Stoofer's 2nd Law

[Mr Stoofer]

Let's aim to get Stoofer's Constant down below 100 for the year 2007.

[mith]

bigAl, do you have data on where the first vote in each thread occurs? I think the way you're doing it isn't going to give an accurate result.

For example, the probability that a 1-post thread will have a vote isn't (# 1-posts with vote)/(All threads). It's (# Threads with vote in 1st post)/(All Threads).

And for later threads, you have the problem that some of the threads with no votes didn't reach a high enough post count for us to know whether they would have had a vote by that point or not.

[bigAl]

Yep, I took that into account. I sorted all the threads by length, then:

First data point = (number of threads that have a vote in the opening post) / (total number of threads)
Second data point = (number of threads that have either a vote in the second post) / (number of threads that are two posts or more long) + First Data Point
Third data point = (number of threads that have either a vote in the third post) / (number of threads that are three posts or more long) + Second Data Point
Etc.

I

think

that should work, but maybe not. (Not that it gives terribly accurate results anyway - it really needs a bigger sample size, especially for the longer threads. There were only six threads that didn't have a vote in the first 100 posts.)

[mith]

Could you send me the raw data? I'd like to play with this myself.

[Fritzler]

you guys are nerds

[mith]

What a nice thing to say!

[Mastermind of Sin]

Yay for nerds!

[Mr Stoofer]

There were only six threads that didn't have a vote in the first 100 posts.)

Where? I'll soon sort that out.

[CoG888]

FYI: This didn't happen until post #4743 in the "Count to 10,000 game," but it still happened

[IH]

Fritzler is so positive.

[bigAl]

Where? I'll soon sort that out.

http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=526
http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=763
http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2092
http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2274
http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3432
http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2310
I'm not sure if the ms community would appriciate you bumping all those old threads though....

Could you send me the raw data? I'd like to play with this myself.

I have three excel files:
- One for the data from jan24/2006 to feb13/2006 (after the law was announced): http://www.ualberta.ca/~aphillip/StoofsK_new.xls
- One for the data from ???* to jan24/2006 (befure the law was announced): http://www.ualberta.ca/~aphillip/StoofsK.xls
- One for both data combined: http://www.ualberta.ca/~aphillip/Stoofs ... nd_old.xls

I know that they aren't very understandable spreadsheets; the important data is in the first three columns (please ask if they don't make any sense). Also, there may be a little bit of overlap between the two, since the forums (fora?) sort threads in order by the date the

last

post, rather than the first. So if someone bumps a thread that was more than a month or so old, it would might have gotten counted twice.

*I can't seem to find where I wrote down where I started checking the threads from, all I said was "about the past five pages from jan24/2006", which might put it around may/2004.

I'd have to agree with Fritzler's sentiment, at least in the case of this thread.

[Mr Stoofer]

You know, I think this trend has been reducing recently. Hopefully this necrotastic bump will change that.

[Pie_is_good]

Vote: Stoofer

There.

I said it.

Now go back to sleep.

[Guardian]

you suck, pie.

[Oman]

Stoofer, the constant will jump now. Wait, constants can't jump.

[NabakovNabakov]

you suck pie.

Fixed

[Mokina]

Vote: Stoofer

There. I said it. Now go back to sleep.

you suck, pie.

Fascinating!

Conjecture:

"For each instance of vote augmentation via Stoofer's Observation or mith's Principle, an equal and opposite psychological impetus exists

against

posting votes in Mafia Discussion threads for fear of upholding the corollary. This has a net zero-sum effect such that bigAl's Calculation holds as originally written. The chance of a post containing a vote can be represented as 1 - (C/(C+n)), where n is the number of posts in a thread and C is Stoofer's Constant for the year in question."

"'Furthermore, it is clear that while a given user will view mith's Principle as either a positive or negative impetus, the influence of a Stoofer corollary cannot be estimated beforehand (see WIFOM)."

[ChannelDelibird]

16 month necro. Impressive.

[Mokina]

16 month necro. Impressive.

16 months of serious, serious research.

[SensFan]

Vote: Stoofer

There. I said it. Now go back to sleep.

you suck, pie.

Fascinating!

Conjecture:

"For each instance of vote augmentation via Stoofer's Observation or mith's Principle, an equal and opposite psychological impetus exists

against

posting votes in Mafia Discussion threads for fear of upholding the corollary. This has a net zero-sum effect such that bigAl's Calculation holds as originally written. The chance of a post containing a vote can be represented as 1 - (C/(C+n)), where n is the number of posts in a thread and C is Stoofer's Constant for the year in question."

"'Furthermore, it is clear that while a given user will view mith's Principle as either a positive or negative impetus, the influence of a Stoofer corollary cannot be estimated beforehand (see WIFOM)."

This clearly isn't NEW, since you bumped a year+ old thread.

[lolbifrons]

Wait so C is time dependent and quantized by year? Is it a calendar year or a fiscal year? When does it jump and how?

[Inferno390]

After much thought regarding Stoofer's Second Law and the statements that followed from it, I would like to propose a new statement based on previous information.

I call it Inferno's Hypothesis on Mokina's Conjecture of the effects of mith's Principle and Stoofer's Observation, and it states that:

"Through the existence of Mokina's Conjecture on previous points made in relation to Stoofer's Law, those who read through the imformation regarding given law will, while have the equal and opposite psychological impetus as given in Mokina's Conjecture, they will also disregard this impetus through knowledge of it's existence, and so comply to mith's Principle. This hypothesis, however, will cause those same people to regard this impetus through the fact that it has been stated that that it will be disregarded, leading us directly into a WIFOM and causing all argument to be made on the matter of Stoofer's Second Law irregardless and unimportant."

Or, in summary, now that all of these observations have been made, the arguments surrounding the law have become WIFOM and can no longer truly apply due to the fact that people have read them.