Wrath of Dagon

Yes, they kidnapped someone named Deadly Nightshade and stole his brain.

Can you imagine why someone disliking ME would like AP? Edit: Btw, they're completely different games, one has almost no relation to the other except in some superficial ways. For instance, ME story is ripped right from a Saturday morning cartoon. AP story is ripped right from some paranoid ranting on Pacifica Radio. See the difference?

No, you wind up as Vodka snacks.

I really don't think it was supposed to be interpreted as being that close of an analogue to real-world events - yeah, the "middle eastern terrorists but with a twist" plot has been beaten to death, but I really doubt the game was intended to indicate that the US is behind Al Qaeda. I'd give AP an 8.7/10 - for reference, I'd give ME1 a 9/10 and ME2 a 7.5/10. Because of the numerous references to real-life concepts, like the Patriot Act, and the critical nature of these references, it's quite clear to me they were intended as political statements. For reference I gave ME1 a 7/10 and a 5/10 to ME2 demo.

Probably for the best.

I give AP an 8.5 I would've given it a 9, but I wasn't very happy with the way the ending was handled, at least in my playthrough. And yes, it is offensive anti-American truther propaganda .

I didn't mean you, it was a particular group of people here I was referring to. Hah, hah, hah, hah, my credentials aren't in danger, and I'm independently wealthy, but thanks for you concern. Would it be unusual if everyone in the town had cancer, because that's the kind of odds I was talking about here. Anyway, the odds may not be that great, I'm thinking perhaps there are a 1000 people who've won twice already. Moreover, in some of the articles about them it mentions they spend huge amounts on the lottery, like hundreds every month or even week, may be even more after they win the first time. Obviously these are lottery addicts, spending most of their disposable income on the lottery, so spending $100,000 over 10 years wouldn't be out of the question. With that in mind, the odds one of them would win a 3rd and a 4th time are actually quite decent, on the order of 1 in 10, something you wouldn't be surprised to see in your lifetime. Now, how about that octopus?

You're right that 4 pre-selected individuals each winning once has the same odds as 1 pre-selected individual winning 4 times, but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about a non-pre-selected individual somewhere in the world winning 4 times. That is not the same as 4 non-preselected individuals somewhere in the world each winning once. Do you see the difference? Edit: Btw Oblarg, I do have to congratulate you on applying the Binomial probability correctly, even though you figured out the wrong probability. You, Balthamael and Amantep are the only guys arguing with me who've shown any understanding of probability at all. The others are a lot better at insults than math, and should be ashamed of themselves.

So you agree with alanschu that probability of an event that already happened is not 1? Also in his example the reason I said we know the probability of someone winning is 1 is not because someone already won, but that someone would have to win a lottery eventually, and I didn't mean exactly 1 but close enough to use in the calculation.

It's not a lot, that's only 20 tickets a week for 10 years. Some people spend a lot more than that, especially after she won the first lottery. That's the probabilty of a specific pot of $10000 winning the lottery, not the probability of any 10,000 pot in the world winning the lottery. Wrong, all based on your previous incorrect assumption I won't post if no one else does, but Krezack still owes me an answer.

Already did that but through the assumption that there are only a handful of people who have won 2 lotteries. May be it's not a handful, may be it's 1000 or so, hard to tell without knowing the total number of lottery winners in the world and how much they have spent playing lotteries on average.

Actually I have to admit I just did find a mistake in my calculation, which I think is what Balthamael was trying to get at earlier. I think when you're calculating her specific odds each time you have to divide the chance of the lottery by the amount of money she spent over the period in question, which is something I was having doubts about and convinced myself of the opposite. So if the lottery odds are 1 in 10 million (I think that's about what they are in the Texas scratch off), and she spent 10000 over the period she's been playing, her chances of winning each lottery would be 1 in 1000. So conservatively assuming there are 100 people in the world who won the lottery twice, and that they keep playing each having invested on average 10000, the odds of someone out of them winning the lottery again (that is for the third time) are 1000 / 100, i.e. 1/10. Then that one person winning again would be 1 / (10 * 1000) i.e. 1 / 10000, still really bad odds but I suppose within the realm of possibilty.

