Xoie wrote:
Louiscool wrote:
Xoie wrote:
Kachi wrote:
Wouldn't it be nice if it were just a reward for completing a challenging piece of content?
Kachi wrote:
Nonono. According to that link, Arise has about a 7% drop rate, so statistically, a player has to beat him FOURTEEN times to be rewarded with the Arise scroll.
Oh, and silly me, that's not accounting for all the other people who want the scroll or the money it's worth.
Edited, Mar 8th 2013 9:01am by Kachi
Statistically, there's a 93% chance you won't get the drop with each attempt (100% - 7% = 93%). After 10 attempts there's only a 48% chance you still won't have it (.93 ^10). Which means over half the time you'll get it within 10 attempts.
I hate to be a stickler here, but... After 1,000 attempts there's still a 93% chance you won't have it. Your % chance doesn't change with each attempt, which makes it much, much worse....
Each attempt has a 93% chance of failure just before you make it, that's true.
But you can calculate the odds if rolling two sixes in a row before you actually try (1/6 * 1/6 = 1/36). That's all I'm doing with the odds you'll get an arise drop. It averages to 10 attempts (before you actually start) and I showed how I calculated it. It doesn't guarantee it's always going to be that many, and your odds don't improve if you fail enough times, but that should be about the average number of attempts if you do it long enough.
Kachi is looking at this from the point of view that he will do the event 100 times no matter what, and collect 7 arise scrolls. I'm looking at it from the point of view that I want 1 arise scroll and I will stop as soon as I have one. The odds a bit better because I'm not rounding out the expected failures that would occur from doing a fixed number of attempts.
Edited, Mar 8th 2013 9:42pm by Xoie I know what you're saying, and it's a common mistake made by MMO players and Gambling addicts alike:
Law of Large Numbers: As the sample size increases the average of the actual outcomes will more closely approximate the mathematical probability. (In this case, 7%)
The law of large numbers is a useful way to understand betting outcomes. A coin on average will come up heads 50% of the time. It could nonetheless come up heads 100% of the time or 0% of the time. In a short trial, heads may easily come up on every flip. The larger the number of flips, however, the closer the percentage will be to 50%.
The problem with the law of averages, as it is often understood, is that people assume that if something has not happened it is due to happen. For example, a person who gambles might expect that if heads have come up 10 times in a row, the next flip is more likely to be tails because the flips have to average out to 50%.
Many people believe that deviations from chance are corrected by subsequent events and refer to the law of averages in support of their belief. Many people believe that after 5 heads in a row the next flip is more likely to be tails.
The law of large numbers, on the other hand, asserts only that the average converges towards the true mean as more observations are added. The average is not somehow corrected to ensure it reflects the expected average. The key difference is in the expectation. After a streak of 10 heads in a row, the law of averages would predict that more tails should come up so that the average is balanced out. The law of large numbers only predicts that after a sufficiently large number of trials, the streak of 10 heads in a row will be statistically irrelevant and the average will be close to the mathematical probability.