Statistics Class: How I Will Calculate Your Probability of Winning the Exploits Giveaway
Statistics and Probability is a fundamental knowledge that should be inside each Software Engineer, and here I will show you some of its wonders.
Some of you are already saying “hi” and posting pictures to boost your possibility to win the giveaway, but, how will it improve your chances? and how will I calculate? Keep reading to find out.
In probability the chance of an event to happen is measured between 0 and 1, with 0 being an impossible occurrence (it will never happen) and 1 being an occurrence that will always happen, anything in between is said to be the probability of an occurrence to happen, the closer to one the more chances it has to happen.
It’s all pretty basic stuff, but lets put it in the context of our giveaway.
Let’s imagine for a second that the giveaway ended and there’s 200 participants, this means that if you were to win you have to be randomly picked out of this crowd of 200, so you have a one out of 200 chances of winning, which is 0.005 probability. Not much is it? but there’s more so don’t worry.
Our contest randomly picks 5 people out of the 200 participants, this means that you have to be picked either one of this times, so you have one of 200 chances of winning, 5 times, so it’s (1/200)*5, or 5/200, which is 0.025, much better right? but this formula is plain wrong.
The thing is, your chances of winning are repeated 5 times and are exclusive: if you’ve already won, there’s no chance of you winning again as you are excluded from the population, so the population of participants decrements by one, but since one winner is already picked, then there’s one less chance of you to win, so both your chances and the population decrease every time until you have more chances of winning, so the formula is left like this:
1/200 + 1/199 + 1/198 + 1/197 + 1/196 = 0.025254
Looks nice but… the probability of you NOT winning is 1 – the probability of you winning, so you have a probability of loosing of 0.9747, which is really, really, really high.
This is usually where past giveaways end, but ours is a bit more complex than that.
You see, I added one more variable to the table: a contest. Users can post images and they get graded between 0 and 10, the higher the grade, the better, users with no picture will end up with a score of a 1 out of 10. Users need to have their picture win and to be picked from the crowd randomly to win the prize.
If your score is an 8 out of 10 then you have a probability of 0.8 that your picture will win, after that you have to cope with the fact that you have to be randomly selected from the crowd.
This means that your chances of winning are solely based on two variables: your picture’s score and the probability of you being randomly picked from the crowd.
So you have two probabilities that need to be met for you to win: your score, and being randomly picked.
This gives us 4 different occurrences that can happen, assuming your score is 8/10:
— Your picture wins (probability of 0.8), you are picked from the random crowd (probability: 0.02525) -> you win
— Your picture wins (probability of 0.8), you are not picked from the random crowd (probability: 0.9747) -> you loose
— Your picture looses (probability of 0.2), you are picked from the random crowd (probability: 0.02525) -> you loose
— Your picture looses (probability of 0.2), you are not picked from the random crowd (probability: 0.9747) -> you loose
So how do we calculate your final probability of winning? well, we use the bayes formula, which goes something like this: the probability of the event we want happening divided by the summary of the probabilities of all events.
The probability of you winning is the probability of your picture winning intersected with the probability of you being picked, which is 0.8 * 0.02525 = 0.0202
Knowing this, we go on to calculate your actual probability:
0.8*0.02525 / (0.8*0.9747 + 0.2*0.02525 + 0.2*0.9747) = 0.02061
Now it may seem like a low probability, but if we calculate the probability of someone with a picture of a score of 0.5 we get 0.01278, and the probability of someone winning without posting any picture is 0.00253.
You may think “Acid, I used to have a probability of winning of 0.025 with the other giveaways, now I have 0.02061 if I get a score of 8 out of 10”.
This is true, but someone with an 8 out of 10 has a much bigger chance than someone with a 5 or no picture at all.
I hope this has helped clarify how the contest works and how the picture matters.
Thanks for the crash course, we need these kind of reminders to not forget the basics :p
Thanks for the infos and explanation…
Bored eh?
I may enter yet..I don’t want or need to win, I’m already rocking the Megamix ‘sploit, and I’ve already (out of sheer generosity on his part) ‘won’ the Sims 3 from Tanooki, but i may enter for fun..Maybe type up some silly story or something. Iunno yet. Regardles, grats to whomever wins this game of numbers. Somewhere, Trogglus Normalus is enjoying the numbers you’ve laid out, good sir.
So math aroused.
what about statistics on the chance of psplink tools patches for vita ?
thats all well and good… but now i feel stupid coz that went in 1 eye and out the other xD
so whens the draw actually going to be? coz theres 500 entries atm and i havent seen a single rated one yet haha
Wow… This Transported me into that fuc*ing days on Math Class…and the most cool thing…I reminded all the stuff…!!! Cool and Thanks 🙂
Really would like to use this exploit. we can use the psn store at all so. wish i could win.
Thx for explaining in detail :D. Being looking the pictures and wondering: why are so many cats? where is the love for dogs? 🙁
I don’t like cat pictures as I find them all to be the same thing, you see one, you’ve seen them all.
