1/1,000 chance and having to enter 1,000 different giveaways to win/have the ability to win 1 sounds good on paper but probability doesn't work like that. Probability is reset every time. Every chance is 1/1,000. Probability doesn't care how many times you have entered giveaways. Every time is a 1/1,000 (in the example i am saying)
Humans have a very very bad time seeing probability for how it actually is. We take incredible training to break through the barrier our brains put in place to see patterns in everything.
Dunno if that made sense. 24+ hours awake and too much caffeine can make me talk shit.
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Flip a fair coin 20 times, counting tails. The EXPECTED VALUE is 10 tails, but there is a chance you might get less tails, maybe even zero of them, or maybe 20. Expected values give "what you are aiming at", but make no guarantee.
If everybody entered 1000 giveaways with 1000 entries each... some lucky folks would get 3, 4 or even more games; many would get 0. But the AVERAGE would certainly be 1 game per person -- that is what "estimated value" measures. To continue your calculation, here is a table that gives the probability Pr(N) of winning exactly N times in this situation:
Pr(0)=36.77%
Pr(1)=36.81%
Pr(2)=18.40%
Pr(3)=6.13%
Pr(4)=1.53%
Pr(5)=0.30%
Pr(6)=0.05%
Pr(7+)<0.01%
So, you see, about 36.77% of the folks would get 0 games; about 36.8% get 1, and so on. On average, people get 0(0.3677)+1(0.3681)+2(0.1840)+3(0.0613)+...=1 game each, as expected!
To summarize, the fact that you are below your ESTIMATED # OF WINS reveals you have been unlucky so far (you would be one of those 36.7% unlucky ones in this example). But, hey, it has to happen to many of us... :(
Cheers!
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Probability isn't evil, but it helps to first ensure you will win before you actually do. Since there's no way of doing that on this site, it follows that you shouldn't bother with it.
And that's why we call it a zoo! Unless it's a farm.
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As people have noted: the estimated wins doesn't have anything to do with probability.
The estimated wins across the whole site will be exactly the same number as the amount of games that have been given away.
So basically, both the estimated wins counter and your probability calculations are correct. They simply are different things.
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First off, you probably want to go through this: Probability.
Although, to be honest, if you hadn't learnt of probability and statistics before now, I guess going through a wiki page won't help you much.
I recently got my estimated wins to 1.
And I'm assuming that it does it like this:
Probability of winning a giveaway being 1/1000 (on average as an example)
So if I enter 1000 giveaways, probability dictates I'd get (1/1000)x1000=1 win, which is what my estimated wins is around now.
Except I didn't. PROBABILITY IS A LIAR! ALL THAT MATH HURT MY SOUL.
Ahem...yeah. So then I went about it the other way.
Probability of me LOSING a giveaway is 999/1000 (again an average example).
This time, if I enter 1000 giveaways, probability that I'd lose would be (999/1000)x(999/1000)x(999/1000)x..so on, 1000 times
meaning (999/1000)^1000=0.367695425 meaning I'd approximately have a 37% chance of losing. What's going on?! :O
One side says I should've won by now, the other says I can still lose.
I pulled the second one to extremes, and found that after about ~4700 entries, your probability of losing goes below 1%, the odds start looking good!
Then I remembered about some poor dude who has entered 11000 giveaways, and hasn't won anything yet. I checked the probability of that happening, and... the probability of THAT is 0.001%. So what is going on there?! :O
Oh yeah, and while I'm here, I might as well make it worth your while. Hit me up if anyone wants 75% off Earth 2160!
TL;DR: Mathering (and my estimated wins) say I should've gotten 1.66 games (166% probability of winning) by now. A different sort of mathering says there's still a 30% chance for me to not have any win.
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