Member Avatar for torrm

Hello all,

I apoligise if this is the incorrect forum but it seemed to be most relevant.

Basically I am doing some statistical analysis on game data using standard deviation and upon analysing the data I seem to have forgotten how to work out my percentages so here is to hoping someone can help!

Essentially this is the data I wish to work out;

Drop Chance in area: 12%

Chance of weapon: 59%
Chance of armour: 13%
Chance of rare item: 24%

The way I read this is there is a 12% chance of receiving a drop from an enemy, if this 12% is acheived there is a 59% chance to get a weapon etc.

Now how do I work out what chance I have of receiving a weapon in this zone? taking into consideration the overall drop chance as well as the weapons drop chance. I'm thinking it would be 59% of 12% but my head is current unwilling to work and google is of no help.

Thank you in advance!

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Member Avatar for rubberman

Time to go back to the book! There are plenty of stats texts (hard copy and online) to help you with this, and wikipedia may help as well.

Just remember, there are lies, damned lies, and then there are statistics! In any case (joke not-withstanding), statistical correlations require pretty simple maths, but all stats require a good body of data, otherwise value-skew is inevitable, and that will throw your game off significantly. IE, you can't just take a few points and extrapolate a likely outcome.

Yeah, not the answer you wanted, but the best I could come up with in 2 minutes! :-)

Edited by rubberman
Member Avatar for torrm

Thanks Rubberman,

I'll keep looking. The data set I have to work with contains several hundred values - I have already used standard deviation and graphed everything so I can already see problems it is just this one simple calculation I can't figure out which would help to explain my results.

Since posting this I have looked further and I know it is a simple calculation but I can't figure it out or find an example! Perhaps I am over complicating it as maths is not my strong point.

All examples I follow give a percentage higher than the overall drop chance of 12%, which is surely not possible. I would expect the overall percentage to be around 7% but thats just guessing (~59% of 12%) - I would of cause have to find the correct calculation.

Anyway thank you for your feedback.

Member Avatar for ddanbe

Just multiply the probabilities. 0,12 x 0,59 = 0,07 --> 7%

Member Avatar for torrm

Ah Thank you so much Ddanbe, I was misreading my decimal places - It's been a long day.

Thank you for the confirmation! I didn't want to go ahead and use an incorrect calculation throughout my analysis.

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