So Gifs are allowed?
images, gifs, video (as long as it’s short)
So do we have to have a picture?
if you read carefully, you don’t have to have a picture, but your chances are much bigger if you do have one than if you don’t
But you are still able to be picked without a Gif or image right?
yes, you are still able to be picked, you just have less probability
Forgot to enter contest – yep still going to continue playing MHFU…
nice explanation, but you still have to review all of those posts… It flooded with gifs, makes me dizzy somehow..
You could have used 7-9 or 8-9 out of 10 to make it more applicable, than to only use only 8/10. Other than that good article.
hi wololo where do i download 101 megamix game ..i dont hav a single game on vita …theres no exploitinggame on store too please reply …i let my brother to subscribe u too 😉
101 megamix was removed from the store A LONG time ago
First of all, are we assuming you just choose a random number for each picture? Because otherwise, it really isn’t a probabilistic system right? Aren’t there characteristics you’re looking for in these pictures? For example, if I submit some picture I know you will hate, I can be sure that I get a low score. Even if we assume the score is random, the sum of probability of everyone’s chances does not add up to 1. For example, assume you scored everyone with 8/10. You say the chance of one person winning is 0.02061. 0.02061 * 200 = 4.122 > 1. Your probability model is flawed.
An alternative approach. Let everyone have a max of 10 “entries” where the entries are determined by the score they have. 8/10 means 8 entries. No image means 1 entry. Etc. Now just sum up the entries and your chance of winning is entries/total. That way, the ratio is biased towards the mean of the scores. If everyone get’s 8/10, everyone has the same change of winning. If everyone has 1/10 but one person has 10/10, they get a much higher change. The math is simple and the experiment is easy to perform (order by name, sum up all entries, pick a random number between 1 and the number of entries, subtract the number from each name until you hit zero and that person is selected).
“An alternative approach. Let everyone have a max of 10 “entries” where the entries are determined by the score they have. 8/10 means 8 entries.”
I KNOW, right? That is the automatically obvious way to do it. I was initially going to suggest 10 entries per person without a pic, with 11 to 20 entries for a person with a pic, but apparently Acid found the dumb way to do it.
Haha, j/k Acid, you know I love you 0.o
The system is not flawed, your assumptions are, you are assuming that both the scores and probability of being picked from the crowd are one in the same occurrence, when in fact they are two separate ones, which is basically what bayes works with. You can’t just add up two different occurrences with two different probabilities and expect it to still be 1.
The first occurrence is the probability of your picture winning, which is individual and independent from the amount of users there are. If your score is 8 out of 10, your picture has a probability of winning of 0.8 and a probability of loosing of 0.2. 0.8 + 0.2 = 1
Then the second occurrence is the probability of being randomly picked from the crowd of, lets say, 200 people. The probability of success here is roughly around 0.025 (5/200, as there’s 5 chances of you winning). And the probability of failing is obviously 1-0.025.
For you to win, both occurrences need to be met: P(B|A). From there on you just apply bayes and you’re good to go.
What do you mean by “winning” a picture? Let’s say everyone got 10/10. Then everyone “wins” so what does it mean? And I’m not assuming that’s the same, I proposed a clearer system in which they are the same.
I probably used a wrong naming there, maybe “approved” is a better word. Your image has to be randomly approved for you to win, aside from being randomly picked from the crowd, and the probability of it being approved is simply your score, not much, not less.
Oh, and also, what is your formula for getting
0.8*0.02525 / (0.8*0.9747 + 0.2*0.02525 + 0.2*0.9747) = 0.02061
?
Assuming A = event that your picture is good and B = event that you are chosen randomily, we get from your formula:
P(A)P(B) / P(A)P(Bc) + P(Ac)P(B) + P(Ac)P(Bc)
assuming A and B are disjoint
P(A|B)P(B) / P(A|Bc)P(Bc) + P(Ac|B)P(B) + P(Ac|Bc)P(Bc)
I don’t see what equation that represents
If you want to use Baynes’ theorem you can get
P(B|A) = P(A|B)P(B) / P(A|B)P(B) + P(A|Bc)P(Bc)
P(B|Ac) = P(Ac|B)P(B) / P(Ac|B)P(B) + P(Ac|Bc)P(Bc)
P(B) = P(B|A) + P(B|Ac)
P(B) = P(A|B)P(B) / P(A|B)P(B) + P(A|Bc)P(Bc) + P(Ac|B)P(B) / P(Ac|B)P(B) + P(Ac|Bc)P(Bc)
because A and B are disjoint
P(B) = P(A)P(B) / P(A)P(B) + P(A)P(Bc) + P(Ac)P(B) / P(Ac)P(B) + P(Ac)P(Bc)
using your example above
P(B) = 0.8*0.02525 / 0.8*0.02525 + 0.8*0.9747 + 0.2*0.02525 / 0.2*0.02525 + 0.2*0.9747
P(B) = 0.05050
However, it’s still a bit flawed because when designing an experiment, you need to make sure that the pdf used for event A is valid. That means if you have to score everyone manually with the knowledge of everyone else’s score. Otherwise, the universe would be broken and you could have something like two people with 100% chance of winning (in theory).
where the heck did you get this from:
P(B) = 0.8*0.02525 / 0.8*0.02525 + 0.8*0.9747 + 0.2*0.02525 / 0.2*0.02525 + 0.2*0.9747
P(B) is the probability of being randomly picked from the crowd, and it’s totally independent on the probability of your picture winning, it’s as easy as 5/200 if there’s 200 people in the crowd and 5 chances of winning, although it’s a bit more like 1/200 + 1/199 + 1/198 + 1/197 + 1/196, since the same person can’t win twice.
that is assuming that what you call P(B) is the probability of being randomly picked from the crowd.
