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[Witherweaver]

10000 lux of full-spectrum light about 30 cm from your face for 20-30 min.  Used for seasonal affective disorder and sometimes depression, especially in northern latitudes in winter.

Wow and this like.. makes you feel better?  I feel like I wouldn't want a light shining directly on my face.

[eHalcyon]

10000 lux of full-spectrum light about 30 cm from your face for 20-30 min.  Used for seasonal affective disorder and sometimes depression, especially in northern latitudes in winter.

Wow and this like.. makes you feel better?  I feel like I wouldn't want a light shining directly on my face.

I suppose it's to simulate sunlight.  IIRC, Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) has a lot to do with the decrease in light during winter.  It literally gets depressing.




Reading through the thread, I think the main issue is that the discussion is vague.  The initial claim was that "KC is far more skippable than people think".  Well, that doesn't actually say anything meaningful if we don't establish how skippable KC is according to general consensus, and how skippable it is according to the OP.  GOON GARDEN later gave his own numbers of 90-93% unskippable, but that doesn't sound far off from [my understanding of] the general consensus.  McQ provided some hard data that even suggests a slightly lower percentage.

It didn't help that the initial proof of the claim isn't particularly good proof of anything, which is what a lot of the earlier critical commentary was about.

And then everybody overreacted and drama ensued.  I am glad I stayed out of that, and I hope that this post maintains neutrality enough that I continue to stay out of it here.

[Witherweaver]

10000 lux of full-spectrum light about 30 cm from your face for 20-30 min.  Used for seasonal affective disorder and sometimes depression, especially in northern latitudes in winter.

Wow and this like.. makes you feel better?  I feel like I wouldn't want a light shining directly on my face.

I suppose it's to simulate sunlight.  IIRC, Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) has a lot to do with the decrease in light during winter.  It literally gets depressing.

Yeah, I've heard claims that it has to do with Vitamin D.  (Sunlight stimulates your body into producing it.)  For a while I took some extra Vitamin D (I usually take a multivitamin and a couple other things), but I can't really tell if it had any effect.  Probably not. 

[Kirian]

10000 lux of full-spectrum light about 30 cm from your face for 20-30 min.  Used for seasonal affective disorder and sometimes depression, especially in northern latitudes in winter.

Wow and this like.. makes you feel better?  I feel like I wouldn't want a light shining directly on my face.

The light is actually angled downward somewhat, and has a screen that makes it very diffuse.  The research has shown that it's actually neurons in the bottom of the retina that are keyed to sunlight (which isn't surprising if you consider where the sun is), so you don't want it directed straight into your eyes anyway.

[Deadlock39]

(The thread has gone a million directions since I started this, but I still want to post it because this is the internet and no one can stop me.)

39% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Are you referring to my 90 - 93% estimate?

It's just an estimation but its probably not far off, its not important to be precise to the second decimal point here

I think that's a joke that I get the honor of explaining!
It is implied that the '39%' part was made up on the spot by Deadlock, which he did for comedic effect.

Its a joke used to insult people who throw figures around without referring to actual recorded data.. I did "make up" the percentage but that is based off of memory, which is good enough for our present purposes

I was indeed poking some fun a people who use made up statistics. It was not directed only at you, and I did not intend it to be insulting. Given the direction of the thread, it is understandable that jokes could be taken in that way, and I am sorry I offended you. I do strongly agree with the sentiment the joke conveys. When people throw statistics around in these forums, they are relavant to the conversation less than 10% of the time and and have less than a %1 chance of being accurate. (...see what I did there)

You claim that your estimate based on memory is "good enough for our present purposes". While "good enough" is totally subjective, your number isn't supported terribly well by your recently logged games; however, the sample size is probably too small to make a meaningful percentage claim from. Based on the 37 pro games that included King's Court that you have played on the new system, in which you have skipped it 7 times, there is a less than 3% chance that you think King's Court is skippable 7-10% of the time. To get a ~95% confidence interval I would need to say that you skip (and presumably, think you should skip) King's Court 9-33% of the time (unskippable 67-91%)

Human memory is an incredibly bad source to base statistics on. This is not only because of the fact that it can't reliably hold the quantity of trials neccesary to generate useful statistics, but also because it is just downright bad at remembering these types of things.

