I have two tables of concern here: users and race_weeks. User has many race_weeks, and race_week belongs to User. Therefore, user_id is a fk in the race_weeks table.

I need to perform some challenging math on fields in the race_weeks table in order to return users with the most all-time points.

Here are the fields that we need to manipulate in the race_weeks table.

races_won (int)
races_lost (int)
races_tied (int)
points_won (int, pos or neg)
recordable_type(varchar, Robots can race, but we're only concerned about type 'User')

Just so that you fully understand the business logic at work here, over the course of a week a user can participate in many races. The race_week record represents the summary results of the user's races for that week. A user is considered active for the week if races_won, races_lost, or races_tied is greater than 0. Otherwise the user is inactive.

So here's what we need to do in our query in order to return users with the most points won (actually net_points_won):

1. Calculate each user's net_points_won (not a field in the DB).

2. To calculate net_points, you take (1000 * count_of_active_weeks) - sum(points__won). (Why 1000? Just imagine that every week the user is spotted a 1000 points to compete and enter races. We want to factor-out what we spot the user because the user could enter only one race for the week for 100 points, and be sitting on 900, which we would skew who actually EARNED the most points.)

This one is a little convoluted, so let me know if I can clarify further.