bara said:
You know nothing about statistics . Relativly speaking I know very little myself, but I do know that you have this wrong. The law of large has to do with convergence of a sample mean to a standard normal distribution. That is as the sample sizes aproaches infinity any distribution starts to look normal.
Here is a true fact Infinity - 300 = Infinity. You will never do an infinite number of MF runs. Thus, you will never convege to the true probability. Therefore the actual probability that any given item will drop is somewhat meaningless, i.e. MF runs are all about luck. MF gear improves your odds, but the RUN is all about luck.
Sorry for the flame
LAW OF LARGE NUMBERS
A fundamental law in probability theory and statistics stating that if an event or probability p is observed repeatedly during independent repetitions the proportion of the observed frequency of that event to the number of repetitional converges (see convergence) towards p as the number of repetitions become large.
Granted it's been awhile since I took stats, so I may not have all the details correct on all its nuances, but I do remember that the law of large numbers shows that given enough independent repetitions (runs in this case), the actual occurences of an event will EVENTUALLY approach the actual probability of the event occuring on one repetition. I think the example most often used is flipping a coin. You can flip a coin ten times in a row and get heads every time. Not likely, but it can happen. However, assuming the coin is evenly weighted, the probability is .5 that it will be heads on any given flip. Therefore, as you keep flipping the coin, the actual outcomes of the flips will eventually approach .5
Your terming of it is also correct, except that you did not mention that the normal distribution that occurs as the number of runs is increased is centered around the probability of a single repetition.
We all seem to be basically arguing the same thing from slightly different sides of the fence. Yes, it's quite obvious that MF does not guarantee you anything on any individual run. You can get lucky on any individual run with 0% MF or get the shaft for 100 runs with 750% MF. We all understand that I think. However, it is a fact that run-for-run, players with higher MF will find more sets/uniques/rares..... when you average it out over a very large number of players with a very large number of runs.
Now in the reality of D2, one character's runs will probably never fit into those probabilities, but when you add that one character's results into the pool of all characters, that is when things start to be more standardized.
The best MF for actually playing with in D2 all depends on how fast you kill, where you kill, how fun it is to play (since you'll stop doing it if it makes you go :cheesy: ), etc. etc. The concensus seems to be that somewhere around 200+ gives good results since it can normally be acquired with minimal change in killing speed.
Now, if I'm wrong feel free to correct me, but please keep it polite and impersonal. If I've come across as insulting to anyone please let me know, as that was definitely not my intention. It's just a game, and as such I don't see the need to get upset and attack anyone or insult them personally. People come to these forums to learn, inform, or simply communicate with others about a game they enjoy, let's keep it that way. :buddies:
