Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Warboss Imbad Ironskull wrote:Now that is only one part of favoring luck over math and vice versa. For instance I once had a single remaining Fire Warrior in a squad armed with EMP grenades. His squad had been wiped out by a Defiler, the Warrior passed his Ld test and I (being a person who puts their faith in luck) used him to charge the Defiler in the hopes that his EMP grenade would get a 6 to pen and then destroy the Defiler and it did just that. Now someone who put their faith in math hammer probably woulden't have even tried to do that simply because the numbers say it woulden't have happened.

I would disagree with that. It might be unlikely but does he have anything better to be doing?

I said probably

Scott-S6 wrote:

Warboss Imbad Ironskull wrote:Now that is only one part of favoring luck over math and vice versa. For instance I once had a single remaining Fire Warrior in a squad armed with EMP grenades. His squad had been wiped out by a Defiler, the Warrior passed his Ld test and I (being a person who puts their faith in luck) used him to charge the Defiler in the hopes that his EMP grenade would get a 6 to pen and then destroy the Defiler and it did just that. Now someone who put their faith in math hammer probably woulden't have even tried to do that simply because the numbers say it woulden't have happened.

I would disagree with that. It might be unlikely but does he have anything better to be doing?

That's the point. It isn't something the numbers say wouldn't have happened. A quick probability check shows it had a 1/36 chance of happening (2.7%).

Depending on the relative value of the remaining FW and the as yet cherry Defiler, the EMP attack might be a very smart move.

OTOH, if saving the FW prevents the enemy winning on KPs, then attacking would be a foolish move even if you had a 97% chance of winning.

Warboss Imbad Ironskull wrote:But again this isn't about whether players use one more then the other. This is about which aspect individual players choose to trust more then the other.

This is only expressing a way of looking at the same thing. It is not two separate things.

You are perpetuating a false premise by sticking to this supposed choice. There is no choice involved. If you roll the dice and say "I hope I get result X" as opposed to "I roll the dice knowing I have Y chance of getting result X" there is absolutely no difference in what is going on.

Perhaps your question should have been: do you base your in-game decisions on math or do you just go with what your gut? Something like that.

I am not trying to brow beat you, it's just that the question doesn't really present the options I think you were trying to present.

Well then I'll take what you think under advisery

Fair enough!

Tacobake wrote:Well you, or we, if we are getting technical need to define what we consider to be "statistical significance". For leadership rolls I would consider ld10 to be a sure thing, for example. If I failed that, that is an outlier. Now in the case of ld9 I have a... 75% chance to pass I would not necessarly consider failing that to be an outlier. I would then go farther and say if my Warlocks are only ld8 that is a hidrance to my Guardian squads unless they have an Avatar nearby.

That's not what statistical significance is. Statistical significance is the point at which you can say a relationship exists between two different variables as determined by a desired confidence interval where the confidence interval is essentially the number of possible, repeated results you expect to lie outside the parameters of a constructed data set.

You could construct a table that dealt with the performance of various pieces based upon turn number, proximity to other units, and army composition, which would basically be Sabermetrics for Warhammer. But you can't simply state that a certain leadership score is statistically significant as, for the purposes of this conversation statistical significance would be the method you would use to establish that a relationshi pexisted between observed dice rolls and calculated probability, which would involve doing something like a difference of means test against the expected outcome and the observed outcome for all dice rolls in a given game.

Tacobake wrote:
We can define an outlier is being a result that you discard because it is considered to be caused by some error. 25% or 33% (one standard deviation) chance of something happening, you have a good chance of seeing that within a few dice rolls that is not really an outlier. Even a 2+ has a 15% chance to fail, unlike say a d10 system where a 2+ would have a 10% chance fail more similiar to say a ld10 roll on 2D6.

First, standard deviation isn't always 33%. That only aplies to normal bell curves, which have nothing to do with calculated probability for rolling a die, or set dice.

Second, you're comparing percentages incorrectly. Standard deviation represents the number of observed results that lie within a certain region with respect to the observed mean, It would apply to a dat set like the one I described in my previous post. It has nothing to with the calculated probability of a give die coming up 6 in one roll.