Now, I did some math (probably incorrectly), and it was fun, but, even if the data was better, and my math and application of it was perfect, I consider it all totally irrelavent. Maybe it helps support my opinion that made up statistics are not worth using to defend an argument, but we need a well defined argument to start with before we attempt to support it with anything. I do feel that the response you have received in this thread is in part due to the way you positioned, stated, and defended your argument. This has been touched on by a couple posters while I have been very slowly finding time to write this.

The biggest issue I have with your position ("KC is far more skippable than people think.") is that it is incredibly hard to define. The primary reason is that what "people think" is not a single position.  There is a general concensus on the forum that KC is "rarely skippable", but in my opinion, getting more specific than that is not defesable. What "rarely skippable" means to f.ds as a percentage is impossible to nail down because everyone can have a different picutre in their head as to what it looks like.

Another issue I see is that the position posed is very combatitive. Presumably, everyone who reads your assertion is a person, and considers themselves part of this community. To the reader, your position becomes "I think KC is far more skippable than you do". You can argue that this is pedantic picking apart of wording, but the emotion your position evokes is important. After reading your discussion in this thread, I would estimate, that I consider KC approximately the same level of skippable as you do, but I don't agree with your claimed position.

The last comment I would make is that the position is execptionally difficult to defend. Even if we had a definitive position from the community that KC was unskippable on 82% of boards, attempting to defend an arguement that the number is too high is an exceptionally tall order, and a single game of Dominion is barely going to scratch the surface.

Since I have criticized the argument as written, I feel obligated to give my opinion on a better way to state and defend this position. A less combatitive position could be "KC can be skipped more often than some think" For this discussion I personally would have gone with a questioning title such as "What type of boards make KC skippable?" instead of a claim statement. For the post itself, I would defend the position in this way: "This is a board I played recently where I believe the general concensus would say to go for King's Court. I think that it should be skipped due to the presence of strong junking without trashing despite the presence of +buy.  I was able to beat my opponent decisively by ignoring King's Court and pursuing a money-based strategy. Do you think King's Court should be skipped on this board?"


I think we could stand to be more friendly around here when debating topics like this even if we think the person we are arguing with is an idiot. I think a lot of arguments get heated based on a difference in opinion that is effectively non-existent. We see in this thread, that the OP's position wasn't even on the side of the stats from top 20 players that he thought it was. I suspect the "100% of games are engines" caracature of reality that is pervasive around here and the attitudes that go with it shaped his argument.

[schadd]

yyyyyyyyyyyiiiiikes this thread accumulated 2 pages within a day, and i'm doing 50 per page i think.
my recommendation, is, upvote donx's posts because he made a board game that is probably your favorite, and whenever you encounter king's court, ask yourself, what are the odds numerically that this would line up with action cards, and is it better to be able to line it up with action cards than win a fifth of the game? kc+monument wins a tenth of the game (although in this case the fractions are different than that because you are playing a game with kc and monument) and gives you $6. i'm already sold. kc+witch does the same thing, kinda, and draws you 6 cards which is real effin neato.

@goon garden: why just one goon and one garden? and also, definitely leave the forum, for at least a week. i personally appreciate that you started a thread that attempted to improve our collective understanding of a card. if executed properly, that takes us about a thousandth of the way to being perfect players which is very nontrivial because we can knock out like two of these threads a day. however, reception and counter-reception was yucky and now we are a thousandth of the way away from being perfect dominion players i think, which is, uh, nontrivial.

watch agdq, go to a park and eat birds, talk to a dentist.

[funkdoc]

adam, everything you seem to be looking for would be much better accomplished on twitter were it not for the fact that hardly anybody here uses it.  you would expect the character limit to hurt your chances of quality discussion, but that's more than made up for by the extra options you have to regulate things (blocking, etc.).  every twitter thread is basically its own mini-forum where everyone has mod powers that only apply to their own experience there, and i think that's a huge boon to [serious] stuff; there's a reason black lives matter originated on twitter and not a forum.

