RNG is not random.

[Aethn]

My 2 cents worth.

:dedhorse:

[NerissaGoldenrose]

In fact if you think about it so many randoms are used for so many different things for so many different people odds are that your 2 combine rolls for skill ups are 100's of rands appart with other peoples inbetween.

VERY good point. The same RNG is generating numbers for hundreds of combats, trade skill combines, folks doing a /random, setting loot on mobs about to pop, etc. in any given second. If there was a separate RNG for each person, THEN you might be able to talk about whether it was streaky or not, but you just can't see the whole picture. You don't have enough data to KNOW whether it's generating a streak or not.

Take a (pseudo) random string of numbers. Now take a random sampling FROM that string. (That sampling is probably as close to truly random as you're going to get, since it depends on time betweein clicks, server population, what everyone else is doing, etc.) That's about as random as it's possible to make something.

The human mind wants to "make sense" of stuff. It's awful at accepting randomness. That's why we have constellations and see faces/shapes in clouds. It's also why we see streaks in a string of random numbers. Not because they're there, but because we project them.

[Abazagaroth]

If you think that the game is running the exact same set of formula over and over for all these different things for all different players, I think you're being fairly naive. Think about how much computing power that would take. Think about the fact that said computing power has to be done on their end, not ours, in order to prevent cheating.

Its much more likely that there are zone-wide (since zones have their own servers pretty much) RNG being used that are broken up into multiple formula, such that every computation for every single thing that goes on only gets one short formula, with the rest done in blocks of time and applied to everyone.

That doesn't mean that you can't, on any single "roll", not get any value, it just means that the probability of getting values is skewed, which is why its streaky. The thought of all the cost added by having the servers run a full RNG set on every single thing of every single player is staggering. It would only make sense that its broken up and only a portion is run individually and every 2-5 seconds the other portions get run.

It explains streakiness. Its still random. Its just not randomly random. Layered probability isn't a new idea in programming, and I really would imagine this is what is going on.

[scarbrowed]

OK, I gotta try this one.

First off, the law of averages that most gamblers like to quote is mathematically derived based on an infinite number of events. So even a BILLION is not enough to mathematically prove things one way or another. Having said that, when I did Monte Carlo simulations in the late 90's, proving on a few 100,000 was good enough. The developer was showing off how fast his new machine was by testing billions.

To really demonstrate what's happening here, use a safe trusted random number generator, flip a coin. (If you are really paranoid, read this article and make extra sure your coin flips. Try it several times. Here's my try:

TTHHTTTHTHTHTTTTTTTTTTHTHTHHTTHHHTHHHT

Wow, that looks very streaky. And I swear I really flipped the coin myself. Now you try it. I'll wait. ..... I bet yours had long streaks in it too. The streaks in your coin are the same as the streaks in EQ's RNG.

In fact, mathematically, the streaks prove it's random. I can't find a current link, but a mathematician came up with a formula about how likely a number is to be random based on how many streaks it has. If it does not have long streaks, it is probably NOT random.

[Ruldar]

Since this seems to have become a moderately in-depth discussion of the RNG, I thought I should point out the following quote: (from here)

Keep in mind that no single person is getting sequential pulls from the generator. Inbetween your tradeskill combines or spell casts or flying kick attempts the RNG has already supplied thousands of random numbers for combat to-hit rolls, damage rolls, wander route pathing, skill-up checks, encounter tables, loot tables, and so on. Even if the RNG was more predictable, you're pulling genuinely random samples from an endless sequence of these "random" numbers.

-Prathun

Pretty clear that one large RNG for lots of events is how they had to have done it for performence reasons, but its nice to hear it from a dev.

[Itek]

If you think that the game is running the exact same set of formula over and over for all these different things for all different players, I think you're being fairly naive. Think about how much computing power that would take. Think about the fact that said computing power has to be done on their end, not ours, in order to prevent cheating.