Yup. That's why I try to be scrupulous when running the numbers and say what can be reasonably expected, which is to say what can be reasonably expected given the number of dice to be rolled...

Warboss Imbad Ironskull wrote:
And what sebster and a few others have said is that there is no way you could choose to put your faith behind either the numbers or luck that you have to trust both equally. Beings as those people who are saying that are not every single person who plays the game and has free choice this is wrong. People can very easily choose to favor one aspect over the other in fact multiple members in this thread have done just that as is shown by the 97 voters.

Well, no, what the poll says is that 97 people were able to choose between what they think is luck, and what they think is math hammer. What Sebster and others said is that you can't choose one or ther other because probability calculations are not especially distinct from luck; ie. you can still be lucky to have an especially probable roll turn out the way you expected it to at a given time.

The larger point, and this doesn't just apply to Warhammer, is that most people don't really understand probability or statistics to an extent that allows them to say that they choose between the two. Many of the people in this thread,yourself included, have attributed to luck what should actually be attributed to rudimentary calculations of probability.

A good example of going on 'luck' would be any high risk move with a low probability of success made in lieu of another low risk move with a high probability of success that would achieve the same general goal.

Warboss Imbad Ironskull wrote:
@Sebster: I saw the same response repeatidly from someone on another thread concerning intelligence and he was considered a troll for it. Just because you do not consider the answers given as actual answers does not mean that the question hasen't in fact been answered. The players said in various ways that they put their faith in luck over math it's as simple as that.

Its never as simple as that, because words in the English language have many varying meanings, and the accepted proper ones are almost never those that are colloquially used. What people say is not always what they think they mean.

Warboss Imbad Ironskull wrote:
Now what you are arguing against is the use of something vs having faith in it which isn't what this post is about. While both aspects may be present in the game (to which no one is arguing against) and most of the time people use a little bit of both that does not mean that they cannot favor one over the other or put their faith in one over the other.

If you favor one over the other, which you can if you make choices like the one I outlined above, then you are placing faith in one option and not the other.

Warboss Imbad Ironskull wrote:
This thread is asking which do you prefer to trust etc.

Note that faith and trust are closely related words, so you basically just said this thread is about what you choose to place faith in.

dogma wrote:

Warboss Imbad Ironskull wrote:
This thread is asking which do you prefer to trust etc.

Note that faith and trust are closely related words, so you basically just said this thread is about what you choose to place faith in.

Let me think of the best way to put this.....EXACTLY!!!.
That is what I have been saying this entire time because that is point in fact what this thread is about. But despite making it perfectly clear on a number of occasions what the thread is about some people seem to think that it's about something entirely differant and go off onto these soapbox discussions when all I want to know is how many people put faith into one aspect or another.

People have the ability to choose what they put faith in millions do it every day with religion. You think that the two points can't be split into choices. Well that is your opinion based off of your interpretation of them NOT a factual statement. You and others may think the question and choices needs to be redone because they don't fit with your interpretation of the subjects. Well your interpretation isn't everyones so the question and choices are just fine the way they are based off of my interpretation and the interpretations of the 100 so people who answered the poll.

Warboss Imbad Ironskull wrote:
People have the ability to choose what they put faith in millions do it every day with religion. You think that the two points can't be split into choices. Well that is your opinion based off of your interpretation of them NOT a factual statement.

Actually, that's not what I said. I said that most people in this thread don't appear to understand probability, and so cannot correctly distinguish it from luck. I then provided an example of making a choice according to luck, and probably should have specifically indicated that in order to know you were proceeding on belief in luck you would have to actually understand the probability of your choice being correct. Otherwise, as Sebster said, you aren't so much playing the game as randomly moving pieces around the board.

Warboss Imbad Ironskull wrote:
You and others may think the question and choices needs to be redone because they don't fit with your interpretation of the subjects. Well your interpretation isn't everyones so the question and choices are just fine the way they are based off of my interpretation and the interpretations of the 100 so people who answered the poll.

My interpretation has the advantage of being correct according to the scientific study of probability and the concept of luck as a logical fallacy.

