Rising Suns??? Hollinger ESPN

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Originally Posted by FromWayDowntown

See, I think you're making an assumption there, too. Assuming your statistical data are correct, what they show is that it's highly unlikely that the Suns will lose 4 straight in San Antonio. It doesn't say where within those 4 games the Suns are likely to win; it just says that if the Suns play 4 games in San Antonio, they're likely to win 1.

The rub, in the context of this thread, is that the Suns might not get a chance to play the hypothetical 4 games in San Antonio. And there's nothing, statistically (from what I can tell), to say that they're unlikely to lose 3 straight in San Antonio. Losing 3 straight and then winning the 4th is as consistent with the statistical trend as losing 2 straight, winning 1, and then losing 1 more.

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Ah I can go with that if you don't want to go 7 games. We don't have to go 4 deep, 3 deep will do.

It's unlikely that the Suns will lose 3 straight in SA and more probable that they will win 1 of 3.

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Originally Posted by Allanon

It's unlikely that the Suns will lose 3 straight in SA and more probable that they will win 1 of 3.

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Wait a second, you've been saying throughout this thread that the Suns were probable to win 1 of 4 games in San Antonio (25%). Now you've unilaterally raised those chances to 1 of 3 games in San Antonio (33%).

What changed? (other than your need to fit facts to make your argument?)

Honestly, I think I'm done with this probability argument.

:lol

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Originally Posted by FromWayDowntown

Wait a second, you've been saying throughout this thread that the Suns were probable to win 1 of 4 games in San Antonio (25%). Now you've unilaterally raised those chances to 1 of 3 games in San Antonio (33%).

What changed? (other than your need to fit facts to make your argument?)

Honestly, I think I'm done with this probability argument.

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I lowered it to 1 in 3 because YOU would not accept a 7 game series, I changed it to fit your needs but you don't like that either.

As you are no longer debating it, I suppose you agree that the Suns have a higher proability to win 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 rather than lose 3 or 4 straight. :D

Why is it not likely for the Suns to win 3 straight in SA? This is assuming that the chance of each outcome of the game is 50/50 (which was stated above). However, in an extreme case, say the Spurs are playing a JV team, the chances of the JV team winning any contest is 0.1%, the chances of them losing 3 straight in San Antonio is quite high, namely 99.9^3, which is about 99.7% of the time. Now if the probability of the Suns winning in San Antonio for any particular game is 30%, the chances of them losing 3 straight would be 70%^3, which is about 34.3% of the time, and that isn't a low probability at all.

However, we already know that the Suns have lost two straight games in San Antonio, and since those two games were not up for probabilities, and has already happened, the outcome of the next event should not be "affected" in the same manner where the 3 games should be addressed independently. In other words, the fact that the Spurs has shown that they could win games vs. the Suns in San Antonio at a high percentage would move the probabilities of the Spurs winning the next game in the Spurs favour.

This is NOT a coin flip, these games are closely affected by the results of the others.

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Originally Posted by ambchang

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This is NOT a coin flip, these games are closely affected by the results of the others.

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Exactly.

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Originally Posted by Allanon

I lowered it to 1 in 3 because YOU would not accept a 7 game series, I changed it to fit your needs but you don't like that either.

As you are no longer debating it, I suppose you agree that the Suns have a higher proability to win 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 rather than lose 3 or 4 straight. :D

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Probability SAYS:

The Suns don't have to lose 3 straight in San Antonio:

NOW - they have to win one. Tonite, in San Antonio; against a Spurs team that is historically very good at finishing series.

Those are the fundamental statistical measures to use to judge what is going to happen this evening. I would say, based on that, the Spurs have a better than 50% chance of winning.

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Originally Posted by Allanon

Exactly.

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Hmmm ... it actually refutes most of the points you have made so far, in that you are treating the three games as independent events where the result of one does not affect the result of another.

I am not sure if you are thinking that this as a classic draw coloured balls out of bag randomly experiment, where there are 7 balls in a bag, 4 black and 3white, and the chances of drawing 3 straight black balls are low. The series is not playing out this way. The series is closer to having 7 bags with an certain number of black and white balls, and the number and ratio of coloured balls depends on what you draw in bag 1, bag 3 depends on bag 2, and so on and so forth. It is not entirely unlikely that you draw black balls three straight times out of 3 different bags.

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Originally Posted by ambchang

Hmmm ... it actually refutes most of the points you have made so far, in that you are treating the three games as independent events where the result of one does not affect the result of another.

I am not sure if you are thinking that this as a classic draw coloured balls out of bag randomly experiment, where there are 7 balls in a bag, 4 black and 3white, and the chances of drawing 3 straight black balls are low. The series is not playing out this way. The series is closer to having 7 bags with an certain number of black and white balls, and the number and ratio of coloured balls depends on what you draw in bag 1, bag 3 depends on bag 2, and so on and so forth. It is not entirely unlikely that you draw black balls three straight times out of 3 different bags.

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No actually I've agreed with you. I've said all along that they were related, the coin flips were brought up by somebody else along with unrelated events and such. Excellent post +1.

As you said, they are inter-related events, not singular events and not coin-flips.

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Originally Posted by Allanon

No actually I've agreed with you. I've said all along that they were related, the coin flips were brought up by somebody else along with unrelated events and such. Excellent post +1.

As you said, they are inter-related events, not singular events and not coin-flips.

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Then I am probably missing something, in the case where losing 3 straight is not probable probability wise. It is actually probable based on historical data, despite the extremely extremely small sample size (4 games).