Newsreel
  Products & Services
  Web Watch
  Software Update
  Events Diary
  Articles
  The Magazine
  Subscribe
  Contact Us

  Advertisers

Game Statistics

DNJ Dilemma keeps a record of each game it plays, and you can display this information in a separate browser window. Two display formats are available: table, suitable for copying to the clipboard and pasting into Microsoft Excel 2000, and CSV string, suitable for saving via a text editor as a .csv file, which can be imported into most database and spreadsheet packages.

The game keeps statistics in sessions. In DNJ Dilemma Standard edition, a new session starts whenever you reload the game page, or when you press the Clear Session Data button on the statistics page (see below). When a new session starts, any previous game results data is lost - so make sure you've copied any important session statistics to a permanent file before starting another session.

Viewing Statistics
To open the statistics window, press the 'Stats' button on the main game setup panel (you can only do this between games). The table-format statistics window opens, and automatically comes into view.

For each game, the statistics table shows the number of rounds played, total scores per player, average scores per player/round (the most statistically important figure), combined total and average scores, and the game history.

Player names and average scores are colour-coded (winner, loser, draw), to make it easy to pick out relative strengths and weaknesses. The game history shows the cards played in each round of the game - 'cd', for example, means that the left-hand player cooperated, while the right-hand player defected. 

The statistics table is updated record-by-record as you view it. It can take some time to fill the table, but while this is happening you can scroll around the page to view the records which have been displayed so far. You can also press the pushbuttons described below (except Clear Session Data). 

If the left-hand player is the same for all games in a session (i.e.  if you've played all the games manually, or left the same computer strategy unchanged), then the statistics page includes an extra table containing overall statistics for that player. Here's an example:

DNJ Dilemma Tournament Edition creates a new statistics session for each multi-game run it performs. The left-hand strategy is therefore the same for all games in a session, and the summary statistics are always produced.

Table Statistics page pushbuttons
The statistics pages contain these three pushbuttons:

Clear Session Data deletes the current game results data (after a confirmation dialog). It will not function while the page is loading its display table (see below).

Show Data in CSV Format switches to the CSV text display format. You can press this button at any time, even while the table display is loading. The CSV format page contains a corresponding Show Data in Table Format button.

Return to DNJ Dilemma switches you back to the main Dilemma game window. The statistics window is not closed, and no data is lost.

Copying data to other applications.
To avoid potential security issues, DNJ Dilemma makes no attempt to write to your system's local disks. Instead, you can copy the contents of the statistics table to the Windows clipboard, then paste it into another application. 

Data from the table format display (above) can be copied and pasted directly into a Microsoft Excel 2000 worksheet (you'll need to adjust the column widths after pasting). Alternatively, you can switch to the CSV format display, which looks like this:

Data copied from this display can be pasted into a text editor, and saved as a file with a .csv name extension. CSV  files can be imported into most database and spreadsheet packages, and also used as the data source in IE4 data binding. (NOTE - the CSV display is not produced record-by-record, but in a single block. As a result, nothing appears until the display has been completely generated, which may take some time. You may also get a 'Script function running slowly' warning dialog - click OK to let the function continue running, and the data will eventually appear!)

Selecting data for copying.
To select table or CSV data for copying, click at the start of the first row you want to copy, then hold the mouse button down while dragging it across the table and down, for as many rows as you want to copy, like this:

When the table is longer than the display, just drag off the bottom of the browser screen - it will scroll. Make sure to drag right across to the right-hand side of the page in order to capture the full game history displays. 

Once you've selected your data, choose 'Edit..Copy' from the browser menu bar, or press Ctrl-C. Now switch to your receiving application, and choose 'Edit..Paste'.

Scrolling down a long table to select its data may take some time, as can pasting the data into Excel - but we've tried it with a table of 600 rows, and it does work!