Umm, pardon my ignorance. You are clearly much more well-versed in the Twitters than I am (you saw my attempt, it was pathetic, I felt like a fish out of water). I was thinking more along the lines of Reddit, a very large community where [serious] tags are respected and lots of really, really great discussion takes place as a result. If this is not a valid comparison then please tell me, because I'm not sure whether or not I agree with you.

the problem with reddit is that it's not all that likely to attract the kind of people who care about the game to the extent that we do here.  there's also the fact that trolling is a more central aspect of reddit than twitter, but i wouldn't be so concerned with that; the real problem is that your dream [serious] subreddit could very well turn into a ghost town.  BGG would be a more natural fit than reddit, and look at how many people there go "big money OP" or "dominion old game".

the wider culture of your reddits and 4chans tends to discourage active participation in the scenes you're interested in.  to continue the analogy from my last post, the main subreddit for competitive fighting games has done cool things like sponsor top international players...but it's also a cesspit obsessed with drama & sleaze where you see nary a word on strategy or becoming a better player.  top players also rarely post there unless their name is getting dragged though the mud - they save their thoughts for twitter & facebook, where they won't be forced to deal with "YOU FUCKED A TRANNY LOLOLOL" x100.

twitter tends to be one of the best avenues for building interest in a hardcore scene because it's a lot more public in nature than facebook, but still lets you keep the conversations in check in a way that no forum can.  things like blocking and muting are a lot nicer than having to ban someone from an entire site, as you might imagine.  twitter also attracts people from a wider range of backgrounds than forums do, meaning you have a chance of finding people who really get into dominion and join the league.  with a place like reddit you might attract more stream viewers, but probably not people who'll go any farther than that.

the big hiccup is that hardcore communities gaining a following through twitter tend to do so once a bunch of people from the established sites get active on there.  that's what we're missing atm.

now re: my line about eurogamers and social media...

I don't think you meant any offense by this, but it doesn't quite seem appropriate. If I asked you to not make comments like that would you do it? Maybe I'm just missing the point? I don't think I'm that far behind the times, am I? I'm pretty hep with what the cool kids have to say, cowabunga! Bee's knees! Bully for F.DS!

i meant that as a statement on not just this forum, but even the likes of BGG as well.  from what i can tell, "board game twitter" just isn't a Thing the way that, say, "social justice twitter" is.  what i mean is that plenty of people talk about board games once in a while, but there's hardly anyone whose entire presence is built around them.

i was trying to say that since dominion players haven't gotten into this stuff yet, this forum is the best we've got so it's reasonable for you to focus your efforts here for the time being.  but i will try not to say it that way toward you in the future!

[AdamH]

OK OK. Wow that's a lot of stuff, I leave to go play board games and dang. Umm, to summarize.

@DXV: It seems you weren't trying to defend the part that made me not want to bro out with you. So yeah, uhh that's cool. It seemed like you were saying something but you weren't. Let's just say we both didn't communicate effectively.

There are a lot of people saying reasons why they wouldn't like [serious] threads. I guess you haven't changed my mind and I haven't changed yours. OK. I really don't understand the people who say they don't understand why people wouldn't want a place for that, and that's kind of funny that I said that. I amuse myself.

@funkdoc: I think I understand what you're saying here. These are good arguments why Dominion forums haven't succeeded in those places as much as this one has succeeded. That doesn't equate (in my mind) to an argument why any particular thing would be better here, though. This is a forum, it's not like we've tried Dominion people discussing things in similar forums with different rules. Who knows, it could be better? The real reason is because I asked what people wanted and people said no for reasons I don't like.

I guess independent of what people think the right thing to do on that front is, and also even independent of how Goon Garden has reacted to all of the many things that have happened in this thread, I'd like to think that we as a community can learn from the way this has gone and realize that people deserve to be treated better than what happened here. Maybe the people who like to post off-topic things will think a little more carefully about what they post in the future? I dunno. I'm certainly going to be a little more happy about my use of the report button, that's for sure, as actually trying to engage in actual discourse with them and be nice about it has led people to point fingers at me saying "LOL UR OFF TOPIC TOO!!!" Hilarious. I'm super-amused.

