Sample Size

[Jeunemaitre]

It's fishing, so we're talking drop table lookups just like when slaying beasties.

Flymo, please elaborate on how you came to these numbers.  Is this some sort of general statistical principal?
[right][snapback]96816[/snapback][/right]

I'm not an expert in power calculations (determining the needed sample size to detect differences of a certain size from a null hypothesis in order to preform significance tests that will result in appropriate levels of confidence), but there is an excepted set of methods that are used, and the results flymo reports sound right under certain circumstances (that's the statement about 95% of trials within 1% of the actual value which translates I think to a 5% probability level on an effect size of 1% of some amount). The other thing about sample size calculations is that they are based on asymptotic relationships, such that an increase in precision of 1% requires many more samples when you go from 94% to 95% than when you go from 50% to 51%. If you're frightened by 9604 drops, you might consider aiming at half that number which would give you about 75% condfidence for that same "within 1% of the actual value." Although, I may be off on that, it's been a while.

Regardless of the methods, the power calc results only apply to experiments that are repeated under the same controlled circumstances (same fishing hole, same equipment, same char stats) and that the drops are independent cases (meaning that the drops are not affected be either any of the previous drops, or the next drops). Basically, theories about frequentist probability only apply to situations where the results of the current trial are not related to the results of any other trial. In gaming, it's possible to limit the number of drops of a certain type to a given character over a given period of time. In that case, the probability can still be computed, but it must be done using more complex methods. The good news is that the results you see in your tracker will show you what the effective probability is, and that's what you want anyway.