Lottery Day Countdown - May 17th

[bluebellmaniac]

6 Days to go before we know...

[Degoat]

“I’m not supers ious but I am a little s ious.”

- David Robinson is the representative for the spurs at Tuesdays lottery.
- I’m Graduating with my bachelors next week as well.

We’re golden boys it’s gonna be a good week

[rascal]

Spurs are getting into the top 4.

[John B]

#1 on my first try

[look_at_g_shred]

Just got the 3rd pick on my first try.

[KingKev]

Admiral will represent the Spurs at the lottery in Chicago May 17.

[JPB]

Jinx is too big on ST, we're gonna get 10th pick, tbh.

[R. DeMurre]

It'd be hilarious to see a running count of how many times people have pressed the SIM LOTTERY button on the Tankathon website. It's in the millions, no doubt. I probably have over a 100 to my name.

[Uriel]

FWIW, the expected value of the Spurs’ lottery pick is 8.02.

[Russ]

FWIW, the expected value of the Spurs’ lottery pick is 8.02.

Which shows you how crazy statistics can be, since 8 is a draft position that the Spurs literally cannot get.

[rjv]

Which shows you how crazy statistics can be, since 8 is a draft position that the Spurs literally cannot get.

the statistical mean is 8 so the inference from that is that the spurs would land at 9. i've run the tankathon close to one hundred times and the mean for me is just under 9 as well.

[BatManu20]

[bluebellmaniac]

3 Days to go. Then we will know...
.

[offset formation]

3 Days to go. Then we will know...
.

Insert Bart Scott GIF.

[daslicer]

Admiral will represent the Spurs at the lottery in Chicago May 17.

David's wife is also from Chicago. Maybe this a good omen lol.

[bluebellmaniac]

Tomorrow... We will know.

[Ariel]

Which shows you how crazy statistics can be, since 8 is a draft position that the Spurs literally cannot get.

It's probabilities, and it's pretty logical if you think about it. Say you play a game where you flip a coin and you win $1 if it's heads or lose $1 of it's tails. What's the value you'd expect to make if you play the game?
Well, if you only play once, there's no chance you'll break even: you'll either win $1 or lose $1. Yet the expected value is 0: if you play enough times, you'll see that, on average, you'll neither win nor lose.
That's called expected value, which is the value you'd expect (the random variable) to have. You get it by adding each value times its probability of occurrence.
In such case would be E(X) = 0.5 · 1 + 0.5 · (-1) = 0, which is a value that is impossible to get in one experiment.
Applying the same principle to the lottery, you'd get expected value of Spurs’ pick = 1 · 0.045 + 2 · 0.048 + 3 · 0.052+ 4 · 0.057 + 5 · 0 + 6 · 0 + 7 · 0 + 8 · 0 + 9 · 0.507 + 10 · 0.259 + 11 · 0.03 + 12 · 0.001+ 13 · 0 + 14 · 0 = 8.02 (actually there's a VERY small chance at 13, so in reality it'd be a little worse than this).
Which means that, if you hit "SIM LOTTERY" button on Tankathon a large enough amount of tries, and you average the results, it should be around 8.02 (the more tries, the closer).

[KingKev]

It's probabilities, and it's pretty logical if you think about it. Say you play a game where you flip a coin and you win $1 if it's heads or lose $1 of it's tails. What's the value you'd expect to make if you play the game?
Well, if you only play once, there's no chance you'll break even: you'll either win $1 or lose $1. Yet the expected value is 0: if you play enough times, you'll see that, on average, you'll neither win nor lose.
That's called expected value, which is the value you'd expect (the random variable) to have. You get it by adding each value times its probability of occurrence.
In such case would be E(X) = 0.5 · 1 + 0.5 · (-1) = 0
Applying the same principle to the lottery, you'd get expected value of Spurs’ pick = 1 · 0.045 + 2 · 0.048 + 3 · 0.052+ 4 · 0.057 + 5 · 0 + 6 · 0 + 7 · 0 + 8 · 0 + 9 · 0.507 + 10 · 0.259 + 11 · 0.03 + 12 · 0.001+ 13 · 0 + 14 · 0 = 8.02 (actually there's a VERY small chance at 13, so in reality it'd be a little worse than this).
Which means that, if you hit "SIM LOTTERY" button on Tankathon a large enough amount of tries, and you average the results, it should be around 8.02 (the more tries, the closer).

