Smuggler Archive

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Istin wrote:

Ok, I get everything that has been said here about the law of averages and stuff.

HOWEVER, I can usually make an educated guess at what my next slice will bebased on y previous slices. There's no equation that I go by to give probabilities, just what seems right. And, more often than not, I WILL be able to guess high or low slice, damage or speed/effect or encumb. In fact, I carry around a crate or two of survival knives so I an slice 5 or so before someone gives me a great weapon to slice or before I go into bulk slices.

Also, if you just got a really low/high slice, chancesseem to be that in the near future it'll be balanced out bya slice of opposite quality.

Just some observations by someone that plays a great deal and has sliced a few thousand pieces in bulk, not to mention other, random people wanting stuff sliced.

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funny cause I do the same thing...as a test tonight I decided to slice 5 weaps, shooting for a damage slice each time and I sliced knives over and over til I hit 4 speed slices in a row and then hit one of the other weaps...4 out of 5 sliced for damage with one errant one being off.

perhaps it WILL balance itself out in the long run, but it sure makes a compelling arguement.

Not saying I'm willing to bet next month's mortgage on it...but it beats just diving into slicing and slicing all 5 in a row when you know d@mn well half will prolly hit speed

we'll see how future tests go

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Asuph wrote:

Law of averages is much more acurate in RL situations, than mathmatics. Mathmatics points out probability, LOA predicts trends.

In mathmatics its50% probable to flip 6 coins, and have all land heads up. That is unlikely. At the same time, its is also 50% likely to get 3 heads, and 3 tails. The problem is, math only looks at one flip at a time.

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Actually it isn't, if you flip one coin six times the odds of it dropping on heads each time is 50%, the odds of all 6 being heads is much smaller 1 in 64 (if my maths is functioning correctly today)

If you flip 6 coins simultaniously the same is true, the odds of any one coin coming up heads is 50% the odds of all 6 coins coming up heads is 1 in 64

Translated to slicing (weapons only for simplicity), the odds of any one slice being a speed or damage is 50%, always. The chance of getting multiple slices of the same type in a row drops each time you get another slice of the same type, but just because it is unlikely doesn't mean it won't happen.

When dealing with one slice we are dealing with the possibility of it being one way or the other... That is always 50%. When dealing with multiple slices we are not dealing with the chance of it coming up speed or damage, but the chance that it is the same as the one before (and the one before that etc).

So in a way everyone is right:

Every slice has a 50% chance of being speed or damage no matter what, however the more slices of one type you get in a row then the less chance that the next one will be the same as those that have come before.

Its confusing and tricky really you are better off just accepting that it is random than worrying about the probabilities.

Just being the devil's advocate (and a former mathematics minor):

But what are your odds of getting those 4 speed slices in a row to make you think the 5th will be a damage slice?

(and yes, mathematically, I know the answer is 1 in 16)

I sort of thought along the same lines, but the more and more I slice (been very busy of late!) the more I see the randomness. I did 15 pieces of Ubese last night and only 3 or 4 were Effectiveness. I did 4 Speed slices in a row on rifles as well. I really don't think you can say "OK, it's been 3 Speeds, gimme that VK, cause the next will be Damage for sure!"

Nice idea though.

I disagree 100%. In my experience if someone hands you armor and says "I hope I get encumberance slices!" they are guaranteed to get effectiveness. =)

hhe. never tell me the odds. just had that in. I have noticed a definate trend in slicing though. One day I will have mostly speed slices, and the next will be mostly damage. I just have to log on, and check for the trend of the day with some cheesy cdefs. That usually works for me. Even if it is random, and it evens out in the end, the slices are usually put into groups with me. I sliced 6 peices of armor last night with only one effectiveness slice (yes it was the gloves by the way), and a speed slice on a gun. The night before was all damage slices on the weapons, with effect on the PSG's and armor I sliced. I can usually tell what type of night I'm going to have when I slice 6 cdefs. Now if it comes to a 50/50 with the cdefs, I'm lost.

Knowing the algorithm would make it theoretically possible to at least tip the odds of a slice in your favor, but it'd have to be performed under very strict conditions. For example, if the random number generator was seeded based on time of day, you might need to slice it at the exact right second to make it go the right way, and that's the simplest possible case. Considering the issues with syncing to the server and all sorts of lag, it would be downright impossible. And hell, it's a better use of everyone's time to just slice again.

The only thing meaningful statistical information you can really derive from the system if it is random is from the law of large numbers, which tells you that if you slice lots and lots of armor you'll eventually get very close to 50% encumberance and 50% effectiveness. If it's equally likely that you get, say, one of three different percentages on each, then you'll have about 16.6% of all of the armor you've sliced fall into the different categories.

How is that meaningful? Well, let's say you wanted to open a pre-sliced armor business. Needless to say, you hope to be dealing in lots and lots of armor, so the law of large numbers makes the probabilities applicable. There's equal demand for encumberance and effectiveness sliced armor, but you know that you'll do very little traffic in the two lower percentages of the three that you can slice in either category, since people who want pre-sliced armor want the best slices. So you'll have to essentially eat 2/3 of your profit by destroying armor that no one would buy from you. Then you figure out how much more you'll have to charge for the other pieces to make up for the lost profits. Are people willing to pay that much, or would they prefer to try their luck with the smuggler? If the profit margin's too low, maybe it would be better for your business if they tried to get it sliced, failed to get the one they wanted, and then came back to buy another piece to try and get it sliced again.

Hmm, thinking about that, I just had an idea about a really wicked scam a smuggler and a shady armorsmith could pull together... but anyway, hehe.

Any prediction you try to make about what slice is coming next is bunk. You cannot divorce the real life situation from the mathematical model, because in this case it's directly applicable. It may not always seem that way, but it is. And if you really want to be confused, I suggest checking out the Monty Hall three-door problem.

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Uncouth-Youth wrote:

Randomness on computers is much harder to acheive that you probably imagine, in my limited experience computers usually have a large table of randomly generated numbers which is _seeded_ by something which starts you at a particular point in that table.

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That's a very very very good point.

I disagree. Many moons ago I wrote my own random-number generator (in C, before C++ was even out) based on a combination of things (clock, date, plus some other things...seems like I had four variables I used in different ways). I wish I still had the algorithm (probably on a FLOPPY disk somewhere in a drawer). The bottom line is it was a fairly short routine and didnt take me long to write. I tested it thoroughly for randomness and it certainly seemed to work. And if I can write one, ANYONE can write one!

Oh I'm certainly not saying it's a 100% effective rule...not by any means...and I agree each individual slice is still a 50/50 chance

...but in application, over several tests now...it seems to be there's 2 different probabilities here...while each flip retains it's 50% chance...whenever I start hitting runs of 4 or more of one slice, it seems the subsequent slices are more likely to hit damage

I'm not saying that you can chalk it up to an exact % of success...but I'm saying that if it is a 50/50 chance and you get a run of one slice, it seems to then try to balance itself out to the 50/50 split in the long run

i've had more luck getting the slices I want using this method than I have just slicing things randomly and taking my chances. If anything I tend to get speed slices more often when I don't want them...and this has changed that...I just can't explain exactly why