the future. – user21820 Jul 29 '16 at 01:53
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I think that one way to do it is to give feedback based on a group of contributions rather than individually. If I say the latest 5 contributions increased the completion percentage to 75% then it is impossible for them to guess.

The other way would be to divide the wall by sections and allow them to contribute on a section of their pick and give them feedback based on that section alone. Overflowing from one section to the other could or could not be allowed

MiniMe
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