On March 24 2015 15:04 TheEmulator wrote: Them feels when you only have two weeks of the semester left. School sucks!
Although the next two weeks are gonna be rough with essays/assignments. Then finals start but those should be easy.
I am in the same boat right now. Though I really go shafted on my finals this year - I have my Programming Languages Final (3000 level computer science course) and my Advanced Number Theory Final (4000 level mathematics course) on the same day this year.
On March 24 2015 15:04 TheEmulator wrote: Them feels when you only have two weeks of the semester left. School sucks!
Although the next two weeks are gonna be rough with essays/assignments. Then finals start but those should be easy.
I am in the same boat right now. Though I really go shafted on my finals this year - I have my Programming Languages Final (3000 level computer science course) and my Advanced Number Theory Final (4000 level mathematics course) on the same day this year.
Finals are going to be rough this year haha.
My finals are nicely spread out just a bit over two weeks, so I'm happy. Sometimes I'd rather have them all back to back at the start of finals but I'm not a fan of studying for them all at once.
Advanced number theory sounds like it will be fun...
I find it fairly funny that whenever LS get negatively mentioned he has to defend himself. Does TB still do it too?`
Theory crafting is fairly useful in PvP games since there are a lot of small things everyone does differently that go unnoticed because of the sheer amount of options in game. Fighting games are very theory based especially with the ever reducing amount of technical skill with every game. Things like positioning in lane and use of information is not really discussed in LoL even if I feel that even top teams are lacking in that department.
On March 25 2015 02:22 Eppa! wrote: I find it fairly funny that whenever LS get negatively mentioned he has to defend himself. Does TB still do it too?
how else do you become e-famous? all e-famous people with giant e-peen's have a chip on their shoulder, and have to defend their starling non-sketchy past from filthy casuals.
Growing up, I never really understood how people could find pro wrestling entertaining. This past weekend, I watched a bunch of clips, and holy crap was it fun to watch.
Growing up, I never really understood how people could find pro wrestling entertaining. This past weekend, I watched a bunch of clips, and holy crap was it fun to watch.
I maintain that pro wrestling video games are more fun than watching. I still don't understand the appeal of watching but hitting your friends over the head with virtual chairs using ridiculous and muscled characters is fun.
There's a lot of good stuff you can do with mathcrafting. IMO you have to keep in mind what you're trying to do though.
The way I use math when I'm suggesting something is like, I don't base my suggestion on the math, I use the math to confirm what I'm suggesting.
So, in the current example of Lux getting Ludens Echo over Deathcap, really what we're talking about is what we want in a Lux build and how are we going to get there.
It'd be easy to just be like "Oh if all you do is cast an E and hit them with Ludens Echo then it's going to be stronger than Deathcap at all points of the game" or whatever, but that would be dumb, just like saying Leblanc is going to get in a 20 second fight with a Shyvana at any point in the game ever.
What Ludens gives you is similar (sometimes a little more sometimes a little less depending on the example) damage than Deathcap, but it also gives you movespeed, which is a really big deal and an undervalued statistic. It's hard to make a theory/math based argument for movespeed because so much of its power is hidden, but it's like, movespeed is going to help you roam better, get to fights faster, position in fights better, get to lane faster (increasing your CS), etc.
It's especially useful in the earlier parts of the game when you're moving around a lot and not just grouping with your team, and coincidentally the earlier you get Ludens, the better it compares with Deathcap in terms of damage. So while it may be (usually is) an inferior item to Deathcap at 4 or 5 items, it's often superior at like two items, which means it does have a place as an early buy for Champions who were previously buying a second item Deathcap. Not for everybody, but definitely for some, Lux included.
Lux also has unique synergy with it because it lets her E one shot caster minions when Deathcap usually does not (unless you're fed and get it real early.)
