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What is variance and how is it calculated? What is variance and how is it calculated?

01-15-2009 , 11:16 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by I vi ii V7
Uh no. Absolutely incorrect. I came to this thread because I expected there would be some wrong definitions, and I hate how often this word is used incorrectly.

Variance is NOT losing an 80/20 hand. An 80/20 hand is GUARANTEED to lose 20% of the time. You hold a set of aces versus a set of queens on the turn. You are GUARANTEED to lose ~2% of the time.

If you were to make a graph displaying the amount you expect to win (or even, how often you expect to win) in certain situations, and then graph your actual results, variance is the amount that your results VARY from the expected amount.

For example, you expect a coin to land heads 50% of the time. You flip is twice and it lands tails both times. What gives? You flip it ten times and it lands heads only 3 out of 10. ??? You flip it 10,000 times and it lands heads 4,987 times. What is happening here?? As your sample size increases, your actual results are getting closer and closer to the expected results. The same holds for poker. You say you lose 80/20 cases more often than you should, but your sample size is only 20 times. Well...the more you play, the more those 80/20 cases will come up, and the closer your average will be to the expected average.

tl;dr Variance is not what most people define it as.
Saying that you are gauranteed to lose a 80/20 hand 20% of the time is just being silly. Uou dont think that over 10 80/20's that you will have lost exactly 20% of them?
Even over 999999999 80/20's there is stil a chance that you will lose ALL of them. Nothing in poker is gauranteed
What is variance and how is it calculated? Quote
01-15-2009 , 02:34 PM
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Originally Posted by Weevil99
It's certainly possible, but I'd have to see it to believe it. I think it would be close enough to normal that almost every calculation you can make that assumes a normal distribution would give you accurate enough answers for most practical purposes.

I think you'd probably find some non-normal characteristics in the extreme outlying parts of the curve, but that's the case with IQ scores as well.

But we're not usually interested in the fact that there are 3 times as many ( or one third as many) people whose win rates are 5 sigma above or below the mean as a normal distribution would predict. For the overwhelming majority of players who fall closer to the mean, and these are the players almost all of us play every time we sit down, their win rates would describe a pretty nice normal curve, I think. I wouldn't be shocked to see a slight skew to the left, but I don't think it would distort things enough to matter a whole lot.
You don't have to see it to believe it, since it's a mathematical construct. The CLT dictates that a sufficiently large number of identically distributed independent random variables each with finite mean and variance will be approximately normally distributed. How approximate is good enough? Since parametric statistical tests that assume a normal distribution (anova, t tests, etc) are pretty robust, perfect normality isn't a requirement.

Also, "parts of a curve" don't have distributional qualities. A set of data is characterized by some statistical distribution. Some distributions fit data better than others.

Finally, it doesn't matter what actual values are in a normal distribution, since the mean is defined as zero.
What is variance and how is it calculated? Quote
01-15-2009 , 02:37 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by finnianp
Saying that you are gauranteed to lose a 80/20 hand 20% of the time is just being silly. Uou dont think that over 10 80/20's that you will have lost exactly 20% of them?
Even over 999999999 80/20's there is stil a chance that you will lose ALL of them. Nothing in poker is gauranteed
An 80/20 hand is defined as one with a probability that you will win 80% of the time. Probability is mathematically equivalent to the frequency of something occurring. Given an infinite number of trials, it is guaranteed that a success will occur 80% of the time and a failure 20% of the time.
What is variance and how is it calculated? Quote
01-25-2009 , 01:26 PM
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Originally Posted by zoltan
An 80/20 hand is defined as one with a probability that you will win 80% of the time. Probability is mathematically equivalent to the frequency of something occurring. Given an infinite number of trials, it is guaranteed that a success will occur 80% of the time and a failure 20% of the time.
No sorry. There is still the possibility that you lose all of them. Correct? Then you cannot guarantee anything. If you ran AA vs QQ 99999999999 times you cannot guarantee that the times the AA will win is the region of 80%. It's simple logic. There is still that chance that you lose ALL of them.
What you are trying to say is that more than likely, a huge possibilty in fact, the aces will win roughly 80% of the time.
What is variance and how is it calculated? Quote
01-25-2009 , 02:08 PM
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Originally Posted by DrVanNostrin
Whether or not your results converge depends on how you define results. Let's say I play hands of poker under the same stakes and same conditions. I'll define X_a to be my average win rate per 100; X_t to be my total winnings; N to be the number of 100 hand sessions I play; and WR to be my true win rate per 100.

As N increases the expected difference between X_a and WR decreases.

As N increases the expected difference between X_t and N*WR increases.
The guy with the nl 25 10k in a month challange,
only broke even after his first 17k hands...
What is variance and how is it calculated? Quote
01-25-2009 , 03:25 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by finnianp
No sorry. There is still the possibility that you lose all of them. Correct? Then you cannot guarantee anything. If you ran AA vs QQ 99999999999 times you cannot guarantee that the times the AA will win is the region of 80%. It's simple logic. There is still that chance that you lose ALL of them.
What you are trying to say is that more than likely, a huge possibilty in fact, the aces will win roughly 80% of the time.
This is the most absolute basic of probability concepts. The probability of an event is exactly identical to the frequency of that event happening over an infinite number of trials, by definition. In a small number of trials, say 10, AA might lost to QQ more then 20% of the time. This is because the process is "stochastic." The more times you repeat the trial, the more likely it is to converge on the true frequency. In your example, the probability of AA losing to QQ 99999999999 in a row is (0.2)^11= 0.00000002, or 1 time in 48 million. How do I know this? Because of the math, which is "simple logic."

Here's an experiment you can do yourself that might help convince you that what I say is true. Take a die. If you roll it, the likelihood of getting a "1" is exactly 1 in 6. This isn't TOO far off the likelihood of QQ beating AA (1 in 5). Roll the die 6 times. Write down how many time a "1" comes up. Now keep doing that. The more times you roll the die, the more close to 0.16667 n (which is equal to number of times 1 is rolled divided by number of times any other number is tolled) will be. If math doesn't convince you, perhaps empirical evidence will. If neither of these two approaches is convincing, please join me at my poker table.

Last edited by zoltan; 01-25-2009 at 03:36 PM.
What is variance and how is it calculated? Quote

      
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