Its much more likely that there are zone-wide (since zones have their own servers pretty much) RNG being used that are broken up into multiple formula,

*SIGH*

Each machine has it's own "seed" and processor. So -yes- each of them has it's own "RNG" in that sense. However MULTIPLE zones all use the same server and so have a common RNG. They are VERY fast. That's a technical term. It means that it's so fast that calculating exactly how fast each call is becomes non-trivial and the result is so minorly different than the "qualitative" expression "very fast" that only real geeks (post-doc work geeks) really give a rat's whisker.

Honest. random() is a fast call out. And it's ALWAYS the same random() because that's how machines are hardwired. (They algorithim they WASH IT THROUGH is different. They use the RESULT of the random() call differently in tradeskills than say combat. Example /rand 100 is different from /rand 1 100 but the random() function absolutely DOES NOT EVER CHANGE.)

Again, in case we've forgotten....

"Human beings are SHOCKINGLY bad at pattern recognition."

And, again, even if we could prove the RNG is broken (which it's obviously not) what precisely do you think could be done to remedy the situation?

[Jarak_akn]

And, again, even if we could prove the RNG is broken (which it's obviously not) what precisely do you think could be done to remedy the situation?

Add more Gin, that normally seems to work.

Jarak.

[Yarb]

Has anyone considered the possibility that the RNG is streaky in the short term on purpose. That adds a bit of spice, as some battles, combines etc... go very well or poorly making a player react to the situation. Personally I think it would be very boring if my char hit for 52.7 damage every swing and missed exactly every 4th attack.

Yarb

[Kieroth_whiteleaf]

Exaggerated point, but hear me out.

If my data set looked like:

11111111000000000111111111111111111111110000000000 00000000111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 11100000000000001111111111000000000000000000000111 1111111111111

Would that be considered 'random' if a computer spit out similar sequences on a regular basis?

Over the course of distribution, that's roughly 50/50 1's and 0's (or at least I tried to make it, didn't stop and count but it looks close) and a relatively decent sized sample set for a small experiment.

As a whole, this pattern could be attributed to a random, one in a billion (or more, there's an awful lot of zeros there and I don't feel like counting the exponents) 'freak' occurrence.

However, in investigating the small sample set by itself, you notice that there's no occurrence of the sequence 101 or 010 - which statistically ought to happen about 1/4 of the time between them (odds are 1/8 for each sequence) - on the other hand, there are a good amount of times the sequences 111, 000, 001 and 110 occur - each of those ought to occur 1/8 times as well.

Smaller data samples show things that larger data samples don't. *IF* an RNG showed number sets coming out that consistently looked similar to the one above (and by consistent, I mean outside the normal probability set) then I would be concerned. Yes - overall the system does even itself out, but that kind of 'streakiness' would be considered unacceptable because it's not really random - in the above sequence EVERY instance of 10 was followed by another 0 - if a system was consistently (over billions of runs) showing similar results, the system *isn't* random.

However, if the set above was a '1-shot' coincidence (or a 5 shot or 10 shot or whatever the mathematical probability for that pattern is + standard deviation) then I wouldn't be concerned.

I teach number theory (among other things) - so don't tell me humans are bad at seeing patterns - most of our discoveries and virtually all of our mathematics are based on our recognition and interpretation OF patterns. The entire science of cryptology is based around the fact that no matter how you encode a document, there's a way to break it down into patterns and decode it. The vast majority of broken crypto systems *WEREN'T* beaten by a computer, they were beaten by a person with a solid math background who observed a pattern and exploited it. The system used by the ****s in WWII was thought to be unbreakable - I can decode it with a pen and paper now if I have a large enough sample of encoded text because I know what patterns to look for. Pattern perception is a significant form of our cognitive process - sometimes we see patterns where we shouldn't because we subconsciously look for patterns to categorize information, but it's actually comparatively rare (compared to the number of patterns we *do* see and categorize properly) for us to make a mistake - especially when cross-checked against other people and their peception of patterns.

A substantial number of people on these forums say they notice a tendency towards streaks in the rng. ESPECIALLY the people who tend to document them. I do my fletching in batches of 40, which is a small sample set. I notice that I usually get no skillups, but frequently get 2-3 and almost never get 1. Statistically, I ought to get something in the area of 1.5 (based on percentages), which should mean that I rarely get 0 skillups, usually get 1-2, rarely get 3 and almost never get 4+.

Now, due to the fact I don't document, I really can't say EXACTLY what my averages have been. I'm also one person, and standard deviation accounts for a lot more than just me. It actually accounts for a lot more than all the people who post here combined when applied against the whole of EQ players. *BUT* statistically, the sample set we have here OUGHT to exhibit SIMILAR patterns to the whole.

Conjecture? Hell yeah. A lot of it. Especially when a lot of the people who post here say "I remember I had a streak where I got like 4-5 in one batch of like 15-30 tries" - that's so anecdotal it's not even funny, and allows for the probability of anything from 4/30 odds (a little high) to 5/15 odds (which would be very high). EITHER data set could be accounted for by randomness.

However -

I also remember a lot of people saying that different skills seemed to have different skillup rates, and a LOT of people saying "it's just the RNG, you have the same odds no matter what" - turns out you don't. There's the V variable (I think it's V, if not substitute for correct letter)

I also remember a lot of people attempting to gather data regarding whether skillups had better odds on success or failure, that was usually answered with "of course you notice more skillups on success, because you're rarely skilling up on anything you consistently fail" - also not true.

Both of these situations were resolved by a dev (maddoc I think?) revealing skillup formula at the fan faire. As it turns out, the observed data gathered by the people here tended to be correct - The RNG wasn't the end-all, there were some hardcoded mechanisms to alter your odds.

There's a hypothesis currently going around that individual recipes could override the difficulty variable for the skillup curve. The hypothesis currently isn't getting a huge amount of credibility since we now know some exact numbers for things and it's making sense given the current formula, but it's still what I would term an "unlikely possibility".

But I don't think we humans have been that bad at gauging patterns - we've already caught two patterns here and were later confirmed correct.

Virtually no one argues that *overall*, the process from 200-220 requires roughly 400 combines on average - some people have lousy streaks, and a LOT of people aren't capped on wis/int/str so their numbers don't really 'count' - but overall things are where they should be.

But those same people observe streakiness in the RNG.

When I'm fighting, shortly after a level increase, I might go a day or more without a weapon skill increase. Then suddenly I get 3-5 inside the same fight with a mob.

Ever do chain casting to work on some caster skill? I frequently get 20 or so casts so my mana bar is practically drained with no skillups, but then in the last 20% of my mana I'll get 3 skillups within a few casts of each other.

Why do fizzles seem to come in batches of 3-5? I RARELY fizzle evoke due to being a wizard, and I get enough single fizzles, but most of my fizzles come in small groupings within a few casts of each other.

And no, my sample set isn't large enough (nor accurately recorded enough) to make it anywhere near conclusive. But there's enough data here to make me a little curious as to what distributions look like on a small scale.

Which is why I said I'd be interested to see the small scale breakdowns of a larger run. Mostly because I find the topic interesting.

*IF* the RNG *IS* streaky/broken, what to do about it?

First off, I should think that *IF* it were conclusively proven that the system is streaky, that would be a bug and possibly (though doubtful) exploitable. I would suspect that the devs would probably want to investigate putting a better system in place.

However, there's also the fact that in the end, everything DOES work out. Given that it's not like national security depends on the nonstreakiness of a video game server, I don't see that it's that important of a topic.

From a game balance standpoint, streakiness seems to work both ways. Seems to me that that almost gives you a 'luck' score, and if you can be lucky or unlucky in the real world, why not the game world? So I don't necessarily see it as a critical issue. I personally would want to see them resolve issues like cultural smithing gaps over repairing the RNG. My comment about investigating a large run as small sample sets was mostly just a mathematical interest on probability.

And realistically, I think if the devs said (after an investigation, if the streakiness turned out to be true) "yeah, looks like it is kinda streaky. But it works overall so we're not too concerned" I don't really think people would be beating down sony's doors over it - generally the only people who notice it are casters (on fizzle rates), melees (on weapon skillups) and tradeskillers (on everything) - the fizzle rate thing doesn't happen often enough to really get concerned over, and usually only occurs if you haven't trained the skill high enough anyways, it's usually to the meleers' advantage, and the people who tend to take tradeskilling up to the 1750 level *AND* notice the streaks tend to be the geeks that understand probability anyways.

I don't necessarily think the RNG is broken. I think it very possibly COULD be, given the apparent streakiness.

I actually don't even necessarily care if it is broken - It's held up so far, I know I couldn't program a better one (and I'm a fairly competent programmer) and the work involved in redoing it would be huge compared to the relatively small gain.

I do, however, appreciate the mental exercise that these discussions bring out. I like seeing the different approaches to the number theory, the different pattern analysis methods people apply, and the general problem solving that people are using to try to think this through.

And for people who think the discussion is either invalid, not worth it, or think that we're all stupid for discussing it - read a different thread. It's that easy.

Frankly, I'm bored by some of the topics that get posted here (I want to emphasize the word some here. I wouldn't read the forums if it were another word like most). And I don't read those topics. I'm at the point where if I see the word hollowshade in a smithing post I want to skip over it - the main reason I don't is because that's where I am in my smithing career and I don't want to miss anything that might alter how I should do something.. but when I'm done there I'll probably skip any hollowshade related topic. My choice. This one is interesting to me, I'll continue to participate. You all have the same choices (assuming of course that no forum rules are broken...).

And as far as naysaying is concerned:

I have a scary number of certifications and degrees. One of which I recieved just before I turned 19. I had been told the entire time that it was virtually impossible to get before you were in your mid 20s, and with my then-level of education almost impossible altogether. At 21 I was *STILL* the record for youngest person to attain it, and I'd already had it for two years. Looks like people were wrong.

My company recently released a product that we were told was a waste of time, there was no market for it, and it wasn't worth slowing development on another product in order to allocate staff to the new project. I did it anyways, and that product accounts for 2/3 of our current profit margin. We had to open a second branch office to work solely on the new project, while half of the main branch is on it as well. Looks like people were wrong.

I was told that you can't teach physics and calculus to middle school students and have them grasp the concepts. After a grant by a local university gave me some extra materials and training, my students accomplished higher scores with less class time than their high school counterparts. Looks like people were wrong.

I had a girl student who wasn't going to amount to much. Parents were druggies, she was a borderline suicide, etc. Pretty much written off by everyone as a lost cause. Somewhere along the lines she figured it out and is now a software company executive, happily married, kids, the whole works. Looks like people were wrong.

A while back I remember that you *couldn't* get a dev to answer questions, Sony *wouldn't* listen to feedback, classes *weren't* balanced, and there was "nothing you can do about it". The "warrior strike" *wasn't* going to accomplish anything.

Seems to me that while melee's aren't as balanced out as they could be (personal opinion, not intended to derail topic) SOE *IS* listening and *HAS* made changes. Whether it's too much or not enough is a matter of personal opinion, but it's clear the players *DO* have an impact on this game. Looks like people were wrong.

Oh.. what's said on these forums *doesn't* matter to SOE and *won't* accomplish anything. Seems to me that Maddoc follows it, listens to it and it at least has some influence.

So don't say things like "can't be fixed", "can't prove it", or "can't do anything about it even if it is broken". I *can* do just about anything. And as a community, we *can* influence changes.

Humans aren't bad at pattern recognition. A small percentage of them are so bad at it that they suck at gambling and pay for all those casinos. MOST people that gamble drop some money, occasionally come out ahead, usually lose, understand that the odds are in the houses' favor and gamble more for fun than any thinking that they're going to become rich off it. The fact that the next pull could just as easily be the one that wins (which is true, by the way) is enough for some of them to throw a few more quarters into the slots. EVENTUALLY, given enough time, SOMEONE is going to win a pull. That "the next one could be it" is the random possibility that keeps a lot of people going, we do it all the time in everything from gambling (this pull could be it) dating (this girl could be "the one") to camping mobs (next spawn could be the drop I need) to job hunting (maybe this place could be the one that takes me) to test driving cars (this could be the one I like) to sex (this time we might get pregnant) - even when the "odds" aren't truly random (like job interviews, first dates and test drives) the "next one could be it" tendency doesn't have anything to do with lack of pattern recognition, it's all about the fact that the next "thing" could be the "thing" we're waiting for.

