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<blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7890199" data-attributes="member: 16814">Sigh.&nbsp; Okay, when I said you did mathturbation, you got mad, but that's when you do the wrong math and get confident you did something cool because of the wrong math.&nbsp; What you did -- scaling standard deviations and then thinking that made distributions similar?&nbsp; That's wrong math.&nbsp; It's bogus, utterly.&nbsp; That you saw graphs line up was coincidence -- it had nothing to do with what you did but the fact that you kept picking numbers until you managed to make the center 10 data points of the normal cumulative distribution of 3d6 look like a line with a slope of -1.&nbsp; Making post hoc choices with stats is always dangerous, because you're altering the assumptions that go into a statistical model but not altering the model to account.&nbsp; It leads to your assumption that you found something, when you did not.&nbsp; If you look at the PDFs for d20 vs 3d6, you might not that you have 18% less chance of rolling a 14 or higher on 3d6, a 20.8% less chance of a 15, and a 20.4% less chance of a 16.&nbsp; Those numbers don't show up much, but that's a pretty big delta.&nbsp; In your streched and recentered 2*3d6-11, that same point is rolling a 12 on the 3d6 part.&nbsp; That's what lines up with a 15 on the d20.&nbsp; The 15 on the 3d6 is over 20 on the d20.&nbsp; I have no idea why you thought these were even comparable.&nbsp; Lines on a graph don't matter much if one &quot;line&quot; is a zoomed in circle and the other is an actual line -- they aren't the same at all.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ovinomancer, post: 7890199, member: 16814"] Sigh. Okay, when I said you did mathturbation, you got mad, but that's when you do the wrong math and get confident you did something cool because of the wrong math. What you did -- scaling standard deviations and then thinking that made distributions similar? That's wrong math. It's bogus, utterly. That you saw graphs line up was coincidence -- it had nothing to do with what you did but the fact that you kept picking numbers until you managed to make the center 10 data points of the normal cumulative distribution of 3d6 look like a line with a slope of -1. Making post hoc choices with stats is always dangerous, because you're altering the assumptions that go into a statistical model but not altering the model to account. It leads to your assumption that you found something, when you did not. If you look at the PDFs for d20 vs 3d6, you might not that you have 18% less chance of rolling a 14 or higher on 3d6, a 20.8% less chance of a 15, and a 20.4% less chance of a 16. Those numbers don't show up much, but that's a pretty big delta. In your streched and recentered 2*3d6-11, that same point is rolling a 12 on the 3d6 part. That's what lines up with a 15 on the d20. The 15 on the 3d6 is over 20 on the d20. I have no idea why you thought these were even comparable. Lines on a graph don't matter much if one "line" is a zoomed in circle and the other is an actual line -- they aren't the same at all. [/QUOTE]

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