Curse

Dauntless · May 06, 2007, 04:22 PM // 16:22

First Birthday:
Warrior: Siege Turtle.
Monk: Fungal Wallow.
Necro: Fungal Wallow. Traded for Jungle Troll.
Ranger: Whiptail.

Second Birthday:
Warrior: Mandragor. Traded for Koss. Traded for Aatxe.
Monk: Koss. Traded for Palawa Joko.

Only one repeat and I no longer have that one. If you don't like what you get, trade for one that you do like.

HawkofStorms · May 06, 2007, 04:32 PM // 16:32

[QUOTE=Myrkwid]@Cacheelma

@HawkOfStorms
Well, you obviosly don't have any scientific training, otherwise you would have at least understood what this was all about. So don't talk about things you have no idea of.

[QUOTE]

Right... I'm going to ignore that comment since I do.

Hmmm I do wonder what that edit of your's was. Anyway...
Lets say you open 6 presents and their are 12 common minis (the chance of getting gwen could be as low as say 1%).
The mathematical chance of you NOT getting a repeat is actually lower then the chance of you getting a repeat.

Chance of not getting a repeat over 6 presents is (11/12)*(10/12)*(9/12)*(8/12)*(7/12)=
55440/248832=
22%

Now you find me ONE mathematician who will tell you that a sample size of around 20 when there are 12 different outcomes produces statistically verifiable results and I'll eat my socks.

DreamRunner · May 06, 2007, 04:37 PM // 16:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlueNovember

I agree that regardless of previous results, the probability of a coin being a head is 0.5 (treating it as a Bernoulli trial and discounting silly things like "edge"). However there's a difference between "100th throw being a head, given 99 heads" and "100 heads"; the difference beeing 0.5 vs ... some really small number.

Mmm. Diverging from the topic a _little_ bit, but for the sake of completeness,
Probability of h heads in n tosses of a coin with a probability of heads equal to p:

(h + t + 1!) / h!t! * r^h * (1-r)^t

h=100, t=0, r=0.5, (presuming fair coin)

(100 + 1)! / 100! * 0.5^100

101 * 0.5^100,

Which, according to google, is
7.96749514 × 10-29

...which is a number so small I don't even know the si prefix for. The coin is biased. Certainty is well over 99.99%.

Edit: I've never really done probability, just have an interest in it, so any and all of these values could be wrong :P

Wrong. You are killing off the main principle of probability. It does NOT matter in any form what or how low the number is, its random. And because its of this, its not biased. Its random, the end. I thought this was done back in school?

sph0nz · May 06, 2007, 04:41 PM // 16:41

So far I've gotten a Jade Armor on my necro and monk. My ranger, who is 13 months old, hasn't received ANY present..

Free Runner · May 06, 2007, 05:02 PM // 17:02

My Ranger who is my most played character got a Siege Turtle on his first birthday. My Necro who is my least played character on my account got a Bone Dragon for his birthday( i know its random but i did find it funny how my least used char got the Unique Miniature). My Mesmer is my second most played character and will be turning 1 in june. Will be interesting to see what she gets.

Carboplatin · May 06, 2007, 05:04 PM // 17:04

i've gotten 3 whiptales and 2 seige turtles. It sucks.

Parson Brown · May 06, 2007, 05:30 PM // 17:30

I think I got all different ones in this order:

Kirin (Proph warrior)
Charr Shaman (Proph ele)
Whiptail (Proph monk)
Hydra (Proph ele)
Fungal Wallow (Factions Rit)

The rest of my characters were created a bit after Factions came out, so we'll see soon

Mad King Corn · May 06, 2007, 05:33 PM // 17:33

I wonder if somehow the seed for the random number gererator is part of your account key? This would explain why some people get great drops and have the best of luck, while the rest of us seem cursed. For me, everything in the game is bad luck, I have horrible luck with chests, drops (HM drops are the worst!), any random aspect of the game seems to affect my characters negatively.

mazik · May 06, 2007, 06:09 PM // 18:09

I've gotten some pretty good repeats for my first years chars.

1st Charr Shaman
2nd Kirin
3rd Charr Shaman(Traded for Burning Titan)
4th Charr Shaman(Gave to guildie)
5th Shiro

Not too bad if I do say so myself:\

BlueNovember · May 06, 2007, 06:44 PM // 18:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Geod

The real truth:

http://xkcd.com/c221.html

xD
xkcd is awesome. So true to life...

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamRunner

Wrong. You are killing off the main principle of probability. It does NOT matter in any form what or how low the number is, it's* random. And because its of this, its not biased. It's* random, the end. I thought this was done back in school?

o0. Quite strong/condescending wording there. Really necessary?

Anyway, would you say that a set of dice that continuously roll double 6 (thousands and thousands of rolls) is just an example of a random outcome? I suppose it vary well could be, but the _chance_ of that being the case is infinitesimally small that it can be discounted.
I don't just mean that in a sense of "accuracy is lost" discounted. The result is actual certainty. Similar to how "0.99999..." is 1. Not just "nearly 1", but "1 exactly". (1/3 = 0.333..., 3 * 1/3 = 1, but 3* 0.333... = 0.999...)

HawkofStorms · May 06, 2007, 10:30 PM // 22:30

Here is the thing, if you roll 6 6s in a row, the chance that you roll a 7th 6 is still 1/6. Each event occurs independently of the previous ones.

Even if there is 7x10^-29 chance that you get that exact outcome, that is the same odds as you getting ANY outcome.

Winterclaw · May 06, 2007, 10:58 PM // 22:58

The Gambler's Paradox: the dice never knows when it is due.

