Quote Originally Posted by emblasochist View Post
To this end, I will record two sample sizes of 100 gathers each, one with a stated success rate of 83% success and one with a stated 81% success rate. I'll record only the nodes with + gathering yield, no bonus or + gathering attempts, but, before I do so, I believe that the stated percentages are pretty reasonable estimates...
I work with random numbers all the time. I have to read reports on random numbers and determine if they follow given percentages "correctly" or not. That being said, 100 samples is not even close to being a significant sample size. At an 83% success rate, I would not be surprised at all if you get 65 successes or 95 successes. If you want to compare 81% to 83% for accuracy, then I'd say that you would need over ten thousand samples (each), and that's still on the low side. I'm completely serious. And no, I don't expect anyone to do this.

The deviation is greater than you think, and yes, it annoys me too.