Ok then you go ahead and provide an entire thread for those who actually care that explains every little exact detail of that scientific study including its authenticity as well as proof that it was made by a prominant scientific foundation and not some highschool science teacher (no offence to any actual science teachers reading this you guys rock).

In the mean time I'm going to go back to the thread where people with common sense know that not everything can be explained by science and that science itself is most certainly not always correct. I'm also going to ignore you

Have a nice night.

Warboss Imbad Ironskull wrote:Ok then you go ahead and provide an entire thread for those who actually care that explains every little exact detail of that scientific study including its authenticity as well as proof that it was made by a prominant scientific foundation and not some highschool science teacher (no offence to any actual science teachers reading this you guys rock).

What scientific study? its simple mathematics. If you have a six-sided, unbiased die then all six sides have an equal chance of coming up given a non-manipulative roller (basically someone who isn't cheating).

Also, the prominence of a person producing a study is irrelevant. If the study produces sound results, then it produces sound results. That's really the end of it.

Warboss Imbad Ironskull wrote:
In the mean time I'm going to go back to the thread where people with common sense know that not everything can be explained by science and that science itself is most certainly not always correct. I'm also going to ignore you

Everything with a material cause (so, everything) can be explained by science given sufficient time. Not everything has been explained by science, but this particular thing has bee. Pretty much exhaustively.

What you're doing is operating under the luck fallacy by assuming that probability must play out identically for all possible actors at all possible times, which is not what probability is about.

I also find it pretty amusing that you seem to believe there is a thing called "common sense" that isn't simply "what I believe".

Personally I find it amusing that Warboss Imbad Ironskull responds to dogma citing the scientific study of probability by demanding dogma cite "that scientific study of probability" and prove its "authenticity"...

Math, how does that work?

Logician 1, Tattoo Artist 0.

"never tell me the odds"

No matter how much fuzzy math you calculate, there will be times where you will whiff entire assaults, shake vehicles to no end, and fail every save called.

Othertimes your troops can do no wrong, you blow every vehicle to kingdom com, and your +5 saves are like +2.

dogma wrote:My interpretation has the advantage of being correct according to the scientific study of probability and the concept of luck as a logical fallacy.

No, luck is not logical, nor should it be studied by those who are.

Psyker_9er wrote:No, luck is not logical, nor should it be studied by those who are.

It burns!

I fully use mathammer, but I think some people attribute more power to it than it has.

Certainly you use it to determine your chances of success, and the viability of choices.

However, the statistics are only actually going to "average out" over a far larger sample size than the dice offer.

Furthermore, just because you roll an equal number of each facing of the dice, does not mean your luck is equal. If you roll 1s when you need 6s and 6s when you need 1s, it doesn't matter if you roll exactly the same number of each facing.

Luck is certainly a factor. Therefore, Mathammer is simply a tool for determining risk/reward. Its the risk/reward balance that I really watch when playing.

One other thing I'll add is that in my experience, chance favors the bold. 40k games have relatively few turns. If you don't decide to take a chance early on, either you won't put yourself in a position to win, or your opponent will get the initiative. Its pretty important to come up with an aggressive plan that has a high reward, and a safer backup plan if the dice are not with you.

I try to make sure that when the dice don't go my way and the expected outcome is not realized, that it doesn't leave me completely open. Then again, sometimes those 16.7% chances are all you have. I'll still take the 16.7% chance if the other option is worse.

Nurglitch wrote:

Psyker_9er wrote:No, luck is not logical, nor should it be studied by those who are.

It burns!

Does that mean teams are tied now?
Logicians 1, Tattoo Artist/Freaks 1.

(I added the "/Freaks", dont want to leave behind any one who is not a tatoo artists or any who lack tattoos.)

I'm sorry I didn't know that a site dedicated to people who play with miniatures had so many people in it who like to stereotype.

Psyker_9er:

More like People who know math 1, People who don't know math -1.

There are four categories of knowledge. There's the people that know that they know. Then there are the people that know that they don't know. Then there are the people that don't know that they know. Finally, and your comment on logic and its applicability to luck puts you firmly in this one, there are people that don't know they don't know. The people in the second two categories are why casinos are big business....

