Difference between increase of x% (old percentage + old percentage * x%)% and increase of x percentage points (old percentage and x)%
Having two possible outcomes does not mean it’s a 50:50 chance.
“So if I aim the arrow at the 1cm square from 100m away and shoot, I either hit it or I don’t. So basically I have a 50% chance of hitting it.”
My wife, father-in-law and I were playing a board game with my brother-in-law. In this game, we were playing as detectives who have to try to find his character, but each turn he could move in secret in one of several directions. We were a few turns in at one point and he could have been in any of dozens of places at this point. We drove him nuts by saying “he’s either in this spot or he’s not, it’s a 50-50 chance.” He kept arguing “I could be in a ton of places! It’s not a 50-50 chance!” But we just kept pretending we didn’t understand and arguing that there were only two possibilities, he’s there or he’s not, so it was clearly a 50-50 chance. He got quite angry.
I love Scotland Yard. We got it for a friend who loves detective stories. Then discovered that it’s a public transit simulator which is even better.
Letters from Whitechapel?
Either that or you buried the lede by failing to mention something rather significant about the hidden character, and you were playing Fury of Dracula. Or my boardgamegeek-fu isn’t as strong as I hoped.
Very weird fun fact about arrows/darts and statistics, theres 0% chance of hitting an exact bullseye. You can hit it its possible to throw a perfect bullseye. It just has a probability of zero when mathematically analyzed due to being an infinitesimally small point. Sound like I’m making shit up? Here’s the sauce
How can an outcome both be entirely possible and have 0% probability?
Q.E.D
Key word here is “infinitesimally.” Of course if you’re calculating the odds of hitting something infinitesimally small you’re going to get 0. That’s just the nature of infinities. It is impossible to hit an infinitesimally small point, but that’s not what a human considers to be a “perfect bullseye.” There’s no paradox here.
Another lesson I the importance of significant digits, a concept I’ve had to remind many a young (and sometimes an old) engineer about. An interesting idea along similar lines is that 2 + 2 can equal 5 for significantly large values of 2.
Either I become president, or I don’t.
Therefore, the odds of me becoming president is 50%
Brb committing 34 felonies.
The thing with that is that it’s actually a useful generalization to make in a lot of scenarios.
If you know nothing about the distinction between two possible outcomes, treating them as equally likely is a helpful tool to continue with the back of the envelope guess. Knowing this path needs 5 coin tosses to go right and this one needs 10 is helpful to approximate which is better.
Your example is obviously outside the realm where you have zero information, so uniform distribution is no longer the reasonable default. But the idea is from a reasonable technique, taken to extremes by someone who doesn’t fully get it.
hopeful-weirdo just needs to be told to consider what increasing by 500% means and it’ll click.
In game design, it has to be stated whether it’s multiplicative or additive. Sometimes a logarithmic function is used as well, with increases in efficiency as 1 / ( 1 + bonus ). This allows you to always add more bonus, but there’s diminishing returns.
i wish it was more common to also indicate the precedence of a percentage increase, so that it’s easier to know if i’m dealing with (x + y ) * z or x + (y * z). although that’s admittedly a lot harder to communicate.
Just include a glossary of formulas for figuring out stats/chances/whatever in your game. With clearly labeled variables. Then throw a reference to that glossary in your tooltips/helpful popups.
This upgrade adds +100% critical chance.
The weapon has a base critical chance of 10%, so the new critical chance is 20%, not 110%
People got this wrong about inflation as well. In 2020 there was actual deflation, and in 2021 there was very minimal inflation, meaning prices were still largely lower or similar as 2019. Then we saw 9% inflation in 2022. Total inflation in 2024 vs the 2019 benchmark was around 15%. Or 3% average per year, which is barely over the baseline. People just hear 9% inflation, completely missing the fact that this was a YoY number relative to the Trump recession.
And then there was that bogus article that said Argentina had lowered it’s inflation to 2% and you find out in the article that’s monthly inflation and the yearly figure was like 190%.
Drag doesn’t know exactly what the problem is, but the official inflation figures cannot be right. Housing is so much more expensive. Food is more expensive. And it’s not 9% more expensive. Drag knows they say the math takes into account the price of rent, but they’ve gotta be lying somehow. It’s impossible that the cost of living is rising so much faster than inflation. Those should be the same. If they’re not the same, someone’s math is wrong.
I keep track of my grocery bills going on 10 years now and 14-15% is spot on for what I buy.