The only way this works is if you're trying to calculate the odds of someone winning a game of chance in which winning the first time is a pre-requisite for eligibility to play the second time. The lottery doesn't work that way, though, since anyone can play the second time regardless of the result the first time around; in other words the probability of winning doesn't actually change in terms of the 4th one vs the 1st one. No, but you can't win the second time if you haven't won the first time already. And we're trying to calculate probabilties of someone winning the second, third, and fourth time, by definition the previous win is a pre-requisite for the next one. That's why you have to take the chances of winning once to the fourth power if we want the probabilities of a specific person winning 4 times, or do you disagree with that?

Wait, WHAT? You're going about that all wrong. The chances of somebody winning again are based on their individual chances compared to every other participant in the second contest. You don't keep "slimming down" the pool/odds so that it's harder and harder to win like that. The chances overall of that sequence of events happening are lower than them winning a contest, but they still have the same chances to win the contest as any other participant. Again, I'm talking about the chances of someone in the world winning, not a specific person winning. A specific (pre-determined) person winning the lottery 4 times has even much lower odds. It would really be septillions, like the article stated.

As I keep trying to explain, it depends on the pool of how many people can win. For someone to win once, you got the pool of all the people playing worldwide. For someone to win twice, only the people who won once already are eligible, in other words a much smaller pool. For someone to win three times, only people who won twice already are eligible, a mere handful. To win the fourth time, it's that exact woman who would have to win again, since to my knowledge she's the only one in the world who had won major lotteries 3 times. Btw, I found out some more about the scratch off lotteries. Turns out the winning number is already on the ticket, and the number you scratch off has to match, depending on how many digits match is how much money you win. The tickets have a bar code scanned at the time of sale, so they can verify the ticket you present isn't fake but matches the ticket that was sold. There seems to be ample opportunity for fraud if you have an insider or can hack into the lottery computers.

It does matter, as I demonstrated using alanschu's example. You need to use that if you calculate probabilities in which some events have already happened and some haven't. Granted it's a fairly trivial calculation, but it can lead to a lot of misunderstanding if not done correctly. Another example would be trying to calculate the odds of a hand of blackjack winning if you remember which cards have already been discarded.

Never as in before the universe ends? I'd say very close to 1. Never as in infinity? Then you've multiplied it by infinity, i.e. you get probability 1 (or actually something infinitely close to 1) that it will happen, but multiplying by infinity is not a good idea. That's why I keep saying "for all practical purposes".

Why?

Oh, sorry, which one is that? If it's something silly where you misunderstand probability for the 1000th time in this thread, don't even bother waiting for a reply, though. So you don't even read what I post, you're just here to insult me, is that it? My simple question (posted right after your post) is whether you know that the probabiltiy of an event which has already happended is 1?

Nice try at evasion Krezack, you still haven't answered my very simple and direct question.

Your previous post was about probabilies, when I answered that your counter argument is something about what's possible at low odds, which has nothing to do with what I commented on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nastassja_Kinski I guess 15 and little boys are all OK in France though.

Um, lol! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value Hahahaha caught out once more, Dagon. That's not exactly what I meant. You should know that English is ambiguous. Answer me one question, do you know that the probability of an event that already happened is one? If not, you shouldn't be discussing probabilities and taking a class instead, it's literally the first thing in probability theory. To use alanschu's own example, lets say he brings a bomb with him, and let's say the probability of a bomb is 1 in 1000. The probabilty of there being two bombs planted independently would be 1 in 1000 x 1000, i.e. 1 in a million. But since alanschu already brought the first bomb, its probabilty is actually 1. So now the probability of 2 bombs is 1 in 1 x 1000, i.e. the same as probability of 1 bomb.

I leave the actual maths proofs to people better equipped than I, which would be 98% of ppl, but I'm curious about the bolded statement. Taking that statement alone, and from my idiot layperson's perspective, I'm wondering is there anything in all this math theory that claims/proves that I/we could not be the ones to see that 1 in a trillion years chance thing happen, and it's all the generations after us that won't see it? Because if not, it does sound to my uneducated ears as if you're still saying these super high odds = absolute 0. No, math doesn't talk about expectations, only probabilities. Well, if all the generations after us last for a trillion years, may be one of them will see it. I think that's longer than the universe is expected to exist though. These types of metrics between University's actually exist? Which school did you go to? Rice University