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Subject: Re: Why not simulate the tourney instead of coin flipping?

Author: Eric Campos

Date: 19:31:04 07/25/03

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On July 25, 2003 at 14:31:58, Tom Kerrigan wrote:

>On July 25, 2003 at 07:14:19, George Tsavdaris wrote:
>
>>On July 24, 2003 at 23:46:50, Tom Kerrigan wrote:
>>
>>>Given a round robin tournament with 13 participants of equal strength, 5 of
>>>which are The King:
>>>
>>>There's a 14% chance The King would take the top 3 spots.
>>
>>I don't know for sure***, but i think you are wrong.
>>
>>Because if the participants have equal strength we can do the following:
>>
>>If N is the number of all possible classifications of the programs
>>then N = 13!/5!   as we have five "The King".
>
>As Ricardo Gibert pointed out, this doesn't take into account the possibility of
>draws. I imagine the program I wrote is reasonably accurate.
>
>-Tom

When talking about the probability of a certain program coming in 1st or 2nd
place, I don't think the possibility of draws comes into play.  I understand
that the possibility of "ties" in the ranking does come into play, but that's a
different story.

I have to agree with George's math.  As a check, the prob(1st and 2nd and 3rd)
is 5/13 * 4/12 * 3/11, which gives the same result of 3.50%.  This ignores the
fact that programs can tie in the rankings, e.g. CM could tie another program
for 3rd / 4th place, but we haven't defined how to treat this case anyway.

When I check your 11.4% expected 1st place outcome for other programs, something
doesn't add up.  11.4% * 8 = 91.2%, which leaves CM only an 8.8% chance of
clinching 1st.  The probability of getting 1st, 2nd and 3rd must be less than
this, but your simulation shows 14%.  Perhaps I just misunderstand what you
meant with your 11.4% number.

The probability of a non-King program winning is still 1/13 (7.69%).
Consider ties:
--------------
The probability of sole possession of 1st place is lower than 7.69%.
The probability of 1st place or sharing 1st place is greater than 7.69%.
So the answer depends on how you want to define 1st place.

One last thought:  If all of the programs had equal capability, the odds of The
King getting 1st, 2nd, and 3rd is exactly equal to the odds of it capturing the
last three places!

- Eric



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