Warboss Imbad Ironskull wrote:I'm sorry I didn't know that a site dedicated to people who play with miniatures had so many people in it who like to stereotype.

Who, me?

I'm just having fun... That is what I do best




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Nurglitch wrote:Psyker_9er:

More like People who know math 1, People who don't know math -1.

There are four categories of knowledge. There's the people that know that they know. Then there are the people that know that they don't know. Then there are the people that don't know that they know. Finally, and your comment on logic and its applicability to luck puts you firmly in this one, there are people that don't know they don't know. The people in the second two categories are why casinos are big business....

tsk tsk tsk... No need to get personal.

If you want to live inside the confines of your little box, that is awesome. I wont stop you, and I want you to be happy with your life. Honestly.

I personally rejected this so called reality, and substituted my own, long ago. This does not make me ignorant nor does it mean I am an idiot who does not know I am ignorant. Does it mean I should be locked away in a nut house? Maybe someday I might retire there, but I wont let closed minded people, wrapped up in laws and dogmas, make the decision to categorize me as an unknowing fool.

Rest assuredly Nurglitch, my decision to be this way, was an educated decision...

thehod wrote:No matter how much fuzzy math you calculate, there will be times where you will whiff entire assaults, shake vehicles to no end, and fail every save called.

For god's sake, hahahaha, we have been saying, over and again, that math hammer tells you these events WILL happen!!!!!!!!*%!T^(!*&$%)*!%(!$%)^*(!

How is this concept so hard to fathom? Math hammer tells you ALL possible outcomes of a certain situation, even the remotely possible and how often they are likely to occur.

Trusting in luck doesn't make you MORE likely to get the 1 in 100 result.

This is like debating with a wall or something (not you particularly thehod, just a large portion of this thread in general). How does this not sink in? Math hammer is not JUST averages, it is every single possible outcome and the likelihood of these events occurring.

OK, screw it. I give up. If it isn't clear then is just isn't clear. Keep playing the game in utter ignorance being dumbfounded as to why things occur. Ignorance is bliss I suppose.

Sorry if I seem abrasive as I am not trying to insult anyone but this feels like trying to argue why the earth is not flat with people who keep insisting that it is.

Psyker_9er wrote:
No, luck is not logical...

That's why its called the luck fallacy.

Imo, i think that luck should be extended to include personal preference. there are times when you dont want to here the numbers and just want to take the weird unit in your list like sniper teams or charge a carnafix with fire warriors just to watch them die.

gosh
that would be funny wouldent it...

Psyker_9er wrote:

Warboss Imbad Ironskull wrote:I'm sorry I didn't know that a site dedicated to people who play with miniatures had so many people in it who like to stereotype.

Who, me?

I'm just having fun... That is what I do best




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Nurglitch wrote:Psyker_9er:

More like People who know math 1, People who don't know math -1.

There are four categories of knowledge. There's the people that know that they know. Then there are the people that know that they don't know. Then there are the people that don't know that they know. Finally, and your comment on logic and its applicability to luck puts you firmly in this one, there are people that don't know they don't know. The people in the second two categories are why casinos are big business....

tsk tsk tsk... No need to get personal.

If you want to live inside the confines of your little box, that is awesome. I wont stop you, and I want you to be happy with your life. Honestly.

I personally rejected this so called reality, and substituted my own, long ago. This does not make me ignorant nor does it mean I am an idiot who does not know I am ignorant. Does it mean I should be locked away in a nut house? Maybe someday I might retire there, but I wont let closed minded people, wrapped up in laws and dogmas, make the decision to categorize me as an unknowing fool.

Rest assuredly Nurglitch, my decision to be this way, was an educated decision...

Ya know, for reasons I really can't explain I like this entire post. I don't really know why.

And no I wasen't referancing you earlier

I don't build lists by what I know works... and numbers aren't my stronghold.

Chance.

dogma wrote:

Psyker_9er wrote:
No, luck is not logical...

That's why its called the luck fallacy.

If you are going to quote me, or any one for that matter, please do not cut the quote off in mid sentence simply to try and justify your own lack of words.

