RF On A MG Machine??????

[New2vp]

This means I'm 99.9% sure from direct observation that they are fair and random.If you have done such tests, it might be instructive to briefly describe what you did and how large your sample size was.  While interpreting the results requires some extra knowledge, I think everyone could understand the instructions to record the outcomes.I do not know which test you are running, but the simplest of these just records how often each card appears.  You could test whether all probabilities were 1/52nd on the deal (when jokers are not in the deck) or whether all probabilities were 1/47th on the draw for cards that weren't in the 5-card dealt hand.  In the simplest dealt case, the null hypothesis is that the probabilities for each card are 1/52, with the alternative hypothesis being the complement of that or that at least one of the cards have a probability different from 1/52.  You do have to be careful in the wording of your conclusion from this test.  Your statement that I excerpted above is incorrect and misleading.  If you performed a test of size 0.1%, and you found that your test statistic exceeded the critical value, you could say that the chances of rejecting randomness with such a test when randomness in fact existed was low, as low as 0.1%.When the test statistic does NOT exceed the critical value, which is what apparently happened, all you can say is that you did not have enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis of randomness based on the criteria that you set prior to performing the test.Failing to reject a null hypothesis is logically not the same as proving that a null hypothesis is true.*  And you certainly shouldn't say on the basis of such a test that you are 99.9% certain that the null hypothesis is true.  There is always the possibility that your test statistic will not provide enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis when the null hypothesis is false, generally called a type 2 error (I think I remember you using this notation somewhere although I could be wrong).  Unless you specify a specific alternative, which is not often done in performing the chi-squared test that I believe you are referring to, you cannot affix a specific probability to this type of error and without a huge sample size, I don't think you would ever get close to 99.9% certainty.*Senator McCarthy once said of one of his targets, "there is nothing in the files to disprove his Communist connections."  Regardless of McCarthy's conclusions, the lack of disproof is not itself proof of a Communist connection.

[New2vp]

Backsider is skeptical about the randomness of machines.Skepticism is good...In the absence of proof, one should always ere on the side of caution, and here the cautious approach would be to believe that machines are unfair and non-random until proven otherwise.Since Backsider lacks the math skills to prove to himself that VP machines are fair and random, the best stance he can take with the information available to him is to believe otherwise. For him, he's actually taking the best stance. The only problem I have with Backsider is how he is acting upon this knowledge.Why would anyone play a game they knew to be unfair???OK, Frank, I'm not intentionally picking on you, but I didn't see this from you until making my last post.Let's use logic and complete your near-syllogism.A. Backsider is skeptical about the randomness of machines.B. Skepticism is good...Therefore, C.  Backsider is good.  (I admit to taking liberties with strict logic here to be a bit humorous.)But now back to logic.  You say, "In the absence of proof, one should always ere on the side of caution,"  Well, here, as is indicated in the prior post, you will never get absolute proof, so I would prefer that you substitute the word evidence.Whether you agree with me or not on that point, using your logic you reach what you see as a contradiction, namely that backsider still plays despite what he says he believes.  And he has seen plenty of evidence.  Add to that that he is extremely assertive about ignoring evidence and insulting those that present it.Now harken back to your math days.  What do you do in a proof when you reach a contradiction?  Answer: You conclude that at least one of the premises that led you to the contradiction MUST BE FALSE.I would like to suggest a different fact pattern to be considered as a null hypothesis.backsider likes to yank shadowman's chain by making personal insults.  He sets this up by making posts extolling the pet theories of a vp-antiguru (who I will refer herein to as the BS-master) whenever possible, including but not limited to:    a.  Video poker machines do not employ fair random number generators.    b.  One cannot win by being an AP and following the math and playing with the edge.  (After all, if the BS-master was unable to win this way, it couldn't be that he was deficient in his application.  Since the BS-master is so smart, it must follow that anyone who wins with standard math techniques is necessarily not truthful.)    c.  One can win only by employing short-term multi-denominational progression techniques and these multi-denominational progressions win even on negative expectation machines.    d.  Employing multi-denominational techniques will result in a high percentage of large wins that offset small losses, despite the fact that simulations demonstrate the exact opposite.    e.  Long-term techniques only work for the casino; short-term techniques employed over and over and over and over work for the player.  Corollary:  there is no limit to how long short-term techniques allow the player an advantage in the long term.    f.  When discarding one card and holding four, there is a much higher probability than 3/47 that the rank of the replacement card will be the same as the rank of the discard, despite the fact that this can easily and has been debunked by actual observation.    g.  One can use patterns of past results to determine when a video poker machine is likely to hit or be "hot" or become "cold."This isn't a question of "proving" anything beyond a shadowman's doubt; it is an inquiry into which hypothesis is better supported by the posting pattern at hand.  My conclusion is obvious; it prevents me from taking the bs posts seriously.  I am a bit perplexed by yours, but perhaps with less observational evidence on this forum, you're erring more on the side of caution.I'm sure you can try to psychoanalyze backsider to try to get to the root of the problem and the contradiction you noted, but maybe a bit of skepticism on your part just might be called for as well.  There may be a positive probability that my substitute null hypothesis is true.Frank, I respect your judgment in a lot of areas and I look forward to reading your posts more than most.  I bear no rancor towards you and hope that this area of disagreement doesn't invoke the same from you towards me, but...maybe at least one of your premises is false."Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong" - Dennis Miller

