[Steam] Thread XIII: The World's #1 Forum-Themed Hat Acquisition Simulator

[blackfox]

Jibbers: If someone impersonates you, I may or may not be able to tell. If I can tell, I will probably punch them first, for imitating you. If not, I will punch them first, because I think they're you. Either way, someone will get punched first.

Scuzz: Versus is first come, first served, whereas jokes are carefully calculated to produce something resembling disgust or, occasionally, humor. There's never enough people for Versus, so you're almost certainly in.

Mario: Tell me this will be livestreamed.

Djinn: I was listing names of people I know are better at L4D than I am. We can form this team, if you'd like, just have fun picking me up all the time.

[Jibar]

http://kotaku.com/5581084/its-like-w...eam-fortress-2

Have fun finding him, but beware the link. You've been warned.

Wow, Kotaku really is slow. That picture has been around for a couple of months now. I saw it while I was still at Uni.

[chiasaur11]

Well, Bryn's stream is going again.

http://www.livestream.com/nyrb


Good fun.

[Byrnbot08]

Wow, Kotaku really is slow. That picture has been around for a couple of months now. I saw it while I was still at Uni.

Ya see here, this is is why things like rickrolling work. Cuz its vintage. Never Gonna Give You Up is right vintage, but recently got revival.

This sort of thing happens all the time.

[Dread Cthulhu]

In 2000, English journalist Piers Morgan was investigated because soon before a financial column of his paper announced that a certain company was an excellent buy, he was found to have heavily invested. As in, he used information that was meant to be private and not used for personal benefit to make a profit, breaking the laws in question.

Far as I'm concerned, owning a website (websites?) used to examine item drops in a game should prohibit you from using said information for your own benefit. And the benefit of your friends.

Drunken F00L, nice one.

Valve, nice one. Well played for misleading an entire community on something, inspiring several to craft away everything they have for no good reason, and then giving the answers to the equation in the hands of a few people.

[Jibar]

In 2000, English journalist Piers Morgan was investigated because soon before a financial column of his paper announced that a certain company was an excellent buy, he was found to have heavily invested. As in, he used information that was meant to be private and not used for personal benefit to make a profit, breaking the laws in question.

Far as I'm concerned, owning a website (websites?) used to examine item drops in a game should prohibit you from using said information for your own benefit. And the benefit of your friends.

Drunken F00L, nice one.

Valve, nice one. Well played for misleading an entire community on something, inspiring several to craft away everything they have for no good reason, and then giving the answers to the equation in the hands of a few people.

Elaborate further, vile fiend.

[Fawkes]

Drunken Fool got a golden wrench.

To be fair, I had information, too. I just didn't get a wrench.

I doubt DrunkenF00l was privy to anything that would have ensured him a wrench. He would have had to get lucky, just like anyone else.

[potatocubed]

On DF's website there are threads and threads digging in to the mechanics behind finding wrenches. I suspect, from the sudden flurry of DF and pals getting wrenches, that they've cracked it.

[Dread Cthulhu]

Elaborate further, vile fiend.

Puns weren't THAT bad.

DrunkenFool, the guy who made the backpack app and also tf2stats (I think), is the proud owner of wrench #58.

He's acknowledged that he didn't get the wrench "naturally" by pure luck, but that he managed to find the formula for the times and crafted specifically knowing it would result in getting a wrench. Nobody else has noted a pattern in the wrenches despite the times being available, suggesting that it can only be deduced if you have all the information from several websites that collate this.

It's also been noted that the owner of wrenches #36 and #56 are both his Steam friends, implying that the website has been sharing information. Not guaranteed, but seems the most likely outcome.

NINJA'D

[Valaqil]

Elaborate further, vile fiend.

