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

Author: Tom Kerrigan

Date: 20:50:49 07/25/03

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On July 25, 2003 at 22:31:04, Eric Campos wrote:

>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'm sorry, I meant the possibility of ties. Saying draws is ambiguous.

>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.

If CM ties for 3rd place, it still gets 3rd place.

>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.

You're ignoring the possibility of ties. When you allow ties, the number of
places that the programs compete for (including 1st place) effectively
decreases, so it's no longer 1/13, but 1/(<13). Interestingly, the 11.4%
indicated by my program is exactly 1.5*7.6%. This is probably for another
obvious reason that I'm overlooking.

>The probability of a non-King program winning is still 1/13 (7.69%).

No, seems like it should be > 50% at least.

>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!

Sure. This would be easy to test with my program but right now I'm using a
different computer. I can run the test later.

-Tom



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