So basically, the argument is not so much does Ludens outdamage Deathcap, it's can we prove that in a reasonable scenario Ludens damage is about the same as Deathcaps, because if it is, Ludens is going to be clearly superior because it's giving us all this hidden power through the movespeed that we can't reasonably just analyze with numbers.
And that's actually just really easy to prove, for Lux at least, while LS's videos both just tunnel on how much damage the item does in isolated scenarios that are not realistic.
And yeah, the 20 second Shyvana example is hilariously ridiculous. I wonder how many games I've had a 20 second 1v1 with the person I'm not laning against, in which nobody from either team shows up to help.
I feel like I tend to get a bad rap on the forum about overvaluing math as a reasoning for doing this or that in the game, when the reality is I play hundreds and hundreds of Lux games, try all these things out, decide what feels right, and then just spend an hour doing quick math to try to confirm whether or not common sense was doing its job.
Mod Edit: Take the LoL discussion elsewhere thanks.
User was warned for this post (DO NOT EDIT OUT MOD EDITS)
On March 25 2015 01:30 Seuss wrote: A large part of the problem is the internet obsession with being right rather than being understanding. Discussions where people are trying to understand each others' positions and incorporate those viewpoints and arguments into their own thought processes are far, far more interesting and fruitful than combative, polarizing arguments. The whole "my math is correct therefore I'm correct" thing is in many ways just a facet with that pervasive problem.
It's funny you mention this cause it's something that irritates me in academia. There's a lot of focus on trying to prove yourself right. That unfortunately means a lot of sloppy mathematics and statistics, where authors assume mathematical rigour is all that is required. The end result is that you have studies where authors generate conclusions which they see as being true because the maths says so. So basically you have an attitude where you jam a lot of numbers into a machine and it spits out a 100% true unquestionable answer and that so long as you can get the machine to spit out the right number nothing else matters. This seems kinda harmless from the outside, but it's potentially terrifying when there are real world implications involved.
For example, in the field of psychology there's Fredrickson and Losada in Psychology which not only had a complete failure to properly understand how statistical tests or even basic maths work (0.54 is not less than 0.5 for example...) but also had a failure in the underlying data to begin with.
Or in economics there was the debacle about the economics paper published by Reinhart and Rogoff which claimed a country's debt levels directly affected it's economic prosperity. And this paper was used as justification for a lot of political and economic policy even though the paper was basically wrong.
I could rant on for a while but I'll stop here. I'm not really bothered to write on how this affects theorycrafting. I leave this for the reader to extrapolate accordingly.
On March 25 2015 02:38 Ketara wrote: There's a lot of good stuff you can do with mathcrafting. IMO you have to keep in mind what you're trying to do though.
The way I use math when I'm suggesting something is like, I don't base my suggestion on the math, I use the math to confirm what I'm suggesting.
Which means you're going in with a certain bias to try and prove your point. You and I have had this discussion before - even if something is technically and mathematically "optimal", there are so many other, unquantifiable variables that require you to use "feel" (as mentioned before) to actually be individually successful. Having the numbers doesn't really do all that much for you.
I didn't read the rest of your post because I really don't care and if I wanted to, I could just go read the Lux thread in depth.
On March 25 2015 02:38 Ketara wrote:
I feel like I tend to get a bad rap on the forum about overvaluing math as a reasoning for doing this or that in the game, when the reality is I play hundreds and hundreds of Lux games, try all these things out, decide what feels right, and then just spend an hour doing quick math to try to confirm whether or not common sense was doing its job.
A big part of it is that you shove math down everyone's throat in so many situations, even in situations where you haven't played hundreds of games to test and practice with champions. It's not like you just get randomly persecuted for no reason.
MoonBear if you don't mind me asking, what is your education/what are your degrees? You frequently have such intelligent posts that I can't help but wonder sometimes.
Your knowledge truly floors me some days. I still remember when you whipped out a poem about Topology!
On March 25 2015 02:38 Ketara wrote: There's a lot of good stuff you can do with mathcrafting. IMO you have to keep in mind what you're trying to do though.