I'm not the fiend, but I'll try to elaborate after a few minutes of searching. Drunken F00l, apparently, is good with math and programming. He wrote a program that allows one to simulate being on a server and receive drops. That's not related, but an initial piece of proof. There's a set of forums called "Source OP". Three(?) members there have received golden wrenches. They are estimating times for the next golden wrench to drop, and appear to be succeeding. The implication is that this isn't random (few things in computers ever are) and is instead based upon some equation in the code. Everyone believes that some of the guys at Source OP have figured it out, which makes the whole "random wrenches" thing seem unfair.

If you'd like to take a stab at it yourself, the times of wrench drops are here. DF claims that there's no equation that he used, just statistics. The time apart averages an hour or so.

EDIT: And Cthulhu posted most of that. Semi-ninja'd. Plus a slight change on that last paragraph.

[Jibar]

Considering how much we all use the Backpack Examiner and what not, Drunken F00l himself definitely deserves something, but if they have cracked it and started spreading it I hope Valve does something about it. That definitely isn't fair.

Also, for all the drop limit being lifted nothing is dropping for me thus far. Took about four hours of play for 1 item. Not entirely sure what's going on there.

[memnarch]

If they did crack it, I'd like to know how they dropped once this whole thing is over.

[watsyurname529]

I'm not the fiend, but I'll try to elaborate after a few minutes of searching. Drunken F00l, apparently, is good with math and programming. He wrote a program that allows one to simulate being on a server and receive drops. That's not related, but an initial piece of proof. There's a set of forums called "Source OP". Three(?) members there have received golden wrenches. They are estimating times for the next golden wrench to drop, and appear to be succeeding. The implication is that this isn't random (few things in computers ever are) and is instead based upon some equation in the code. Everyone believes that some of the guys at Source OP have figured it out, which makes the whole "random wrenches" thing seem unfair.

If you'd like to take a stab at it yourself, the times of wrench drops are here. DF claims that there's no equation that he used, just statistics. The time apart averages an hour or so.

EDIT: And Cthulhu posted most of that. Semi-ninja'd. Plus a slight change on that last paragraph.

The only reason it isn't truly (or as close as you can get) as far as I can tell, is because they've made it "fair" across timezones and that they want the Engie update info to come at certain times. So they've influenced the drop times to occur at certain moments. I'm not sure how much he's able to truly discern a pattern from it though.

[shadow_archmagi]

Random =/= Fair.

Random System:

Jibar: I used up four of my ubersaws, but it was worth it, because I got a golden wrench

Shadow: I used up four of my ubersaws, but it wasn't worth it, because I got an ubersaw.

Fair System:

Shadow: I did not put any time or effort into deciphering the pattern, and I got nothing at all.

Drunken Fool: I put much more time and effort in, and I was rewarded.

[onasuma]

Number Twenty Seven Is Down. Repeat. Number Twenty Seven Is Down.

[Dread Cthulhu]

Fair System:

Shadow: I lack the information required to get something, so I got nothing.

Drunken F00L: I have the information required to get something and lack moral fibre, so I got a golden wrench!

This wasn't that he was the only person who bothered. It was that he was one of the few people who could.

[AlterForm]

If you'd like to take a stab at it yourself, the times of wrench drops are here. DF claims that there's no equation that he used, just statistics. The time apart averages an hour or so.

Not sure what kind of statistical inference they're applying to get any sort of accurate estimate. For predicting the time between drops based on a finite data pool, you're looking at a t-interval.

Eliminating the obvious outliers (x > 20k, x < 100, x = seconds between drops produces a 95% confidence interval of roughly (2458,4897), which does have a center at 3677, very close to one hour. Variance on the prediction is horrendous though; s_x = 4153, n = 47.

Including the outliers, a 95%CI of (1561,5290) is produced, with center 3426. s_x = 7643, n = 67.

If outliers are reduced further to (x > 10k, x < 100), then the 95%CI formed is (1958,3400), x-bar = 2680, s_x = 2341, n = 43.

I'm going to go poke around on their forums and see if I can glean any other information on their methods. My calculations, however, suggest that any prediction formed from the current data would be tenuous, at best.

[watsyurname529]

Random is also completely fair as long as every single person has the same chance for the item/thing in question.

