What you don't know about statistics - Page 4

Bagration

United States18282 Posts

May 04 2012 03:55 GMT

#61

He's quite the controversial character on r/sc as well, I've seen quite a few posts by him that buried by downvotes. He brings up a few good points, though it is interesting to see how he bears significant ill-will towards TL.

pOnarreT

155 Posts

May 04 2012 03:59 GMT

#62

On May 04 2012 12:41 figq wrote:

Show nested quote +

I'm sure that's why he originally named his thread "What reddit does not understand about statistics" and posted it on reddit. Clearly all to do with TL.

He got you

Natespank

Canada449 Posts

May 04 2012 04:00 GMT

#63

He makes good points, it's foolish to ignore a rude person's good ideas (though fine to abuse him for it).

Serpico

4285 Posts

May 04 2012 04:02 GMT

#64

On May 04 2012 12:55 Bagration wrote:
He's quite the controversial character on r/sc as well, I've seen quite a few posts by him that buried by downvotes. He brings up a few good points, though it is interesting to see how he bears significant ill-will towards TL.

All the "this isn't reddit/4chan" stuff I've seen here at times is a bit sanctimonious. When you see how many people have to get warned/banned all the time you realize TL isn't some shining center for civility.

BraneSC2

United States123 Posts

May 04 2012 04:09 GMT

#65

I love the "99%" statistic provided, then the post goes on to talk about fallacies. It's humorously ironic, especially when the post is about statistics and the first one provided is a blatant lie.

Jumbled

1543 Posts

May 04 2012 04:15 GMT

#66

Most of his objections are just basic statistical limitations that are well-known on TL, and are usually brought up in any related thread. Inevitably, there will always be some ignorant posters who don't know about them and draw false conclusions, but they usually get deservedly panned.

His claim that people are more likely to get away with a rubbish post if it's nicely formatted does have some credence, but it's hardly a damning indictment.

TheRealDudeMan

United States213 Posts

May 04 2012 04:18 GMT

#67

The only thing I find stupid is that he has no conclusion to how statistics can be used or what should be used. It just seems to me like he refutes any kind of information just to refute it. Maybe he is just tired of people basing balance off of win rates which is flimsy by itself to say the least. I don't see anything positive or informative about this.

AKomrade

United States582 Posts

May 04 2012 04:25 GMT

#68

OP is pretty freaking right. TL is swamped by ridiculous statistics that mean next to nothing. Every week there is some new "mathematical study" that claims that race X is op/up because of a number that is nearly irrelevant to the game (like the analysis of mining per race which found T has an advantage of .5 minerals over a minute or something).

There is too much overanalysis done with very little understanding of the way the game operates and the evidence generated from these experiments just fuels more race wars than solving anything. It isn't exclusive to TL however, and to be honest, if you're going to put some statistics you found anywhere, it'd be here, if for no other reason than the quality of the posters and admins relative to other sites.

The TLPD stats too are just a summary of a wide range of talent across many games and many people treat them like they are the EXACT evaluation of ability and "race imbalance" when it is much more subtle than just simply who wins more. Its surprising how often people focus on the mathematical parts of Starcraft as rationalization for wins/losses when a good part of the game is based on things you can't measure like positioning, star sense, psychological advantages, etc. Cost effectiveness is a part of the game, obviously, but its blown so horribly out of proportion.

Actually, a lot of this post is really reasonable and makes quite a bit of sense to me. Even his attitude is understandable when you read the comments on posts in the strategy forums and LR posts. Why are people so pissed? He isn't even really attacking TL.

wuhan_clan

United States5609 Posts

May 04 2012 04:55 GMT

#69

Why do people even bother to respond if they don't even read the entire OP? This is is a problem rampant in forums anywhere on the internet, not just TL or Reddit.

On topic, the only real logical conclusion you can come to from the win/rate charts is this. If I select a random PvZ game from last month, the probability of selecting a game where P wins is x%, based on the chart (i don't know what it actually is, havent looked at the latest charts).
Arguments can be made that certain win/loss rates might be some indication of balance but with so many factors involved (and no raw data), any kind of statistical analysis is pointless.

Edit: win/loss rate can be used to identify a POSSIBILITY of an imbalance in a certain matchup but the actual win/loss rate stat is not evidence of any imbalance.

