What you don't know about statistics - Page 5

On May 04 2012 15:34 arbitrageur wrote:
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%.

99% of the time this deals with winrates and balance, 99% of the people commenting on it have no clue how to interpret these numbers

On May 04 2012 09:00 Cyberonic wrote:
- Fallacy: advantages at certain times of matchups expressed in graphs

There are also a lot of graphs posted which supposedly indicate that some races may have an advantage at certain matchups. Oh boy do people misread what these graphs mean. Take this bad boy.

A naïve way to read it would simply be 'Hmm, Z has an early game advantage in ZvP, then it becomes about even, then P has a slight advantage up to the end, then Z again.', wrong; look closely, what does the graph actually say, it says this:
IF a ZvP game ends in the 0-5 minute range, the chance is 60% it ends in Z's favour.
Now the 'if' is so bloody important here, the game needn't end. Now, everyone of course realizes that that part is caused by early pools. Does Zerg really have a large advantage at that point? Can Zerg force a win at that point if they want to, are early pools overpowered? No, not at all, so what is going on?

Imagine a ZvP, Z decides to 7pool, P doesn't scout soon enough, lings get in, kill every probe, traalalala, P GG's. Game over in the first 5 minutes in Z's favour.
Okay, imagine a ZvP, Z decides to 7pool, P scouts in time, gets his wall up, damn, Z's like 'fuck man, shouldn't have done that'. But not necesarily GG's unless IdrA, the game goes on, Z however plays at such a disadvantage that in the next 5-10 minutes surely P will claim his victory unless P messes up.

See the fallacy? That Z has that 'early game advantage' doesn't mean that Z is more powerful or that 7pools are too powerful, it just means that IF the game immediately ends due to a 7pool it will most likely be in Z's favour. If the 7pool fails, the game doesn't end at that point, Z will most likely stay in the game and play from a significant disadvantage to lose later.

It is a grave statistical error of the magnitude of interpreting 'If a 8 year old child dies, the chance is the greatest he dies from a car swoop' as 'It is very likely 8 year old children die from car swoops'.

The graph doesn't even say how likely it is that the game ends at certain intervals. For all you it's far more likely for P to win in the late game than in the mid game, even though the graph indicates that if the game ends in the late game, the chance is higher that Z takes it. And even so, that still says nothing about advantages of races at certain times. One would assume that if a race is likely to win at time X, that race enjoys an advantage slightly before that time, no?

What would be far more intersting, though also not conclusive, would be a graph which outlines 'How large was the percentage of Z wins in ZvP at each interval', which is fundamentally different from 'at each interval, if the game ends, how often does it end into Z's favour in ZvP'. My bet is that because 7pools are actually quite rare, it would not at all show the huge spike for Z in the early game.

On May 04 2012 09:16 Ripper41 wrote:

Well he explains...
it's worse, he spelled it that way intentionally. still, he makes some good points in the substance of what he says.

On May 04 2012 18:29 straycat wrote:
Please, could you all stop being so insulted (wrongly insulted at that, since it was aimed at redditors in the first place) and actually try to read it? Contrary to what many have posted in their attempts to bring some of the hurt from their bleeding egos back to the proxied OP, it was an interesting read with interesting perspectives.

On May 04 2012 18:45 Chunhyang wrote:


That most people already knew.

On May 04 2012 18:55 Cyberonic wrote:


If that was true, why would there be so many posts containing balance whine with "supporting" their viewpoints by exactly the type of graphs criticized?

On May 04 2012 18:55 Cyberonic wrote:


If that was true, why would there be so many posts containing balance whine with "supporting" their viewpoints by exactly the type of graphs criticized?

On May 04 2012 19:06 KuKri wrote:

Hey, Mr. Statistician, your degree in statistics should give you the answer.

On May 04 2012 18:45 Chunhyang wrote:


That most people already knew.