I dug into this a bit more; I am not at all confident that I’m understanding things correctly (my code is here) but I printed out a few sanity checks on the numbers:
Program
Cost (USD)
Benefit (counterfactual expected QARYs)
Cost-effectiveness (QARYs per $1M)
Attendees
Attendees (weighted)
QARYs/​Attendee
Trojan Detection Challenge
65,000
21
320
210
65
0.098
NeurIPS Social
5200
150
29,000
310
680
0.49
NeurIPS Workshop
110,000
360
3200
590
1100
0.6
It continues to feel surprising to me that a social would cause 0.5 QARYs/​attendee, but maybe there’s something I’m missing (e.g. maybe you happen to know about a particularly valuable collaboration which was sparked at this event).
I dug into this a bit more; I am not at all confident that I’m understanding things correctly (my code is here) but I printed out a few sanity checks on the numbers:
It continues to feel surprising to me that a social would cause 0.5 QARYs/​attendee, but maybe there’s something I’m missing (e.g. maybe you happen to know about a particularly valuable collaboration which was sparked at this event).