Scottbdoug wrote:Perhaps a different approach is needed to explain variation in chance. Meaning that a 100% chance one time and a 0% a second time is not the same as a 50% chance twice although both are mathematically the same.
The simple reason for this that the first will always get 50%. The second will not. The 2nd will result in 50% in most cases but not all. Sometimes the result will be 0% or 100%. The more times you do the 2nd the closer you will get to 50% but the 1st is always 50%.
Thats all im saying. The second deviates from the mathematical norm of 50%. The first never does. Therefore if your result you want to reflect something to be exactly 50% the better option is the first not the 2nd. And if accuracy is what you want which strat obviously is supposed to want, the more accurate stats to what the player did in the mlb that season, then an automatic hit rather than a chance hit is more accurate ans should be used as much as possible. The less chance hit and the more automatic hits should be the norm as much as possible taking into account the limitations of roles available on the card.
The problem is that you averaged the two when they should be multiplied. If you flip a coin there is a 50% chance it will land on heads, flip it two times there is not a 50% chance it will land on heads both times but a 25% chance. There are four scenarios (Heads/Heads, Heads/Tails, Tails/Heads then Tails/Tails) and Heads/Heads in only one of the four.
The advantage of the splits is the precision it gives. If there are no splits the most precise a roll can be is 1/108 or just under 1% (0.00926...) for any single player card 1/108 where the 108 comes from 2 dice times half of one die. If the powers that be determine that they wish to assign a percent chance of a player getting a single on his card is 7% they would need to have a roll with a 7.56 chances out of 108. The closest you could get is the combination of 1-2, 1-7 and 1-12) which is 8 (1+6+1) chances out of 108. This is 5.8% off the required value.
The total chances you have with the splits is 108*20 or 2160. With this you can achieve precision of 1/2160 (0.00046296...). The closest you can now get to the 7% required for the single is 6.99% (151/2160) which is a lot closer to the 7% than the 7.56 that you were limited to without the splits. This is done by using the same combination of 1-2, 1-7 and 1-12. The 1-2 now gives 20 chances and 1-7 gives 120 for a total of 140. We are now 11 short of our goal of 151. We know the 1-12 would give us another 20 but that is too much. Of course, if we put a 1-11 split on the 1-12 roll we get and add that 11 to the 120 we get the 151 we are looking for..
Over a few hundred at-bats that player's single count will be much more accurate by using the splits as the odds of getting the single per at-bat are more accurate than without the splits.