Did you really just explain 9th grade expected value?

[Ariel]

Did you really just explain 9th grade expected value?

8th I've seen worse misunderstandings here
Time goes slowly until tomorrow

[JPB]

I propose we permaban all the posters who came out with a top 4 pick if spurs don't get it.

[Russ]

It's probabilities, and it's pretty logical if you think about it. Say you play a game where you flip a coin and you win $1 if it's heads or lose $1 of it's tails. What's the value you'd expect to make if you play the game?
Well, if you only play once, there's no chance you'll break even: you'll either win $1 or lose $1. Yet the expected value is 0: if you play enough times, you'll see that, on average, you'll neither win nor lose.
That's called expected value, which is the value you'd expect (the random variable) to have. You get it by adding each value times its probability of occurrence.
In such case would be E(X) = 0.5 · 1 + 0.5 · (-1) = 0, which is a value that is impossible to get in one experiment.
Applying the same principle to the lottery, you'd get expected value of Spurs’ pick = 1 · 0.045 + 2 · 0.048 + 3 · 0.052+ 4 · 0.057 + 5 · 0 + 6 · 0 + 7 · 0 + 8 · 0 + 9 · 0.507 + 10 · 0.259 + 11 · 0.03 + 12 · 0.001+ 13 · 0 + 14 · 0 = 8.02 (actually there's a VERY small chance at 13, so in reality it'd be a little worse than this).
Which means that, if you hit "SIM LOTTERY" button on Tankathon a large enough amount of tries, and you average the results, it should be around 8.02 (the more tries, the closer).

Right. Duh. (Perhaps I should have referred to statistics as sometimes "ironic" rather than "crazy.")

[Brazil]

I gave it a whirl and came up 10

I did it once more and while the Spurs stayed at 9, OKC got picks 1 & 2.

did it 10 times.. 80% went 9 the rest 10

[Mr. Body]

I just don't want to drop to 10.

[KingKev]

I combobulated my simulations in NBA Live 95 and every time we got the 9th pick.

[Russ]

It's probabilities, and it's pretty logical if you think about it. Say you play a game where you flip a coin and you win $1 if it's heads or lose $1 of it's tails. What's the value you'd expect to make if you play the game?
Well, if you only play once, there's no chance you'll break even: you'll either win $1 or lose $1. Yet the expected value is 0: if you play enough times, you'll see that, on average, you'll neither win nor lose.
That's called expected value, which is the value you'd expect (the random variable) to have. You get it by adding each value times its probability of occurrence.
In such case would be E(X) = 0.5 · 1 + 0.5 · (-1) = 0, which is a value that is impossible to get in one experiment.
Applying the same principle to the lottery, you'd get expected value of Spurs’ pick = 1 · 0.045 + 2 · 0.048 + 3 · 0.052+ 4 · 0.057 + 5 · 0 + 6 · 0 + 7 · 0 + 8 · 0 + 9 · 0.507 + 10 · 0.259 + 11 · 0.03 + 12 · 0.001+ 13 · 0 + 14 · 0 = 8.02 (actually there's a VERY small chance at 13, so in reality it'd be a little worse than this).
Which means that, if you hit "SIM LOTTERY" button on Tankathon a large enough amount of tries, and you average the results, it should be around 8.02 (the more tries, the closer).

8th I've seen worse misunderstandings here
Time goes slowly until tomorrow

The problem is, this is feast or famine. The average (or mean) doesn't "mean" much here.

You can talk about the the average house price or the average salary of a cohort. It's meaningful to talk about that average (or mean) because that number is a possible result that can lead to further understanding of realistic probabilities (even though it's unlikely that any one house/salary will precisely equal that average or mean). That statistical analysis leads somewhere.

The problem with the NBA draft (at least where the Spurs are) is that the average (or mean) is not theoretically possible. The Spurs can get 1-4 or 9-12, nothing in between. And "in between" is exactly where the average (or mean) falls.

Here, only the raw numbers matter -- the Spurs have about a 20.2% chance at 1-4 and about a 79.8% chance at 9-12. To a gambler, that's 4-1 against. The average (or mean) is somewhat less "mean"ingful here. (And the fact that the average result is a pick that is unavailable to the Spurs is still at least slightly funny. And please don't bore with an analysis of coin flips where the average/mean is also unatainable.)