[Roadrunner7671]

Well, I feel awful.
1. Apologies to everyone here, mosly Goon Garden and Adam, but let's just call this an apology for rearing my trolly head in the first place.
2. What does a [serious] tag do?
3. What does the report button do?
4. Is this a reoccurring thing where someone joins the forum, presents a different idea, then gets shot down?
5. What are we disagreeing about?

[Kirian]

they save their thoughts for twitter & facebook, where they won't be forced to deal with "YOU FUCKED A TRANNY LOLOLOL" x100.

So many people are down on auto-erotic fantasies.

[enfynet]

they save their thoughts for twitter & facebook, where they won't be forced to deal with "YOU FUCKED A TRANNY LOLOLOL" x100.

So many people are down on auto-erotic fantasies.

I see what you did there...

[Davio]

10000 lux of full-spectrum light about 30 cm from your face for 20-30 min.  Used for seasonal affective disorder and sometimes depression, especially in northern latitudes in winter.

Wow and this like.. makes you feel better?  I feel like I wouldn't want a light shining directly on my face.

I suppose it's to simulate sunlight.  IIRC, Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) has a lot to do with the decrease in light during winter.  It literally gets depressing.

Yeah, I've heard claims that it has to do with Vitamin D.  (Sunlight stimulates your body into producing it.)  For a while I took some extra Vitamin D (I usually take a multivitamin and a couple other things), but I can't really tell if it had any effect.  Probably not.

I have "solar panels on my back" that generate less energy during winter, so I take vit D and occasionally do the light therapy thing.
It's because my skin complexion is somewhat darker than plain Caucasians; my great-grandfather is from the Caribbean and his dark complexion (probably a dominant gene) survived all the way down to me, though it has been watered down by my other family members who are mostly white.

I don't know if any of it helps, but I believe it does, so it does.

[Awaclus]

2. What does a [serious] tag do?

It doesn't do anything. It just means the OP wants the discussion to be "serious".

3. What does the report button do?

It notifies the mods about the post.

4. Is this a reoccurring thing where someone joins the forum, presents a different idea, then gets shot down?

It has occurred a few times, but it's not really a thing.

5. What are we disagreeing about?

Whether or not funposting is fun.

[Davio]

4. Is this a reoccurring thing where someone joins the forum, presents a different idea, then gets shot down?

It has occurred a few times, but it's not really a thing.

It's a rite of passage.

I think this is just internet forums in general. After a while, some sort of consensus tends to be formed and the veterans start to form some sort of elitist group and anything that isn't in line with the consensus is heavily scrutinized.

Being active on a strategy forum is a great way to get to a decent level fast, but it's also a great way to stop improving as you'll stop trying crazy ideas the group doesn't agree with.

Let's say the people on these forums have an average Isotropic level of 30 which was pretty good, 40+ was elite. If you're new here and start reading articles and discussing and implementing ideas, you can get to 30 pretty quickly. Because most answers will be ~lvl 30 answers, any player below lvl 30 will be quickly pulled up, but conversely anyone above lvl 30 will be pulled down.

It would be great if the forum had weighted posts based on someone's skill level.
I mean, I can give perfectly fine Dominion advice, but it will be lvl 35 advice or thereabouts.
If you want to grow beyond that, you can only really talk to Stef, Mic, SCSN or someone like that.

[GOON GARDEN]

(The thread has gone a million directions since I started this, but I still want to post it because this is the internet and no one can stop me.)

39% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Are you referring to my 90 - 93% estimate?

It's just an estimation but its probably not far off, its not important to be precise to the second decimal point here

I think that's a joke that I get the honor of explaining!
It is implied that the '39%' part was made up on the spot by Deadlock, which he did for comedic effect.

