j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
bobdonda said:
j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
55%? That's hardly a majority of wins, or even a valid indicator that Reds are psychologically more pumped up that blues. It's barely over the half-way mark.
It may seem at first glance that this isn't a big deal, since 55% isn't much higher than 50%. But look at it this way- suppose a million games were played. Red will win 550,000 games and Blue will win 450,000 games. That's a discrepancy of 100,000 games in a situation where things are supposed to be perfectly even. Red is winning 22.2% more games than Blue is winning. Statistically this is very significant.
btw 55% is a majority
100,000 is 10% of a million, isn't it? Or is my maths letting me down again?
And yes, 55% is a majority. Thing is, just because Red won by 10%, it doesn't mean there's anything in the colour itself. We don't know all the factors or variables that could have affected the results. For all we know, 55% of the blue team could have been playing blind drunk, which would no doubt have affected the results. That's the problem with statistical evidence- it shows a correlation, not a causation.
And then there's the fact that, when you get down to it, each multiplayer session is a game of chance. Sure, there are players more skilled than others, who've put in more time and honed their aiming talents. But for most gamers, an average game of Unreal depends just as much on chance as anything else. Spawn points, hidden weapons and running around like a headless chicken are all important factors (just naming a few) in deciding the outcome of a game. In the end, Red's could win 80% of their games against Blues, and you still couldn't rule out the possibility that luck dictated those results.
It's possible that the extra 5% came from luck but when 1,000,000 games are played you can begin to rule out luck, as it's about as likely to be the defining variable as the Large Hadron Collider is to blow up the earth. Saying luck did it in this case is about as scientifically plausible as saying God did it.
Having said that, there are other variables that might affect these things. Firstly, player variables: some players were distracted, were off their game, were playing stupid, etc. Assuming the scientists did their job, though, these can be disregarded. Firstly, any half-decent study would make sure to control these variables by, say, randomising team-selection over each game, giving identical conditions to each player in terms of environment and PC set-up, and so on. All uncontrollable variables (what the players ate on the day, their mood, their sex lives) can again be disregarded as they'd mostly balance out over 1,000,000 games (and hopefully a large number of players randomised to teams and blah blah blah). So unless these scientists/psychologists/whatever didn't do their jobs we can disregard player info as well.
Here's where things
might be clouded: spawning. I've never played UT2004 but if it has both of these two features and they weren't somehow controlled then I wouldn't trust this study farther than I could throw it.
1)Team-based spawning positions.
2)Asymmetric maps
This would mean that not only is the map uneven but, since teams are forced to spawn in one area every time, one side might have a statistical advantage on a map, and depending on how many maps are like this, one side could have an overall advantage. This would be mitigated if spawning positions were randomised so that both teams could spawn anywhere on the map. Since neither team is given a positional advantage then the effect of spawning on victory (over 1,000,000 games with enough randomised players) should be controlled.
IF the games played in the study didn't have
both of these elements and controlled all factors properly then I'd start to think that that 5% might mean something (not necessarily that red=aggression thing but something). Of course there's some room for statistical anomaly and I don't know how much it would be for a study of this kind but my guess is that it wouldn't be 5%. Even if it was, that would be simple anomaly, not the result of any factors that couldn't be reasonably controlled (again, assuming these people did their shit right).
avykins said:
Just think. If all these companies devoted all these funds to curing diseases instead of endless stupid crap we may actually have gotten somewhere by now.
I remember hearing that fiber optics was discovered at the end of a series of totally different,but related, studies. The first study in that series was about frog eyes. We can't be sure where a study will take us.