[Valaqil]

I'm going to go poke around on their forums and see if I can glean any other information on their methods. My calculations, however, suggest that any prediction formed from the current data would be tenuous, at best.

Huh. That's interesting. Thanks for the math. I did well enough in statistics/probability to understand enough of that, but it was one course that I fought. I discarded most of it after I passed.

I'm not sure if you could replicate it, but they somehow used the data before Wrench 34 to guess its arrival fairly closely.

I agree with wats about random being fair. However, perhaps we shouldn't dwell on fairness too long.

[Phase]

Random is also completely fair as long as every single person has the same chance for the item/thing in question.

Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!

[AlterForm]

Huh. That's interesting. Thanks for the math. I did well enough in statistics/probability to understand enough of that, but it was one course that I fought. I discarded most of it after I passed.

I'm not sure if you could replicate it, but they somehow used the data before Wrench 34 to guess its arrival fairly closely.

I agree with wats about random being fair. However, perhaps we shouldn't dwell on fairness too long.

Indeed, I had AP Stats last semester which is the only reason I remembered how to do it at all. Of course, it wasn't much harder than plugging the data into my calculator and running the proper test. Technology is useful that way.

[EDIT]: Tried my hand at "predicting" Wrench 34. Using all the data up to that point (no outlier correction), my CI isn't even close to being able to predict the time of the next drop to within "plus/minus 9 seconds."

When I correct for the early outlier drops (x < 10 or so), I get a similarly terrible CI; eliminating x = 56k or so produces a CI similar to the ones above, with very large variances around x-bar = 3600 ish.

Thus, the way I see it, there are 3 probabilities:

1) Ranma (the poster who predicted Wrench 34) is using higher-level statistics than I am familiar with.

2) Ranma is lucky, lucky bastard. Like, insanely lucky. He would have guessed an 18-second interval from a roughly 4000-second interval.

3) Ranma is cheating.

[Izual6764]

Nevermind. I'm an idiot.

[shadow_archmagi]

Fair System:

Shadow: I lack the information required to get something, so I got nothing.

Drunken F00L: I have the information required to get something and lack moral fibre, so I got a golden wrench!

This wasn't that he was the only person who bothered. It was that he was one of the few people who could.

If I recall correctly, he doesn't "Have Access" to those websites, he personally built them.

Also, I heard he used nothing but the statistics, which are freely available



--


Now, more important than the stupidity that is Valve making golden wrenches at all, I'd like to post here that I'll be showing Black Dynamite via Livestream at 9 PM EST on Friday.

[watsyurname529]

Indeed, I had AP Stats last semester which is the only reason I remembered how to do it at all. Of course, it wasn't much harder than plugging the data into my calculator and running the proper test. Technology is useful that way.

[EDIT]: Tried my hand at "predicting" Wrench 34. Using all the data up to that point (no outlier correction), my CI isn't even close to being able to predict the time of the next drop to within "plus/minus 9 seconds."

When I correct for the early outlier drops (x < 10 or so), I get a similarly terrible CI; eliminating x = 56k or so produces a CI similar to the ones above, with very large variances around x-bar = 3600 ish.

Thus, the way I see it, there are 3 probabilities:

1) Ranma (the poster who predicted Wrench 34) is using higher-level statistics than I am familiar with.

2) Ranma is lucky, lucky bastard. Like, insanely lucky. He would have guessed an 18-second interval from a roughly 4000-second interval.

3) Ranma is cheating.

He could be using very high level of statistics, but he had to have gotten quite lucky to predict it that accurately.

[Fawkes]

Alternatively, it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Nano]

That link needs fixin'.

[AlterForm]

Alternatively, it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A plausible theory. Probably my favorite so far.

[Worira]

Hmm, 73 found. Update should be soon. 1-2 hours or so.

[onasuma]

Looking at drunken F00ls backpack... he seems to be golden wrenchless.

[surikesu]

He's also now VAC banned, along with his friends.