Its a joke used to insult people who throw figures around without referring to actual recorded data.. I did "make up" the percentage but that is based off of memory, which is good enough for our present purposes

I was indeed poking some fun a people who use made up statistics. It was not directed only at you, and I did not intend it to be insulting. Given the direction of the thread, it is understandable that jokes could be taken in that way, and I am sorry I offended you. I do strongly agree with the sentiment the joke conveys. When people throw statistics around in these forums, they are relavant to the conversation less than 10% of the time and and have less than a %1 chance of being accurate. (...see what I did there)

You claim that your estimate based on memory is "good enough for our present purposes". While "good enough" is totally subjective, your number isn't supported terribly well by your recently logged games; however, the sample size is probably too small to make a meaningful percentage claim from. Based on the 37 pro games that included King's Court that you have played on the new system, in which you have skipped it 7 times, there is a less than 3% chance that you think King's Court is skippable 7-10% of the time. To get a ~95% confidence interval I would need to say that you skip (and presumably, think you should skip) King's Court 9-33% of the time (unskippable 67-91%)

Human memory is an incredibly bad source to base statistics on. This is not only because of the fact that it can't reliably hold the quantity of trials neccesary to generate useful statistics, but also because it is just downright bad at remembering these types of things.

Now, I did some math (probably incorrectly), and it was fun, but, even if the data was better, and my math and application of it was perfect, I consider it all totally irrelavent. Maybe it helps support my opinion that made up statistics are not worth using to defend an argument, but we need a well defined argument to start with before we attempt to support it with anything. I do feel that the response you have received in this thread is in part due to the way you positioned, stated, and defended your argument. This has been touched on by a couple posters while I have been very slowly finding time to write this.

The biggest issue I have with your position ("KC is far more skippable than people think.") is that it is incredibly hard to define. The primary reason is that what "people think" is not a single position.  There is a general concensus on the forum that KC is "rarely skippable", but in my opinion, getting more specific than that is not defesable. What "rarely skippable" means to f.ds as a percentage is impossible to nail down because everyone can have a different picutre in their head as to what it looks like.

Another issue I see is that the position posed is very combatitive. Presumably, everyone who reads your assertion is a person, and considers themselves part of this community. To the reader, your position becomes "I think KC is far more skippable than you do". You can argue that this is pedantic picking apart of wording, but the emotion your position evokes is important. After reading your discussion in this thread, I would estimate, that I consider KC approximately the same level of skippable as you do, but I don't agree with your claimed position.

The last comment I would make is that the position is execptionally difficult to defend. Even if we had a definitive position from the community that KC was unskippable on 82% of boards, attempting to defend an arguement that the number is too high is an exceptionally tall order, and a single game of Dominion is barely going to scratch the surface.

Since I have criticized the argument as written, I feel obligated to give my opinion on a better way to state and defend this position. A less combatitive position could be "KC can be skipped more often than some think" For this discussion I personally would have gone with a questioning title such as "What type of boards make KC skippable?" instead of a claim statement. For the post itself, I would defend the position in this way: "This is a board I played recently where I believe the general concensus would say to go for King's Court. I think that it should be skipped due to the presence of strong junking without trashing despite the presence of +buy.  I was able to beat my opponent decisively by ignoring King's Court and pursuing a money-based strategy. Do you think King's Court should be skipped on this board?"


I think we could stand to be more friendly around here when debating topics like this even if we think the person we are arguing with is an idiot. I think a lot of arguments get heated based on a difference in opinion that is effectively non-existent. We see in this thread, that the OP's position wasn't even on the side of the stats from top 20 players that he thought it was. I suspect the "100% of games are engines" caracature of reality that is pervasive around here and the attitudes that go with it shaped his argument.

I agree with most of what you say. A lot of your objections are valid within the constraints specified by my counterpoint:

By "present purposes" I meant "for the purpose of beginning a conversation on the factors which compromise KC's ability to give a ROI."

If our "present purpose" was doing an experiment on KC, then the criticism of my ballpark estimate would be justified.

