This is not going to be easy to answer but bear with me and I'll give it my best shot.

If you've got 2 pc's running the agent the points totals showing on each individual agent reflects the total number of points both PC's had posted at the time the last complete work unit was posted back to WCG from that PC. So the one that says 2243 was the last PC to have completed a work unit and so shows the bigger total number of points. The next time the PC with agent showing 505 points at the moment completes it's work unit it will post it back to WCG and it's total should leap up past 2243 and so on and so on.

Now to complicate matters still further we have the statistics total on the website which as you rightly say do not match either 505 or 2243

Deep breath

This is confusing everybody

The points on the website reflect the total number of points posted back from completed work units up until 23:59 GMT (UTC) the previous day. If you have posted a result at 00:01 that work unit has missed the boat and will not show up on the website until the following day.

OK - There's more

The WCG computers tally up all the work units, points, cpu time that everyone has posted up until 23:59 GMT (UTC) the previous day but this doesn't occur until 06:00 GMT (UTC) so the stats from 00:00 to 06:00 will not immediately show the results up to 23:59 GMT we have to wait until this process has completed which is taking at the moment until roughly 07:20 GMT. With more users each day being added this will take longer and longer to complete. After this time your website stats will show another days extra results.

This is why the website stats you are seeing are lagging the 2243 points you can currently see on your agent that has posted the last work unit. This work unit has not been as yet absorbed into the websites totals

unfortunately there's more as somewhere in the process of calculating your points, which are roughly based on CPU power and length of time for a work unit, there are rounding errors in this calculation and this has the consequence that the points on the web may not match the points on your agent. This error is usually very small 1 or 2 points or there abouts. Sometimes you will win sometimes you will lose.


Hope this helps clear up the seemingly random numbers - there is some method in the madness.

I hope this is clear enough

If not post back

Welcome to the world of Crunching

Dave

Wow, we are really working with enthusiasm here. There was no answer when I started on this one.

Hi David and Lawrence --

Yeah, we did all trip over one another on this one didn't we. Well, at least it looks like the 3 of us all have the same understanding about the numbers and how they add up. The one thing none of us mentioned is that there are rounding differences between the Agent and the online database. I forget which one rounds up when the other rounds down, but the bottom line is that at some points in time, there may be a point or two difference between the online statistics and what the Agent reports.

The big thing is that while the points can give you a bit of a measure of how your contribution to the project is growing, the accumulation of points isn't what this is all about. It is about us all banding together to provide scientists working for the betterment of mankind with computing power to accomplish that work.