Author: Danniel Corbit
Date: 07:47:58 08/09/98
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On August 09, 1998 at 09:59:47, Christophe Theron wrote: [snip] >NEVER. 10 games is NOT ENOUGH. > >I have found that a 30 games match has a +/- 5% error margin. That is a 50% >result can mean 45% to 55%. [snip] The book "Statistical Methods" by Pfaffenberger & Patterson [ISBN 0-256-03664-0] makes the following quote on pages 504 & 505: "Hypothesis tests concerning the population variance or the population standard deviation are based on the X^2 distribution first introduced in Chapter 9. These tests assume that the population random variable X is normally distributed. If X is not normally distributed, but is approximately so, then these tests should be used only for "large" samples (n = 100 or more is often required). The degrees of freedom for tests concerning the population variance and the population standard deviation are df = n - 1." So we might take 100 as a _minimum_ number of trials to get a result about an unknown population. Interestingly, they supply detailed formula for determination of the smallest sample size you should use for testing hypothesis. On pages 503 & 504 the sample sizes worked out in the example problems were 451 and 266. So you are very, very correct. A sample of ten games probably shows us very little.
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