MustNotSleep

United States8 Posts

May 04 2012 05:30 GMT

#70

The fallacy of Drabzalvers intelligence; he stumbles through his logic like a dog. Moving sloppily from one point to the next, he is so stuck in his narrow minded thinking that he can only focus on concepts as situations. While I understand relativism is a wonderful argument Drabzalver , it also holds many fallacies of its own. Your arguments are coincidental; they are so dependent on the situation at hand. While you are attempting to thwart a scientific study, you don’t realize that you’re only exemplifying stupidity by having an online epiphany involving the fundamental logic that a chimp involves stacking blocks. Drabzalver, where do you get off? The fact that your post has even made it into the TL community speaks loudly that others feel the same as you. Why I must not know; is it not obvious that these studies must take place? Even if you want to bring all of your player and race balances into the numbers, are statistics not necessary in performing formal calculations of balance?
MustNotSleep

Schnullerbacke13

Germany1199 Posts

May 04 2012 05:49 GMT

#71

he's right. however same as in politics, the public opinion enjoys simplified thinking and therefore bashes him :D

cristo1122

Australia505 Posts

May 04 2012 06:04 GMT

#72

relevent ideas and well formed badly presented with a lack of emotional detachment that this sort of matter requires (imo ofc). TBH havent actually looked graphs on win rates at all but to get an idea what he is talking about. The data itself imo is incomplete and is not modified to take into account different variables that would have an impact on the result. For example we could say that korean players at MLG performed less optimal than foriegnors as they had a significantlly lower win rate than occurs when they are at a GSL event however this over view of the win rate does not take into the many variables that would impact on said winrate such as jet-lag, 1st set win rate (btw interesting bit of triva is that the player who gets to 2 wins in the OSL will win overall), degree that they have had to practise due to travel, fact that they are not sleeping their regular beds even. Though hese examples are somewat strange it highlights the fact that the winrate of a player and or a race (which is a sample of players) is not that usefull considering it dosent take into account the effects of lots of other impacts that could effect the outcome. That is why for any sort of deep analyisis they are sub-optimal as they do not take into account maps, players, 1st set wins, recent patch changes, etc. For a general sort of overview they are interesting but they are not representitive of true balance.

For example medusa (this taken from liquidpedia) The original map was very difficult for Terran against Protoss; though the statistics do not appear terribly imbalanced at first glance (39-18 in favor of Protoss), they become much more damning once you realize that Flash went 7-1 against Protoss on the map, without which the statistics reduce to a dismal 38-11.

if one were to take the overall winrate and use to form a complex argument about the balance on this map it would not take into account flash's skill (which btw is ridiculous) thus one can be given a false impression on the balance on the map as significant portion of the T wins are from a single player

Torte de Lini

Germany38463 Posts

May 04 2012 06:15 GMT

#73

This is basic statistics 101 in university. He's not saying anything new, just assuming we're unqualified to understand the underlining meanings of stats.

Jerubaal

United States7684 Posts

May 04 2012 06:22 GMT

#74

There are no facts, only interpretations.

HyunA

Romania362 Posts

May 04 2012 06:29 GMT

#75

unfortunately, i aggree with the dude from reddit.

arbitrageur

Australia1202 Posts

May 04 2012 06:34 GMT

#76

LMAO.

A criticism of the use of statistics with PURE WORDS. If this was an assignment topic in a statistics subject at university you would get 0%.

sandg

Australia123 Posts

May 04 2012 07:05 GMT

#77

What I don't know about statistics? Who's being pretentious here lmao...

I'm pretty sure when people see TLPD winrates they don't instantly assume balances/imbalances and take it as gospel, and I'm pretty sure that blizzard doesn't balance the game around statistics gathered from the pro-level.

Cyx.

Canada806 Posts

May 04 2012 07:07 GMT

#78

So despite all the hate going on in this thread, I see people making points every single month in the TLPD Winrates thread over and over and over that use some of the fallacies he listed as arguments. And he's right - everything he warned against is something that you shouldn't do if you're trying to interpret stats in a meaningful way. If everyone read this before they commented on winrates we'd be a better place. Fuck everyone hating on Reddit.

SeaSwift

Scotland4486 Posts

May 04 2012 07:16 GMT

#79

I read his thing on reddit, and I read his "credentials".

http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/t5izg/what_reddit_does_not_understand_about_statistics/c4js5pq?context=3

There they are, if anyone wants to read them. Basically, he's just a uni drop out who was bad at stats.

oZe

Sweden492 Posts

May 04 2012 07:31 GMT

#80

On May 04 2012 09:09 halfies wrote:
praetentious?
really?
i hope that how he spelt it too, because it would be really funny if he wrote this much about people being pretentious and used big words that he couldn't even spell.

You don't even begin a sentence with a capitalized letter, made even more fun by the fact that it was "I". Thereby forfeiting all rights to complain about spelling. Also if you have a problem with his argument, attack his argument.

In American English, spelt means exclusively a hardy wheat grown mostly in Europe, and the verb spell makes spelled in its past-tense and past-participial forms.

Ps. I put my money on you being the creator of the bad boy ^^

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