Statistically, I know the probabilities and patterns, and I know I have virtually no chance of winning the lottery. But I still toss out a buck or two here and there to play once in a while, because *IF* I *DO* win, it's worth the buck. If not, I didn't lose anything I couldn't afford to lose.

On a roullette table, odds say that if you sit through a large number of spins (like say 50ish) and bet the same amount on each, you'll likely end up roughly where you started. But almost no one walks up the the roulette table with $50 and walks away with $50. Why? Because most people either stop when they get ahead OR they think they'll make even MORE money if they stick with it longer. And if they end up losing it all, no big deal because they brought the money in knowing they were risking it in the first place. The casino setup (like putting the cash out spots in the middle of the floor instead of the doors, or hiring hot wait staff) just helps them from a psychology standpoint, not inhibiting your pattern recognition.

If anything, it shows a high level of pattern recognition, because the casinos know exactly how to place things so the maximum number of people will spend the maximum amounts of cash at their establishment.

I know that the hot waitress at my table who is winking at me is PROBABLY doing it so she gets a better tip. She *MIGHT* be interested but I know she's probably not (because I recognize the pattern of cute girl + winking = higher tips). I'm STILL going to give her a slightly better tip and maybe try to get her number because despite my pattern recognition ability I can afford the extra buck (or few) and the potential gain is more than an offset (in my opinion) than the known loss.

Don't confuse pattern perception with acceptable loss.

And the number of people that actually suck at pattern recognition is large enough to be noticed, but small enough to fit well within the concept of standard deviation.

Just some thoughts,
SFG

[thrashette]

Stop beating yonder horse

If you think that the game is running the exact same set of formula over and over for all these different things for all different players, I think you're being fairly naive. Think about how much computing power that would take.

Negligible?

Let's say it takes 1000 instructions to serve a random number. That's actually a lot. It will take you no more than five minutes to find < 100 instruction RNGs on the Web.

Let's say there are 100 players in a zone, each needing 10 random checks per second. That's around the limit of what EQ servers can handle without bogging, as we have seen many times in Sshreazha Temple.

So you might need a million instructions per second to serve random numbers to players.

Let's triple it to include zone random overhead. So three mips.

For reference, the original Pentium could serve around 50 million instructions per second. Look, 47 million instructions are left for other things even if the servers are ancient.

I doubt that computing power for random number generation is at issue.

Pretty clear that one large RNG for lots of events is how they had to have done it for performence reasons, but its nice to hear it from a dev.

He didn't say that. What he said was that your slow self can't keep up with the rest of the events going on in the zone, so you don't get sequential runs through the random code.

[Tanker]

I've been hesitant to post in here for a couple reasons. First, these kinds of discussions are fun for me to read and participate in, but I can't really be involved in this one without having an air of authority that would hamper debate. Second, I'm not a statistics expert, so I don't know all the tests that random number generators go through (and I'm not looking for them, thanks) and I can't comment first-hand about the integrity of the current algorithm.

You should know that the random number generator used by EQ (on the Zone server side, which is the one that counts for just about everything) was reviewed about 3 years ago, and replaced with one we found after a bit of research into fast/good RNGs. It's a good one that we ran through some tests (not me personally, but the guy who did is pretty smart, though no longer on the team), that's really all I can say about it. As I said, my degree isn't in Statistics.

Without going into the details of the algorithm (which I won't, for obvious exploitable reasons), I will say that there is only one stream from the RNG per Zone, i.e. all random numbers calls use the same generator that was seeded once, when the Zone was started. Random numbers are a large part of EQ, and lots of different messages require them in their handlers. About the only way a single player would be affected by a sequential set of RN's would be if a single message handled required multiple random numbers (for instance, a recipe combine needs more than one). However, if you were to try doing "/random 0 10000" over and over again, I can pretty much guarantee that there is at least one other random number being generated for another player between two of your /random attempts.

