Probability amiss

[AwwWhatThe]

So I got a 96-98% chance of gathering on this node, and uhh, 3 out of 4 missed or 5 out of 6.

Does this happen to anyone else?? Ive gone ballistic because I can go 10 out of 20 pulls with an 82 or greater chance of pulling...

Let's not even bring up crafting here, I want my keyboard to be how it is for a few more days!

[RaineAmorie]

It's all RNG, I've hit every swing on 40% and missed every swing at 98%.

At least it's not karma sensitive...

[Bombast]

Welcome to Law of Large Numbers. The larger the number of test performed, the closer to the probable average you get.



Simply put, 4 is a pretty bad sample size.

[Wadoka]

The thing about Probability... is you only approach true alignment with the opportunity percent, as the sample size goes to Infinity.

So in other words over very short runs it's very easy to have short runs of very bad luck and short runs of very good luck.

But I'd bet you don't remember the times a 25% chance hit on six attempts in a row

[dspguy]

The probability is just fine. You can't look at it from "what happened this time" or "the last time."

When I was working on one of my luminary tools, I made a LOT of HQ felt. I used a macro that (according to the crafting simulator) should have resulted in 90% HQs. After the first 10, I was 10/10. After 100 I was 96/100. After 300, I was 289/300. After 500, I was 481/500 (90.5%). Just like the graph Bombast posted, as the sample size gets bigger, you'll see all results regress to the mean.

[TomTom1968]

Also do not forget that there is also the opposite result possible. Often I have a 15% chance to harvest an HQ item and I get 3 or 4 out of 4 in HQ. Human brain tends to forget about the good RNG times and only memorizes the bad ones.

[DarkDedede]

It's always fun to get 4-5 15% HQ pulls in a row.