Still I don’t see where the flaw is. P(B) and P(A) are two different probabilities. To win, both probabilities must be met, which is a join: P(A)^P(B).
If what you say is true, then the sum of everyone’s P(A) must add up to one. Everyone’s P(A) does add up to one. But two people can get 0.8 for P(B).
Where I got that equation from is the definition of Bayes’ theorem (look at Wikipedia), which I showed step by step of me applying it. However, I don’t know where you got your equations from.
no, the probability P(A) (assuming we are talking about the scores) are individual, not collective, as I already said, it makes no sense in a statistical way to sum them up. The only collective probability is P(B) (if we assume it’s the probability of being randomly picked from the crowd).
To clear it up a bit, let’s take as an example flipping a coin. My probability of getting head is 1/2, your probability of getting head is 1/2, and some other guys probability of getting head is 1/2. Does it make sense to add up all those probabilities? no! as they are individual and not related at all, you would end up having 3/2, which we both know is impossible. Same applies to the scores here: it either wins, or not, whatever another person’s probability is is not related at all.
I think the main point of confusion is what exactly is P(A). I said above “A = event that your picture is good” which is what I believe you mean by P(A). However, if we go back to my original argument, A is NOT a random event, so you can’t model it with a probabilistic model. None of this applies at all since the score you assign to pictures are not random. That being the case, the most fair way to pick the winner is as I’ve said above of assigning different number of tickets to people and pick a winner like a weighted lottery.
Also your coin flipping example doesn’t work either because we are not talking about two people flipping coins since there’s only ONE winner. If you are flipping coins and you say “heads means you win” there can be two winners. Which is exactly what I’ve been trying to say above.
if P(A) is the probability that your picture is good, and your picture has a score of 8 out of 10, then this probability is 0.8, as simple as that. After this just go ahead and generate a random number between 0 and 1 (not counting these), if P(A) is bigger or equal to this number, your picture is good.
|\_|\
(*-*)
(TT)
! !
I dont understan lol but its cool…
u forget to add the 99% of people not intrested lol
Yeah because the human race is a *** thing. Majority of people only want to be entertained not educated. Try share wisdom? Most get defensive and offended, then they make excuses with lies, get bored and dismiss the knowledge as unnecessary.
So we’re stuck in a world where everyone runs around bathing in each others ignorance. The only time you can educate someone is by listening to blabber, blabber is letting someone regurgitate their dramas for more than 15 minutes into your ears, then and only then after you pay this tax will they be happy to accept your wisdom.
But what if Acid_Snake is a fool with bad taste in memes, who will bias his contest in a childish fashion? Then he’ll just look like a jerk, showcase his bad taste in humor (oh, sorry, humor is subjective unless you’re begging a child for his favor), and write a silly post about the probability of winning his silly contest?
I entered your contest for fun, but you rating everybody somewhat harshly is just embarrassing to you. I say this as someone who has not been rated; I just think you’re a bit silly.
You should probably add a “makes me angry” factor for people you want to exclude, now, huh? =)
So basically your contest is worse than every other contest on the site, ever, since we have to guess at what someone with bad taste will like. I say this after reviewing most of your rating thus far, which – shockingly! – were more harsh as you rated more pics.
lol
“I don’t agree with your ratings so I’m gonna call you names to make myself sound smarter, when in fact it makes me sound like a ***”
I just summed up your wall of text.
wow Yifan Lu !
🙂
love it
Pff, feeble attempt at a “stats” class.
I’m sorry, your other articles are good.
You didn’t get this one right at all.
I would kindly have a nice discussion with you, but if you’re only gonna be like “lol you suck, I win” instead of doing an actual debate with actual data, then there’s not much to discuss other than that you’re a ***, unlike yifanlu above who provided good points to his thoughts and allowed for a more mature debate.
“Ooohhh I can’t take criticism so I’m going to start namecalling! BUT I want a mature debate.”
Lifanyu already made my point so there’s no reason for me to repeat it.
I expressed my opinion about your article. Take it or leave it.
what about psplink on other devices … ps3 ps4 one etc ?
Will posting multiple comments gives me a higher chance of winning 😛
the contest ended, but to answer your question: no. The script I use to choose the winners automatically filter people who make more than one post as well as filtering my own posts.
i hope i get it i really wanna experience the full potential of my vita lol
It sounds good! Yeah… to me statistics and probability is the math that bores mathematicians, but that is another story, my question is how is the picture going to be evaluated? How is the winner going to be picked? Am I the only one who feels like in nested if statement?
If(picture == winner)
{
WinningChances = WinningChances + PictureScore
}//can’t think of something else right now
i guess result of this competition will be emailed to those 5 winners