Muspellsheimr · May 06, 2007, 11:55 PM // 23:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlueNovember

Similar to how "0.99999..." is 1. Not just "nearly 1", but "1 exactly". (1/3 = 0.333..., 3 * 1/3 = 1, but 3* 0.333... = 0.999...)

You bastard - you're doing it the easy way...

If x=0.999 repeat, then 10x = 9.999 repeat

10x (9.999) - x (0.999) = 9x (9)

9x(9) / 9 = x (1)

Therefore, x(0.999) = x (1), or 0.999 repeat = 1

vojnik · May 07, 2007, 12:00 AM // 00:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by HawkofStorms

Here is the thing, if you roll 6 6s in a row, the chance that you roll a 7th 6 is still 1/6. Each event occurs independently of the previous ones.

Even if there is 7x10^-29 chance that you get that exact outcome, that is the same odds as you getting ANY outcome.

Independently yeah each is 1/6, but when your trying to find the probability of successive rolls....

A roll of 6 die could net 6 6 6 6 6 5.
but this is the same as if the die rolled 6 5 6 6 6 6.
so its much more likely to get this combination than all 6's.

if you draw a tree of the rolls, you'll see that there is only 1 branch possible that gives all 6 6's, so the succession of 6 6's is quite unlikely.

marshy man · May 07, 2007, 12:20 AM // 00:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Myrkwid

why some say "hard mode is like paradise, rares everywhere" and others say "Duh? What? I don't even get gold".

last night i went with a group of friends vanquishing.
(x-x-x= number of golds a person got)
first area-14 golds. (6-3-3-2)
second area-10. (4--5-1)
third area-6. (3-2-1)
how many golds did i get? none, i got a single flippin grape.
how many people were these golds divided up by? 5...wtf!

Cjlr · May 07, 2007, 12:56 AM // 00:56

Any string of random numbers is as unlikely as any other string. Given a truly random distribution, they all have the same likelihood. Say I have a die. I'm quite unlikely to roll six sixes. But I have exactly the same odds of rolling 3-2-6-4-1-4 as 6-6-6-6-6-6.

That said, I've received five first-year birthday presents so far. I got two Jade Armours and three Burning Titans.

Cacheelma · May 07, 2007, 01:42 AM // 01:42

How can you prove that the "streak" of whatever that you got doesn't come from just "your luck"? You try to get it over and over until you can prove it with stats.

While it's unlikely, it's also POSSIBLE for you to just get something randomly 3 times in a row. Such number is too small to be used in statistical analysis anyway. If it's a streak of, say, 100, then we can start discussing about this.

As I said, don't start blaming/bring up something as an issue when you don't really have any evidence to support it.

qwe4rty · May 07, 2007, 03:42 AM // 03:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by HawkofStorms

Now you find me ONE mathematician who will tell you that a sample size of around 20 when there are 12 different outcomes produces statistically verifiable results and I'll eat my socks.

Actually, to do a Z test, you only need to the following 3 conditions:

1) Sample is random
2) Standard deviation of the population is known
3) Population is normally distributed OR sample is large (which for a Z test amounts to 20 or larger)

The only thing this really fails is that we do not know the standard deviation of the population, which means we would have to use a T test, which requires that:
1) Sample is random
2) Standard deviation of the population is unknown
3) ONE of the following
-population is normal OR
-sample size is large (>40), OR
-sample size is medium (15-40) and plot of sample shows little skewness and no extreme outliers, OR
-sample size is small (<15) and plot of sample shows no skewness and outliers.

Granted, having a higher sample size is certainly better as it lowers the standard deviation, but you can still get a guess with 20.

Quote:

Originally Posted by HawkofStorms

Here is the thing, if you roll 6 6s in a row, the chance that you roll a 7th 6 is still 1/6. Each event occurs independently of the previous ones.

Even if there is 7x10^-29 chance that you get that exact outcome, that is the same odds as you getting ANY outcome.

Err, sorta, but let me also point the following out. If i were to roll 3 dice and add there totals, there is only 1 possible way to get a score of 3 (1 + 1 + 1) while there are several ways to achieve a score of 9 (2 + 3 + 4), (4 + 3 + 2), etc. Order does seem to matter.

If you were to plot that on a distribution curve, getting 7 sixes in a row would be near the bounds of the graph, while getting 2 ones, 3 fours, 1 five, and 1 six would be somewhere closer to the middle, just because there is more than 1 way to get it (order matters on the sampling distribution--the graph of all possible outcomes).

DreamRunner · May 07, 2007, 12:33 PM // 12:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlueNovember

xD
xkcd is awesome. So true to life...

o0. Quite strong/condescending wording there. Really necessary?

Anyway, would you say that a set of dice that continuously roll double 6 (thousands and thousands of rolls) is just an example of a random outcome? I suppose it vary well could be, but the _chance_ of that being the case is infinitesimally small that it can be discounted.
I don't just mean that in a sense of "accuracy is lost" discounted. The result is actual certainty. Similar to how "0.99999..." is 1. Not just "nearly 1", but "1 exactly". (1/3 = 0.333..., 3 * 1/3 = 1, but 3* 0.333... = 0.999...)

... You had a swing and you miss. Or rather you tried to dodge and put up another argument. Either way, is it a possible outcome? Yes it is. Thank you for understanding my point.

Sirkl · May 07, 2007, 12:45 PM // 12:45

Myself and 2 guildies have been hardmoding it up and in the last 2 days 1 player has got 4 sup absortions, 3 major absorbtions, and 2 minor absorbtions, and the other guildy and my self got 4 Sup fastcast runes each. I think something is fishy here.