[Frank Kneeland]

[QUOTE=Frank Kneeland]This means I'm 99.9% sure from direct observation that they are fair and random.If you have done such tests, it might be instructive to briefly describe what you did and how large your sample size was.  While interpreting the results requires some extra knowledge, I think everyone could understand the instructions to record the outcomes.I do not know which test you are running, but the simplest of these just records how often each card appears.  You could test whether all probabilities were 1/52nd on the deal (when jokers are not in the deck) or whether all probabilities were 1/47th on the draw for cards that weren't in the 5-card dealt hand.  In the simplest dealt case, the null hypothesis is that the probabilities for each card are 1/52, with the alternative hypothesis being the complement of that or that at least one of the cards have a probability different from 1/52.  You do have to be careful in the wording of your conclusion from this test.  Your statement that I excerpted above is incorrect and misleading.  If you performed a test of size 0.1%, and you found that your test statistic exceeded the critical value, you could say that the chances of rejecting randomness with such a test when randomness in fact existed was low, as low as 0.1%.When the test statistic does NOT exceed the critical value, which is what apparently happened, all you can say is that you did not have enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis of randomness based on the criteria that you set prior to performing the test.Failing to reject a null hypothesis is logically not the same as proving that a null hypothesis is true.*  And you certainly shouldn't say on the basis of such a test that you are 99.9% certain that the null hypothesis is true.  There is always the possibility that your test statistic will not provide enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis when the null hypothesis is false, generally called a type 2 error (I think I remember you using this notation somewhere although I could be wrong).  Unless you specify a specific alternative, which is not often done in performing the chi-squared test that I believe you are referring to, you cannot affix a specific probability to this type of error and without a huge sample size, I don't think you would ever get close to 99.9% certainty.*Senator McCarthy once said of one of his targets, "there is nothing in the files to disprove his Communist connections."  Regardless of McCarthy's conclusions, the lack of disproof is not itself proof of a Communist connection.[/QUOTE]You're asking for me to dredge up my team records from the 80's and 90's, but since it might be very productive I will comply.I'm off to my Tuesday Night D&D game. I'll try to give you the details tomorrow. The sample size was tens of millions of hands.In the meantime I recommend focusing on the question I posed:Why would anyone play a game they believed to be unfair?You'd be walking into a situation knowing that you were being cheated and expecting to lose no matter what you did.~FKP.S I believe these are important topics to discuss, but we should discuss the topics not the people on each side of the argument. I do not approve of all this "specific people" bashing, especially when it is so easy to understand the other side of the argument. In the presence of understanding anger and conflict should wither, unless a lack of empathy is present. Let's all try to remember that on the other side of these faceless logins real people with real feelings are out there.When one hunts monsters, it's all too easy to become one yourself. Winning isn't wroth it if you have to lose yourself in the bargain.

[brmcc74]

Why would anyone play a game they believed to be unfair?

Could be many reasons. Insanity, gambling problem, too much to list

[backsider]

Im glad this discussion isnt overtaking my life so much so that I need to put long and winding posts to try and get a simple point across. Why do I play having a belief the machines may not be fully random? Please read carefuly, as it might save a certain someone from making another 5000 word point only a relative would read: I PLAY BECAUSE I LIKE THE ENTERTAINMENT OF SITTING IN MY WHEELCHAIR FOR HOURS OCCUPYING MY MIND WITH A SIMPLE CARD GAME, AND SOMETIMES I EVEN WIN SOME MONEY! Yahoo! I call it fun because it means so little in my or most peoples lives; you may call it a serious, gut wrenching, life-changing, tortuous dose of sleepnessless. I dont care a smidget if the games are random or not because they offer what Im looking for in my spare time, and I most definitely wouldnt get all worked up over a differring opinion or be underhanded in showing timid denigration towards someone the true-believer camp cant get out of their heads.

