What Feat Is Harder

[sixpack]

Thanks... now I understand where the 66% comes from... but I'm not convinced it applies here.

Seems like we have either a GO (strung 5 together)... or a NO GO (did not string 5 together) type of situation.

In my experience as an engineer, normal distribution is associated with a measure of the variance that a single process produces... such as machining a metal part... and then measuring a critical dimension of that machined part. A graphical representation of the measurements of a number of the machined parts represents a bell curve.

I can't think of how a bell curve would apply to the 5-pk situation.

Pls explain further if you believe that it does.

Hmmm....it might not. I was thinking in terms of the statistical analysis around 100 year storms. The way I think the bell curve applies is instead of the variance from perfect like you're thinking of, you chart the number of tries between successful 5 packs and that becomes a normal distribution (bell curve) centered around 243. The 2/3 chance of something happening in X tries where X is the average number between tries is something I remember, but can't remember how it's derived off the top of my head.

It's very possible that I've misapplied something as I haven't really used statistics since grad school. I'll have to go look at some things.

EDIT: After some checking, the actual value is a 63% chance of it happening within 243 breaks. That suggests to me that even though the bell curve I was talking about is valid, there is something else going on too. Unfortunately I've been on the road for 12 hours and I'm too tired to pore over more material tonight.

Cheers,
RC