I'm not going to comment on streaks except to say that we don't cause them on purpose at the RNG level. I'm not intimately familiar with every system in the game, but I don't know of any that artificially creates streaks by "changing the odds" either.

As far as those of you who say you've gotten failures upwards of 100 times in a row for a 5% check, I have to suggest that either you may have miscalculated the 5%, or just got unlucky (1 in 169 for that example, I've computed with my limited statistical background), sorry.

Hope this helps.

Tanker

[Jarak_akn]

First off thanks for posting and confirming the belief that the RNG is good :-)

I will say that there is only one stream from the RNG per Zone, i.e. all random numbers calls use the same generator that was seeded once, when the Zone was started.

Interesting so if you are the only player in a zone you may get a "cleaner" stream of random numbers. Of course this won't effect how streaky or random the numbers are, but it may make you feal a little better :-)

but I don't know of any that artificially creates streaks by "changing the odds" either.
Tanker

The only case I would really question on this is spell fizzles. In fact at one time I am sure I saw a quote to the effect that if you fizzle once then immediatly recast you get annother fizzle. I know from experience that I can go all night with no fizzles and then get 4 in a row. It seems that stopping casting, a step forward, a turn and a recast normally resolves this.

I personally think that the RNG is about as "random" as a RNG can reasonably be, especially considering that in most cases you will have tens of players and (probably) thousands of server side events drawring from the same pool.

I would still like to see a definative word on fizzles, but I guess that this is not really the forum to either ask for it, or get it :-)

Jarak

[Itek]

Thanks Tanker,

Let's review ...

1) "one we found after a bit of research into fast/good RNGs."

Someone said that they NEEDED a very fast and very reliable RNG and probably had one of the best in the industry.

Oh, that was me.

2) "Without going into the details of the algorithm (which I won't, for obvious exploitable reasons), I will say that there is only one stream from the RNG per Zone, i.e. all random numbers calls use the same generator that was seeded once, when the Zone was started."

Someone said the RNG had to be server (machine specific) and was only half right. It's machine specific with instance seeds.

Oops. My bad. But close enough for discussion purposes.


3) "Random numbers are a large part of EQ, and lots of different messages require them in their handlers."

Who was it that said that EQ was totally dependant on random numbers?

Itek, again.

4) "I'm not going to comment on streaks except to say that we don't cause them on purpose at the RNG level. I'm not intimately familiar with every system in the game, but I don't know of any that artificially creates streaks by "changing the odds" either."

Ok, there we go. It's official. Nothing to see here move along. (Really not being sarcastic for once. Thanks Tanker for finally debunking the "they are out to -fasten- us and I can prove it" myth.)

Kieroth-

You must be joking... right?

a) I didn't read it all. Please be CONCISE.

b) 90% of the codes you are talking about being broken pre-date computers by DECADES. Computer generated codes (random) are virtually NEVER broken BECAUSE -they- _ARE_ -random- and can't be broken by pattern recognition. Human generated codes are MUCH easier to break BECAUSE they are not random even when people THINK they are. Enigma was broken because of two things.

i) We got our grubby mitts on a machine and tore the -son-of-unmarried-parents- apart. That was a big help.

ii) The grunts in the field could not be BOTHERED to follow the procedure and reused the wheels improperly. Cutting the complexity down by... 3? orders of magnitude. (Notice, the HUMAN non-random element was the big factor here)

c) RSA 40-bit has been broken. It took literally THOSANDS of giga-flop HOURS to do so. If you can reproduce such results by hand that would be something.

HUMANS ARE SHOCKINGLY BAD AT PATTERN RECOGNITION. There is NO debate on this. It's a proven and proveable fact.

I) "The Bible Code" ... Any sufficiently complex "cipher-text" will generate any desired "clear-text" and that's the end of that.

II) Your own example of o's and 1's ....

You FORGOT that the outcome YOU see is NOT the outcome seen by the computer.

*pause for effect*

*hands over an ice-pack for the lump on your forehead*

The outcome of random() isn't binary (pun) it's a extremely detailed fraction. THEN it's washed thru an algorithim which has 2 outcomes.

00000111110011 looks non-random for coin flips.

A) We aren't talking about coin flips.
B) There's that **censored** word LOOKS again...

.4 .3 .3 .3 .1 .14 .6 .6 .89 .9 .7 .2 .12 .6 .9

That look a little more random?

And, just for the FINAL nail in the coffin... I have personally and in fact gotten success/fail/success before and I'm not alone. So saying "they never have back to back" or "they have unreasonably long streaks compared to coin flips" is silly. _We-are-not-talking-about-coin-flips_

To test your theory in actuality you would need to provide a reasonable sample size of /random 0 1 rolls with non-likely streaks. (Since they have spent the time, skull-sweat and money to make a good RNG I wish you luck in your quest and long life.)

Shockingly bad. Did I mention.... -shockingly- bad? People, and not just a few, see patterns in the deaths of Kennedy and Lincoln. "A few people that lose money in casinos?" A -few-? What planet do YOU live on? Millions of people gamble in Las Vegas EVERY YEAR. And I hazard the guess that there's a casino within 300 miles of you RIGHT NOW. People in EQ have been BEGGING for a casino for YEARS. It was so popular THEY BROKE IT. Twice.

People who want to successfully challenge the "bad at recognition" arguement, most likely, will try to show that people recognize faces very well from limited information.

This is a fallacy.

First most people have under 1000 people they recognize by face.

Second most people have gone up to someone they THOUGHT they recognized and realized, often too late, it was someone else. It's so freakishly common we even have a term for it, "mistaken identity."

As a teacher of "number theory" you should be amoung the ones most familiar with people's innate lack of understanding of math. Let's start with the percentage of people that take your class. (If it's 1% of the general population that EVER takes a math class at that level I'd be amazed.)

People are even worse at math than they are at pattern recognition. (In general, see my .sig about varied mileage.) Pattern recognition IN math... *shudder*

[kiztent]

Conjecture? Hell yeah. A lot of it. Especially when a lot of the people who post here say "I remember I had a streak where I got like 4-5 in one batch of like 15-30 tries" - that's so anecdotal it's not even funny, and allows for the probability of anything from 4/30 odds (a little high) to 5/15 odds (which would be very high). EITHER data set could be accounted for by randomness.

A lot of people said success doesn't increase the chance of skill ups either. I only trust tests with reproducible methods and posted results, instead of vague recollections.

[NerissaGoldenrose]

Interesting so if you are the only player in a zone you may get a "cleaner" stream of random numbers. Of course this won't effect how streaky or random the numbers are, but it may make you feal a little better :-)

For a completely "clean" stream, though, you'd need to be in a zone with no NPCs either... Lake Rathe Arena, I guess? If you're doing your combines somewhere like PoK, well, there's no WAY you're getting successive numbers out of that stream. Well, maybe at 4am on a Wednesday... no, there are people there casting spells (requiring fizzle checks) then too.

One way or another, I don't think we (the player base) are going to be able to gather enough data to either prove or disprove streaks in the original number stream. Nor do I think that it really matters in the long run whether there ARE streaks in the original stream, because it's highly unlikely that any one person's sampling of that stream is even consistently the same distance apart in the stream (i.e. every 50th number), let alone having them actually get several calls in a row from that stream. The original number stream could be completely free of streaks (doubtful, but possible), and any given player could still see them due to their sampling of that stream.

And the bottom line... even if there are streaks, they're not of consistent length, so you still never know if that next combine is going to be "the one" or not. You can't count on any streak to continue or end in a predictable manner, so even if each call were not a completely separate entitiy from a probability perspective, it might as well be. Your chance of success after 10 successive failures is still the same as it is after 10 successive successes or any other string of 10 combines, assuming no other factors (skill, stats, items, etc.) have changed.