Furthermore, my assertion that KC is skippable 7-10% of games is a hypothesis. (I apologize for not making that clear from the outset) I am making an observation (albeit one based on memory)

and all scientific inquiry begins with observation, and all observations are flawed by frame of reference and all observations are tainted by the faculty of flawed memory.

This is the problem of some rationalists who are a bit overzealous in their passion for science. They see me making an estimate based on memory and they cry foul just because it lacks scientific rigor.

My ideas are admittedly "half-baked" but that's because I am in the beginning stages of my inquiry into this topic. This is just the beginning of the discussion that was prompted by my personal experience playing dominion.

If people really care enough about academic rigor, perhaps we should apply the scientific method to Dominion and write scholarly articles on them.

I am aware of my shortcomings and my shortcomings are mostly in terms of not communicating my ideas very well, rather than a weakness in my ideas per se.

My choice of words for this thread title was regrettable.

The reason why I don't make great effort to articulate my ideas with more scientific rigor is because doing so would require me to write more words, and I don't think I am important enough to ask people to read a long article in which I postulate my thoughts on KC, and also because I lack the patience to collect data, even though I know exactly what needs to be done with it.

And lastly, as for your criticism of my memory based 90-93%, I realize memory is an unreliable instrument. So are the senses, yet science begins by empirical evidence (from the five senses, and all sensory information is unreliable. That is an argument for proceeding through the scientific process, but it is not an argument again making the first step.

And I fully realize that in making this thread, I was merely making the first step in the scientific process, some posters seem to think that I have delusions of having completed the scientific process when I suffer no such delusion.

[GOON GARDEN]

I'm certainly going to be a little more happy about my use of the report button, that's for sure, as actually trying to engage in actual discourse with them and be nice about it has led people to point fingers at me saying "LOL UR OFF TOPIC TOO!!!" Hilarious. I'm super-amused.

My thread was ill-conceived and poorly titled, so it was damned to wander off topic from the outset.

I am glad you are amused, it didn't amuse me at all. I mean, here is someone actually being a kind human being to me when I was having an awful day and it really made me feel a lot better, and to me that is worth much more than focusing on the topic of KC - Which nobody was in the mood to do any way.

I learned a while ago to always try to be kind, because you never know how awful someone else might be feeling, and you might be the only person who shows them kindness that day. 

I feel better today, thank you to the posters who posted kindly to me in this thread, and sorry I didn't have time to respond to all of them. Your empathy and positive regard is truly appreciated.

[Witherweaver]

So jokes aside, has there actually been a consensus on KC on this particular board?  (I mean the one linked in the original post:  https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160103/log.0.1451844058550.txt.)

I think Awaclus said that when he tested against other players, KC didn't perform that well.  Or at least he said:

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?action=post;quote=556766;topic=14521.25;last_msg=557154

I can see the point that you can't combat Mountebank junking so it's hard to line your KC up, and you also have to pick up some Margraves.  I think it may be the kind of thing where if your KC lines up with Mountebank early, you probably win, otherwise not. 

[Infthitbox]

So jokes aside, has there actually been a consensus on KC on this particular board?  (I mean the one linked in the original post:  https://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160103/log.0.1451844058550.txt.)

I think Awaclus said that when he tested against other players, KC didn't perform that well.  Or at least he said:

http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?action=post;quote=556766;topic=14521.25;last_msg=557154

I can see the point that you can't combat Mountebank junking so it's hard to line your KC up, and you also have to pick up some Margraves.  I think it may be the kind of thing where if your KC lines up with Mountebank early, you probably win, otherwise not.

When AdamH and Awaclus played this board on stream, Adam (playing money-variants) crushed him every time. I believe that Awaclus was able to line up KC-Mountebank (unblocked) once total during the set, and it still didn't really help him win. I guess those logs would be up now for review; I'll see if I can link them.

EDIT: logs

http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160104/log.0.1451928235206.txt
http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160104/log.0.1451927852989.txt
http://gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?http://dominion-game-logs.s3.amazonaws.com/game_logs/20160104/log.0.1451927485920.txt

[Deadlock39]

(The thread has gone a million directions since I started this, but I still want to post it because this is the internet and no one can stop me.)

39% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Are you referring to my 90 - 93% estimate?

It's just an estimation but its probably not far off, its not important to be precise to the second decimal point here

I think that's a joke that I get the honor of explaining!
It is implied that the '39%' part was made up on the spot by Deadlock, which he did for comedic effect.

Its a joke used to insult people who throw figures around without referring to actual recorded data.. I did "make up" the percentage but that is based off of memory, which is good enough for our present purposes

-snip-

made up statistics are not worth using to defend an argument

-snip-

By "present purposes" I meant "for the purpose of beginning a conversation on the factors which compromise KC's ability to give a ROI."

If our "present purpose" was doing an experiment on KC, then the criticism of my ballpark estimate would be justified.

-snip-

(snips for brevity, not intended to take things out of context. Hopefully I did not.)

So the heart of my position is that I am criticizing the usage of an estimate, and not the accuracy of it. It is my opinion that throwing a number that does not have a solid basis into an argument adds nothing at all to your position, and can create confusion.

If your purpose was to have a conversation on the factors which compromise KC's ability to give a ROI, you succeeded at that by posting and discussing your game log.  There was a lot of good discussion that was started from there, and a few users who initially thought KC was good on the board even decided it should be skipped.

I do not feel your estimate added anything to the discussion about KC. Rather, it caused others to question its accuracy, and whether it was or was not "far more" than the general consensus or not.

The main issue that comes from guessing at statistics based on feel is that it generates conflict where there may not be any.  It is possible for two people to completely agree on the % of time KC should be skipped in practice, but have completely different estimated percentages based on their personal biases. This is basically what we saw in this thread. Your skip rate for KC in your last 37 games is ~19%, which almost exactly matches the skip rate from top 20 players of ~18%. It is much better to (as you said) discuss "the factors which compromise KC's ability to give a ROI" than to make an attempt to pin a number on the frequency those factors occur.

[GOON GARDEN]

(The thread has gone a million directions since I started this, but I still want to post it because this is the internet and no one can stop me.)

39% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Are you referring to my 90 - 93% estimate?

It's just an estimation but its probably not far off, its not important to be precise to the second decimal point here

I think that's a joke that I get the honor of explaining!
It is implied that the '39%' part was made up on the spot by Deadlock, which he did for comedic effect.

Its a joke used to insult people who throw figures around without referring to actual recorded data.. I did "make up" the percentage but that is based off of memory, which is good enough for our present purposes

-snip-

made up statistics are not worth using to defend an argument

-snip-

By "present purposes" I meant "for the purpose of beginning a conversation on the factors which compromise KC's ability to give a ROI."

If our "present purpose" was doing an experiment on KC, then the criticism of my ballpark estimate would be justified.

-snip-

(snips for brevity, not intended to take things out of context. Hopefully I did not.)

So the heart of my position is that I am criticizing the usage of an estimate, and not the accuracy of it. It is my opinion that throwing a number that does not have a solid basis into an argument adds nothing at all to your position, and can create confusion.

If your purpose was to have a conversation on the factors which compromise KC's ability to give a ROI, you succeeded at that by posting and discussing your game log.  There was a lot of good discussion that was started from there, and a few users who initially thought KC was good on the board even decided it should be skipped.

I do not feel your estimate added anything to the discussion about KC. Rather, it caused others to question its accuracy, and whether it was or was not "far more" than the general consensus or not.

The main issue that comes from guessing at statistics based on feel is that it generates conflict where there may not be any.  It is possible for two people to completely agree on the % of time KC should be skipped in practice, but have completely different estimated percentages based on their personal biases. This is basically what we saw in this thread. Your skip rate for KC in your last 37 games is ~19%, which almost exactly matches the skip rate from top 20 players of ~18%. It is much better to (as you said) discuss "the factors which compromise KC's ability to give a ROI" than to make an attempt to pin a number on the frequency those factors occur.

This whole post of yours assumes that when I made that estimate that in doing so I intended to make that the center of the discussion, when that is what others did, not I.