The way I use math when I'm suggesting something is like, I don't base my suggestion on the math, I use the math to confirm what I'm suggesting.
Which means you're going in with a certain bias to try and prove your point. You and I have had this discussion before - even if something is technically and mathematically "optimal", there are so many other, unquantifiable variables that require you to use "feel" (as mentioned before) to actually be individually successful. Having the numbers doesn't really do all that much for you.
I didn't read the rest of your post because I really don't care and if I wanted to, I could just go read the Lux thread in depth.
While I do believe that you can prove things mathematically, I think it's only possible if you include ALL of the variables. With theory crafting that I see in General Discussion or in the strategy forums I don't think that this is simply possible. There are too many unaccounted variables that aren't immediately visible to the people.
Of course this can transition into the whole analytic versus synthetic knowledge debate, but something tells me that bringing it up here isn't going to do a whole lot as I don't think anyone is actually going to read my post and care about it. Still however, one could argue if we can actually prove anything with logical statements or if they're just meaningless declarations which don't really tell us anything. Of course, one could also make the point that all knowledge is based off experience and there is no such thing as analytic knowledge. It's such a deep concept really.
On March 25 2015 01:30 Seuss wrote: A large part of the problem is the internet obsession with being right rather than being understanding. Discussions where people are trying to understand each others' positions and incorporate those viewpoints and arguments into their own thought processes are far, far more interesting and fruitful than combative, polarizing arguments. The whole "my math is correct therefore I'm correct" thing is in many ways just a facet with that pervasive problem.
It's funny you mention this cause it's something that irritates me in academia. There's a lot of focus on trying to prove yourself right. That unfortunately means a lot of sloppy mathematics and statistics, where authors assume mathematical rigour is all that is required. The end result is that you have studies where authors generate conclusions which they see as being true because the maths says so. So basically you have an attitude where you jam a lot of numbers into a machine and it spits out a 100% true unquestionable answer and that so long as you can get the machine to spit out the right number nothing else matters. This seems kinda harmless from the outside, but it's potentially terrifying when there are real world implications involved.
For example, in the field of psychology there's Fredrickson and Losada in Psychology which not only had a complete failure to properly understand how statistical tests or even basic maths work (0.54 is not less than 0.5 for example...) but also had a failure in the underlying data to begin with.
Or in economics there was the debacle about the economics paper published by Reinhart and Rogoff which claimed a country's debt levels directly affected it's economic prosperity. And this paper was used as justification for a lot of political and economic policy even though the paper was basically wrong.
I could rant on for a while but I'll stop here. I'm not really bothered to write on how this affects theorycrafting. I leave this for the reader to extrapolate accordingly.
It's funny you mention this now. My friend in his final year of Chem Eng was assigned a certain subject for his thesis which was a continuation of a Masters project from a year before. When he started doing it he eventually realized that the whole basis of the thesis was wrong but no one actually figured that out since the "math" around it made sense at a glance. He did this by just looking at the very basic definition the scenario and looking into the science behind that to find out the whole problem was incorrect. People just get too caught up in what they think should happen.
On March 25 2015 02:45 Frudgey wrote: MoonBear if you don't mind me asking, what is your education/what are your degrees? You frequently have such intelligent posts that I can't help but wonder sometimes.
Your knowledge truly floors me some days. I still remember when you whipped out a poem about Topology!
The being that created the universe obviously has knowledge in all spheres of life.
Growing up, I never really understood how people could find pro wrestling entertaining. This past weekend, I watched a bunch of clips, and holy crap was it fun to watch.
On March 25 2015 02:45 Frudgey wrote: MoonBear if you don't mind me asking, what is your education/what are your degrees? You frequently have such intelligent posts that I can't help but wonder sometimes.
Your knowledge truly floors me some days. I still remember when you whipped out a poem about Topology!
He's british. He automatically get +10 to his fancy stat
EPT
