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What you don't know about statistics - Page 5

Forum Index > SC2 General
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Cyberonic
Profile Blog Joined September 2011
Germany80 Posts
May 04 2012 07:36 GMT
#81
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%.


So what you say is you need statistics to prove statistics are used wrongly?
surfinbird1
Profile Joined September 2009
Germany999 Posts
May 04 2012 07:43 GMT
#82
Haven't learned anything of note. Thought this guy had something to add.
life of lively to live to life of full life thx to shield battery
RoberP
Profile Joined March 2011
United Kingdom101 Posts
May 04 2012 07:45 GMT
#83
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

Scumbag Drabzalver - rages at false statistics - makes up statistics in the first paragraph...
Rannasha
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
Netherlands2398 Posts
May 04 2012 07:52 GMT
#84
I was expecting some hard-core math in this thread when I saw the title. Or at least some math. I was disappointed to find that it was just a regurgitation of what should be blatantly obvious mixed with bad assumptions and lots of words linked together with shaky logic.
Such flammable little insects!
Surili
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United Kingdom1141 Posts
May 04 2012 07:52 GMT
#85
Firstly i would like to say that being polite, disliking swearing and poorly writting language is a GOOD thing. It keeps everyone civil, and makes text easily legible, thereby reducing misinformation.

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.


But I do have to say that THIS section, was a very good point, that people completely misunderstand.

Frankly i like any post that rejects that we have any real understanding of imbalance.
The world is ending what should we do about it?
GeneralSnoop
Profile Joined February 2011
United States142 Posts
May 04 2012 08:04 GMT
#86
good job mods. i'm glad you keep people like this out of our community. this guy calling TL pretentious.........
"I could probably live in trees" - LiquidJinro
Chenz
Profile Joined November 2010
Sweden1197 Posts
May 04 2012 08:13 GMT
#87
What the guy says is nothing new, but a lot of posters on this forum take the tlpd statistics for more than it is.It's true what he says, you can't judge balance by those statistics, especially not over the time period of 2 or even 3 months.
hypercube
Profile Joined April 2010
Hungary2735 Posts
May 04 2012 08:17 GMT
#88
The tone is annoying but all the points he makes are valid. And not all of them are obvious either.
"Sending people in rockets to other planets is a waste of money better spent on sending rockets into people on this planet."
Roxor9999
Profile Joined December 2011
Netherlands771 Posts
May 04 2012 08:35 GMT
#89
So basically that guy on reddit says something that we already know and he thinks that we don't know in a very arrogant and condescending tone. I don't see a reason for this thread to exists since these points have already been expresses multiple times in for say the win rates thread every month. The only reason I can think of is for him to feel smarter then everyone else which is a dick move.
Grohg
Profile Joined March 2011
United States243 Posts
May 04 2012 09:07 GMT
#90
I'm pretty sure anyone who actually cares about the stats understands the basics he is attempting to explain. Anyone who has taken a statistics course will learn about logical fallacies before almost anything else. It's wonderful to see that he thinks people who frequent TL are incapable of pointing out obvious errors. I'm pretty sure almost any thread with stats in it gets analyze critically by multiple people...in fact it's probably the first thing that happens when a long post with a lot of graphs and charts pops up. The only thing about it is that the people who really don't care post in the thread first saying how great the OP is without having read it all. Jump to page 3 or 4 in those threads and someone will be correcting all of the mistakes or critiquing the post. TL isn't full of idiots and I think the winrate charts are widely understood to simply be something interesting to see...not to balance a game off of. Of course there are people who open up TL and find threads to whine about balance in. These people have major confirmation bias and it should be expected to see it pop up in a thread where balance is potential up for discussion.

Keep your ego in check...your high horse is a lot shorter than you think. If you'd stop to look up you'd be able to see that there are plenty of people on your level and above you and your pretentious comments.
You can't spell slaughter without laughter.
halfies
Profile Joined November 2011
United Kingdom327 Posts
May 04 2012 09:17 GMT
#91
On May 04 2012 09:16 Ripper41 wrote:
Show nested quote +
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.

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.

so hes spelling pretentious wrong because hes pretentious? oh the irony.
he certainly doesnt seem to say anything wrong, but theres not much thats really enlightening either
straycat
Profile Blog Joined May 2011
230 Posts
May 04 2012 09:29 GMT
#92
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.
Chunhyang
Profile Joined December 2011
Bangladesh1389 Posts
May 04 2012 09:45 GMT
#93
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.


That most people already knew.
If you could reason with haters, there would be no haters. YGTMYFT
Cyberonic
Profile Blog Joined September 2011
Germany80 Posts
May 04 2012 09:55 GMT
#94
On May 04 2012 18:45 Chunhyang wrote:
Show nested quote +
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.


That most people already knew.


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?
KuKri
Profile Joined February 2012
Germany168 Posts
May 04 2012 10:06 GMT
#95
On May 04 2012 18:55 Cyberonic wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 04 2012 18:45 Chunhyang wrote:
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.


That most people already knew.


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?

Hey, Mr. Statistician, your degree in statistics should give you the answer.
XenoX101
Profile Joined February 2011
Australia729 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-05-04 11:33:29
May 04 2012 10:43 GMT
#96
On May 04 2012 18:55 Cyberonic wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 04 2012 18:45 Chunhyang wrote:
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.


That most people already knew.


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?


This is the biggest issue I have with people saying this is 'common knowledge', if people were/are already well aware of the specific issues with these graphs (i.e. not just for example the general idea of what a confounding variable is) then many of the stat-pointing balance whine posts would either A) not exist or B) not be taken as seriously by the majority. Yet people freely point to these graphs as a beacon of balance truth whenever they get posted and nobody says a word.

Also, if these issues were common knowledge, then why haven't statistic-based threads such as the 'win rate over game length' one addressed them specifically? This kind of scrutiny should be common practice in statistics threads, and if it isn't mentioned by the OP then posters should be critical of this kind of omission because of how integral it is to the meaningfulness of the statistics.

The winrates post is an even worse example of a statistics thread, created completely devoid of any statistical analysis whatsoever and with very few people being critical of the graph and none of them being critical of the thread. Why do simple undeveloped threads always get removed yet simple undeveloped graphs persist? Regardless of whether people were aware of what OP said or not, it really needs to start being put into practice if we want to have proper discussions about trends in SC2.

Cyberonic
Profile Blog Joined September 2011
Germany80 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-05-04 11:33:32
May 04 2012 11:33 GMT
#97
On May 04 2012 19:06 KuKri wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 04 2012 18:55 Cyberonic wrote:
On May 04 2012 18:45 Chunhyang wrote:
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.


That most people already knew.


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?

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


haha, good point. However note that OP/author are not the same!
Lord_Maximus
Profile Joined March 2012
Denmark46 Posts
May 04 2012 11:50 GMT
#98
Why are people in this thread badmouthing this? It's completely correct and it's something a lot of people get wrong. If "praetentious" and "reddit" weren't said no one would mind.
straycat
Profile Blog Joined May 2011
230 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-05-04 12:00:37
May 04 2012 12:00 GMT
#99
On May 04 2012 18:45 Chunhyang wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 04 2012 18:29 straycat wrote:
it was an interesting read with interesting perspectives.


That most people already knew.


1. Sigh.
2. QED.
C[h]ili
Profile Joined December 2011
Germany167 Posts
May 04 2012 12:06 GMT
#100
Oh well, that guy is writing a romane on how winrate statistics are biased because ability is an unobservable variable. That is hardly new, but we take a look on winratios nevertheless, because an important function of statistics is to facilitate discussion and communication.
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