[New2vp]

Many thanks for worrying about how I spend my time

[shadowman]

I dont care a smidget if the games are random or not because they offer what Im looking for in my spare time, and I most definitely wouldnt get all worked up over a differring opinion or be underhanded in showing timid denigration towards someone the true-believer camp cant get out of their heads.


 
You claim you "don't care a smidget if the games are random or not" yet earlier in this thread you stated "Ive read up on a lot of info from different people and sources on this subject".
 
I suspect that most people who "don't care a smidget" (whatever that is) would not be inclined to "read up a lot of info" on the subject.
 
So, what is one to believe? Are you now claiming disinterest because you have been thoroughly debunked? Bingo!

[New2vp]

When one hunts monsters, it's all too easy to become one yourself. Winning isn't wroth it if you have to lose yourself in the bargain.Profound.  I think I might have heard it before.  Didn't Nietzsche say it a bit differently?  "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster."  Well, he actually said, "Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird," but I don't think the German is very helpful to most of us here.  Who knows?  Maybe it can translate both ways or maybe your proverb was just coincidentally similar.Another good one is "You shouldn't try hunting grizzlies with a flyswatter."  I apologize; I would attribute it to the author if I remembered who it was.But I don't think either adage is really applicable here.  No one here is a monster (I'd probably go with "annoyance") and I'm not concerned with losing my moral underpinnings from my posts at pointing out the obvious.  I appreciate your different point of view and expect you to go about posting based upon it.  I hope you can appreciate mine even if you don't agree with it.It is not like I just stomp on psyches indiscriminately giving no credence to the ideas in the posts.  Certainly I have generally amiably added to the discussion and provided some help here from time to time.  Is there more to say on this subject?  Maybe, but I haven't seen anything new here thus far.  Maybe the insults are a bit different; but I haven't really judged their creativity.However, when a bit of irreverent sarcasm is almost literally begged for, sometimes I just don't think I should resist.  And I don't think any animals have been harmed in the process.Maybe a more appropriate aphorism for your protectee is, "Anyone who dishes out that much disrespect should be able to take it without whining."  Darn!  I don't know the source of that one either; it might have been my dad......ok, here's a good one for him from As Good As It Gets from Jack Nicholson's character:  "Sell crazy someplace else, we're all stocked up here."Frank, I'm sorry but as you can see from shadowman's last post, there is a lot of evidence that your client just isn't that credible.  Maybe you could put on a better defense for him if you could just get him to stop talking and take the 5th.

[backsider]

Im starting to enjoy this absence of dignity from the all-stars here. New is getting unravelled over just about anything, and shadow is feeling left out so he probably jumped out of bed to post for the sake of posting. At least TRY to get some sleep tonight my man! Here, Ill help settle you down some: A few of you constantly jump on posters who refuse your points of view. OK I guess, but no one has ever proven anything and the other camp also has ideas that probably are unproven too. Hence a disagreement, only they (I,in this case) can live with it and you cant. I look at this issue as not meaningful to life in general; you guys react like Anthony Weiner just undressed Mother Theresa with his eyes. Cmon Man!  Im not even trying to win this thing, and even Eduaaaaaaaardo has to admit his team is embarrassing the home fans. Even the ones holding the mirrors. 

[New2vp]

Im starting to enjoy this absence of dignity from the all-stars here. New is getting unravelled over just about anything, and shadow is feeling left out so he probably jumped out of bed to post for the sake of posting. At least TRY to get some sleep tonight my man! Here, Ill help settle you down some: A few of you constantly jump on posters who refuse your points of view. OK I guess, but no one has ever proven anything and the other camp also has ideas that probably are unproven too. Hence a disagreement, only they (I,in this case) can live with it and you cant. I look at this issue as not meaningful to life in general; you guys react like Anthony Weiner just undressed Mother Theresa with his eyes. Cmon Man!  Im not even trying to win this thing, and even Eduaaaaaaaardo has to admit his team is embarrassing the home fans. Even the ones holding the mirrors.What do you think, s-man (or others)?  Is this just general gibberish or do you think, noting the hour, that the alcohol is doing the talking now?  (Maybe he didn't understand exactly what I meant when I said he should "take the 5th."  He didn't really need to take it all at one time.)Ok, Frank, I give up.  The patient is yours.  Work your miracles and do with him what you will.