I think.....I think we all just got schooled with arithmetic guys.

I once killed a Madruger with a MD.

You instinctively realize that says nothing about the relative merits of the MD vs. the HAV. One anecdote with no accounting for any other factor imparts zero information. For all you and I know the driver had to AFK to attend to a real life emergency.

Yet these forums are replete with case after case of "proof" that one or another weapon is OP. The latest is where Xero attempts to prove that the MD is OP by showing us a single score of 32/3. A number of folks instinctively realized there were confounding factors such as running with a full proto-bear squad against randoms, but not being statisticians they could not fully articulate the the complete failure to provide evidence of his claim.

CCP has several statisticians on its staff, so you are going to have to do better than that if you want to convince them.

At the very least what you need to do is run multiple experiments with the two comparison weapons, the AR and MD in this case. You then measure the characteristics of the two populations of measurements and use a statistical test to determine if there is a significant difference between the two.

The two major characteristics of a population is the mean (average) and standard deviation (the measure of how spread out the data is). You can then use a simple T-test to determine if the two populations of measurements are different or not.

Now what usually happens is that you find that the variation in measurements (number of kills per match) obscures any difference. In that event you can attempt to remove the confounding factors (number and strength of players in your squad and team, length of match, presence of vehicles, strength and experience of the opposing force, type of match, etc.) to isolate the effect of the weapon. This is done with a randomized block design.

I'm not expecting everyone here to be able to design and run a proper experiment. I would be satisfied if more people were simply aware of the requirements for a proper statistical proof that could be used to balance with and refrain from polluting the forums with anecdotal accounts and calling them proof..

The sad part is that when someone gives a bullet proof logical argument, the other side tends to shut down and not answer it. As a result, it is forgotten and the idiotic argument on Xero's post continues.

The problem here is that certain people start with an opinion and then provide anecdotes as proof that they are correct in their opinion.

Science doesn't work that way.

You start with an idea, then design an experiment to determine if there is sufficient evidence to warrant that being an accurate model of the world or not.

The closest I've seen the argument come to science are the threads discussing damage per second, though it's tough to model every aspect.

Just to be pedantic. Science, ideally, works slightly differently. You come up with a theory, and then test it for failure. The scientific method never proves anything. It can only disprove things. Over time, as more and more incorrect theories are weeded out, we are left with a functional, if not "true", model of whatever is being studied.

Unfortunately, arguments over DPS leave so much out of the equation when it comes to FPSes, that there's very little data to be separated from the opinions. That's at least a starting point based on facts though.

That's true, and real science is even messier than that, but the core notion s that you try to disprove your hypothesis, not cherry pick data that supports your idea. The deal is that individual anecdotes are worth nothing. You need hard data.

People instinctively understand the need for comparison when they tell complainers to use the supposed OP weapon for a while to see how it affects their KDR. It's not a statistically rigorous test but it does use repeated measurements to obtain a new average for the weapon. The idea is that with enough tests (matches) the user will encounter enough conditions that the results will reflect the average reality.

It's not perfect as KDR naturally fluctuates, but it's a good first test.

I once killed a Madruger with a scrambler pistol.

No joke, it was already damaged and I threw some packed AVs at it but it still had a sliver of armor let, fired my scrambler at it and it gave the pistol credit for the kill.

Thank you

I was starting to think the lunies ran the asylum

These forums...
Man these forums. ..

"Whatcha got there? Numbers?"

+1 for science

Flux Grenades have more kills than Sleek AV grenades.
'Guardians' (spikes on support structures) have more kills than the Sleek AV grenades.
Sleek AV grenades are at the bottom of the kills list according to CCP.