I too can speak and read your seemingly preferred language of mathematics. Every time you, or any one else in this thread, go off on a tangent using big fancy math words, I read you loud and clear... Big words and fancy degrees do not scare me, nor am I intimidated by a bunch of 40 year old virgins sitting in a room trying to write an equation to prove there is an infinite amount of prime numbers.

I understand your language, please try and understand my language. The language of dreamers.
My original statement, that I am about to quote in its entirety, is very much indeed a true statement.

Psyker_9er wrote:No, luck is not logical, nor should it be studied by those who are.

Luck is in no way logical. The very concept of luck is not logical. Therefore, people with dogmatic minds, fed intravenously with other people's ideals of reality, are not qualified to study it's effects. There is not an equation for it, there is not a squareroot, nor is there any way to measure it's circumference. These principles from the black and white world of math are useless here in the land of luck. Logic will not save you on this side of the looking glass, nor will college degrees protect you from your own entropy.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
My hysterical wife would like to add something:

"I hate math... Finding 'X' is really only important if you are going to be a pirate!"


AAaaRRRrrGGG ya land loving scurvey dogs!!!! AAARRRRgg I say!!

Psyker_9er wrote:
If you are going to quote me, or any one for that matter, please do not cut the quote off in mid sentence simply to try and justify your own lack of words.

That was the only part of that sentence worth quoting and, because it was a compound sentence, I was not acting outside courtesy by quoting only the part I was interested in. I even used the ellipsis to indicate that more was written, so it isn't as though I was attempting to be misleading.

Psyker_9er wrote:
I too can speak and read your seemingly preferred language of mathematics. Every time you, or any one else in this thread, go off on a tangent using big fancy math words, I read you loud and clear... Big words and fancy degrees do not scare me, nor am I intimidated by a bunch of 40 year old virgins sitting in a room trying to write an equation to prove there is an infinite amount of prime numbers.

That's nice. I didn't claim that you couldn't understand the words I was using.

Also, don't use the old "40-year-old virgin" joke. You don't know me from Adam, and everyone here knows that as well. We all also know that simply playing war games, or posting on a message board about them, doesn't tell us anything about anyone's sex life.

Psyker_9er wrote:
I understand your language, please try and understand my language. The language of dreamers.
My original statement, that I am about to quote in its entirety, is very much indeed a true statement.

Psyker_9er wrote:
No, luck is not logical, nor should it be studied by those who are.

Luck is in no way logical. The very concept of luck is not logical.

Again, that's why its called "the luck fallacy" in logic. Though, if you could demonstrate a material sort of luck, then yeah, it would have a perfectly valid place in logical argument. Which is why the luck fallacy is an informal fallacy.

Honestly, it doesn't really seem like you have any idea regarding what you're talking about. If you did, then you wouldn't have even posted this little rant, because I didn't actually disagree with you in any explicit sense.

Psyker_9er wrote:
Therefore, people with dogmatic minds, fed intravenously with other people's ideals of reality, are not qualified to study it's effects. There is not an equation for it, there is not a squareroot, nor is there any way to measure it's circumference.

Not yet, anyway. Though it should be pretty easy to demonstrate luck with statistics by showing that a given person naturally achieves outlying results despite the absence of any other discernible cause.

I'd also ask you, the person who desires to be 'unboxed' (while proceeding to box himself with words like 'dreamer') not to place others in 'boxes' because they use mathematical terminology, or talk about probability and logic. Let's be honest, all you're really doing is trying to make yourself feel like you've somehow freed your mind, when in reality you just riffed the collective Beat Generation.

Psyker_9er wrote:
These principles from the black and white world of math are useless here in the land of luck. Logic will not save you on this side of the looking glass, nor will college degrees protect you from your own entropy.

Well duh, no one ever said that college degrees would protect anyone from entropy. Why would anyone even make that argument. They're just pieces of paper that denote social concepts, they don't stave off death.

Either way, all you're saying here is "I believe in luck". And that's fine, but as many other people here have already argued, luck and probability aren't mutually exclusive ideas. Luck is a personalized concept, probability is a generalized one. Hell, as I already said, its even theoretically possible to demonstrate, statistically, that one particular person is unusually lucky when rolling dice.

Easily one of the most interesting/entertaining threads of late.
Salute all.