I meant to say, Ìn my estimation, I skip KC (in my estimation)__% of games and even when I choose to skip it I do no worse or better than in games where I choose to buy it, and here is why I think it should be skipped in some cases``

But before we could progress the discussion, the contrarian horde had a field day

In a helpful forum, people could have taught me how to find out my skip % of KC so I don`t need to estimate

But the majority of this forum would prefer to mock and imitate me rather than educating me to improve my methods.

[Haddock]

But the majority of this forum would prefer to mock and imitate me rather than educating me to improve my methods.

Sigh... I was really hoping not to get involved in this one.  But here goes.

I can assure you that this statement of yours is not the case. 

I'm fairly new to these forums, but I know them well enough that I can tell you with some certainty that only a very small percentage of the users on this forum would ever intend to mock or outright attack any new member.  It's actually quite a friendly community with the exception of just a few individuals.  The large majority of the comments made in this thread that you have seen as being mocking or attacking have come from people who I feel I know well enough to be sure that they had no intention of attacking you.  The jokes made were, on the whole, aimed to make fun of some of the tropes and behaviours of this forum as a whole, not aimed to poke fun at you.

[Harley_Beckett]

I'm certainly going to be a little more happy about my use of the report button, that's for sure, as actually trying to engage in actual discourse with them and be nice about it has led people to point fingers at me saying "LOL UR OFF TOPIC TOO!!!" Hilarious. I'm super-amused.

I learned a while ago to always try to be kind, because you never know how awful someone else might be feeling, and you might be the only person who shows them kindness that day. 

At the risk of being 'that guy', I played two games with you just before Christmas and after both you told me my wins were 'bad' and I didn't deserve them.

Under other circumstances, if my wins were very high-variance luck-based strategies, I wouldn't necessarily have minded, but you seemed very unreasonable.  The first game I beat you with an early pile-out facilitated by Highways and +buy.  The second, you were going for a Madman megaturn into Duchies/Dukes, but it didn't work against whatever it was I was doing.

The first one was particularly galling because I am a dreadful dominion player, so on the rare occasions when I pull off something like that I do feel a sense of pride.

Now, I don't normally remember the details of games I played a month ago, but this occurence stuck in my head.  Kinda ruined my day dude.  I'm sorry you had a bad time yesterday, but I would humbly suggest that you practice what you preach.  Fo' sheezy.

[Deadlock39]

This whole post of yours assumes that when I made that estimate that in doing so I intended to make that the center of the discussion, when that is what others did, not I.

I don't really feel that my comments imply that I make that assumption, but if they do, I will say now that it was not my intention.

I assume only that by by making your estimate that you intended to make it a part of (not the center of) the discussion, and I argue that estimated statistics of this sort have no place in any discussion ever because they are by their very nature meaningless.  I'm not sure an actual computed percentage has much place in this discussion either, but at least it is a factual data point that could be used to see how your play compares to others.

[drsteelhammer]

The problem was our "estimation" was useless at best and misleading at worst. I usually don't care about that such things, I mean it's a forum you can say whatever you want. However, I found Deadlock's poke at it amusing and not at all out of place since it raised a valid point. And your response failed to argue against that, you could have left things where they were and be done with it.

[enfynet]

But the majority of this forum would prefer to mock and imitate me rather than educating me to improve my methods.

I am going to manually count all the replies in this thread, just to prove how wrong this statement is, along with your general assumption on the community. If you come in here and start off with "I know better than you" I can guarantee you that will no go over well. There is no "nice way" to say things like that, and if you wanted to discuss things don't start off combative.

Edit: I counted (Forgive the numbers not adding up exactly, some posts counted for more than one "type" of post.)

Goon Garden:
On Topic - 15
Off Topic - 22
Humorous - 0
Attacks - 5

Other Replies:
On Topic - 28
Off Topic - 86
Humorous - 20
Attacks - 0

If you go back and read the first two pages, you will notice that the majority are on topic, with a few jokes in there. It really got derailed when the forum members were accused of mocking/insulting/attacking Goon Garden, where there was no malice intended.