Study: Gaming linked to depression.

[El Mahdi]

I think that when the world at large thinks "gamer", it's not rpg gamers that come to mind to them, but vidio game players.

Now-a-days, most likely true. Other than those old enough to remember stories from the 80's about how D&D was based in Satanism, most people probably don't realize that it's still a burgeoning hobby or have even heard of it in the first place. It's all about the MMO's today.

And the study was specifically about those who play video games, not RPG's. I guess a few people have missed that part in the article and the OP (or they just didn't read them).

 

[nedjer]

Tabletop RPG players get off their backsides, go out and meet people and negotiate over how they roleplay.

Videogame players plant their backsides, meet no one f2f and play the game the way the system says.

One is designed to be fun with your mates, the other to press you to keep chasing ever higher moving targets. They should do a study to see if tabletop RPGs help with depression. If being active, socialising and having some control over things are good for depression, tabletop RPGs might get some praise.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

The margin of error on any Poissonian distribution (which a study like this will produce) is the square root of the number of participants over the number of participants, so 100 people would have a 10% margin of error either way when compared to the general populace, 500 people would have 4.6% margin of error, and 300,000 people would have a 0.18% margin of error. That's why news agency stopped putting margin of error in their polling data because you could tell they polled about 25 people.

And one counterexample with pictures does not disprove a study, it just shows you are not average.

 

[Vartan]

Of course we're depressed. We keep dying.

Yes!

 

[darjr]

Doesn't it make you sad that no one told you yet?

I'm not doing it. Make Rincewind do it.

 

[ggroy]

The margin of error on any Poissonian distribution (which a study like this will produce) is the square root of the number of participants over the number of participants, so 100 people would have a 10% margin of error either way when compared to the general populace, 500 people would have 4.6% margin of error, and 300,000 people would have a 0.18% margin of error. That's why news agency stopped putting margin of error in their polling data because you could tell they polled about 25 people.

By "margin of error", are you referring to the square root of the variance divided by the mean?

What exactly is the Poisson distribution modeling in this particular study?