07-24-2010, 12:20 PM | #21 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Standard deviation on Stat distribution?
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07-24-2010, 12:26 PM | #22 | |
Dog of Lysdexics
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Melbourne FL, Formerly Wellington NZ
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Re: Standard deviation on Stat distribution?
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07-24-2010, 12:33 PM | #23 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Buffalo, New York
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Re: Standard deviation on Stat distribution?
Mind you, my perspective on this isn't neccessarily math driven, but I'd like to point out WHY some people are driven to use math and realism combined with regards to GURPS...
Can we measure the speed of individuals? Yes. Can we measure how much mass they can pick up? Yes again. Can we measure statistically how often a given population will die off of a given disease during a plague? Yup. Can we measure the size of a bullet, its velocity, and determine how much kinetic energy it has? Yup. Can we even measure real life performance in a swing of a given individual, and translate that into math? The answer is yes on all counts, and many many more not even specified above. The problem lies in part, being able to define what means what - and as Kromm has mentioned, this has never been done with any level of intent per se, but only in what seemed to work overall. Take another example. If you have an IQ 8 individual attempting to study a skill until they are "professional" capable of succeeding in their use of said skill, the individual has to dedicate (assuming 1 character point equals 200 hours of study) a total of 16 x 200 hours or 3200 hours. An IQ 10 person, needs only 8 points, or 1600 hours of study. An IQ 12 person, needs only 2 character points, or 400 hours of study. So what does that mean in game terms as far as human reality? Darned if I know, nor would I even TRY to say that this indicates that an IQ 12 person learns things at a rate of 4x faster than someone of Average IQ (10 in this case), nor would I even try to indicate that an IQ 12 person learns things at a rate that is 8x faster than someone with an IQ of 8. Why, because to me, it doesn't even come close to directly mapping on a one for one scale between game reality and reality itself. GURPS, because it is a 4 stat system, can't really begin to simulate reality. Were IQ to be broken down to Reasoning, Memory, Mental Will, etc - and were ST to be broken down to upper body strength, lower body strength, fatigue, endurance, mass, etc - can we really say that it closely describes reality? <shrug> So, what is stat normalization? What is the purpose of stat distribution methodology? If handling flawed concepts to start with, what is the purpose of trying to use statistics to describe that, which is flawed to begin with, and will only compound the flaw the more you walk down a given path of saying how many people are described by a given flawed description? Heck, how many of us as GMs have ever wondered at the true meaning of IQ stats in GURPS as they apply to real life? How many people do you know, who are book smart but just not very wise? How many people do you know, who have an iron will, but never really excelled at math or history, or - well, anything cerebral? Ah well, I digress.
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07-24-2010, 12:40 PM | #24 | ||
Join Date: May 2008
Location: CA
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Re: Standard deviation on Stat distribution?
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Besides, saying 'most people have between 7-13' just means the standard deviation is probably something less than three. Three is approximately the maximum, not the actual value. The standard deviation could be 1, leaving 9-11 as 65%-ish, 8-12 95%, 7-13 99.5%, etc., and those are still 'the majority', because 99.5% is still greater than 50%. |
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07-24-2010, 02:06 PM | #25 |
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Your imagination
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Re: Standard deviation on Stat distribution?
A standard deviation of 2 would still give 0.5% above 16, or about 35 million people. A normal distribution probably isn't the way to go though, since it's pretty obvious that the distribution will be skewed. There's a minimum of -4 but a maximum of +10 (roughly).
Adjectives for a fictional protagonist is probably a good way of describing things. |
07-24-2010, 02:17 PM | #26 |
Computer Scientist
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dallas, Texas
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Re: Standard deviation on Stat distribution?
The only problem with this is that protagonists are a minority of the characters appearing in most plots. Being GURPS, lots of non-protagonists characters aren't human, but lost of them *are*, and in my experience they tend to be less exceptional than protagonists, so GURPS' "average human" would seem to be relevant to them, too.
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07-24-2010, 02:50 PM | #27 | |
Computer Scientist
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dallas, Texas
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Re: Standard deviation on Stat distribution?
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2.5% of attested GURPS humans having a given stat of 17 or more might be too many, but in my experience it isn't ludicrously too many. |
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07-24-2010, 02:57 PM | #28 | |
Join Date: May 2008
Location: CA
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Re: Standard deviation on Stat distribution?
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2.5% of humans having a stat of 17 or higher is ludicrous. Actually look at what that means, mechanically speaking. It pretty much makes you near-professionally competent at anything you try at default. That's really unbelievable for 2.5% of the population. People that omni-competent are rare, not everywhere you look. And yes, 2.5 people out of every hundred is everywhere you look. You're expected to find at least one person with a stat over 17 in an average classroom, not just an average school. That's crazy! |
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07-24-2010, 02:58 PM | #29 | |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Standard deviation on Stat distribution?
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07-24-2010, 03:00 PM | #30 |
Join Date: May 2008
Location: CA
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Re: Standard deviation on Stat distribution?
Only half-plausible at that. I'm not sure ST17+ is all that common - there was a thread recently that pegged the world recordholder for ST at 18 or thereabouts, with reasonable use of Extra Effort and Lifting skill (while the unreasonable version had the world's strongest person have a ST of 12 or so).
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