In fact, the only other match, EVER, where the stats just bombed big time was the first Link/Cloud match. The rest? No problem at all.

CATS and Sonic would like to have a word with you.
---
Squall Leonhart's Road to the Summer Contest 2005 Championship
Round 2: (3) Mag...Er...(6) Knuckles the Echidna

Ulti gets +10 respect points for realizing the greatness of Ness. Yes, his thoughts being printed out on the Lumine Hall for everyone to see was damn cool.

---
2nd Place, Spring Contest 2005
World Champion: Gyruss, Link's Awakening, Mega Man X, Solstice, Super Mario World, Zombies Ate My Neighbors

CATS: It's the close-up picture. It's no coincidence.

Sonic: You really think he could've done much better against Cloud? No thank you.
---
"You can't have gone over a kilometer up. 1500 meters, tops." -Samus Aran
"I'll express my love to you slowly, later." -Setzer Gabbiani

From: Slowflake | Posted: 8/13/2005 2:17:05 PM | Message Detail | #050
In fact, the only other match, EVER, where the stats just bombed big time was the first Link/Cloud match. The rest? No problem at all.

I'm going to start calling you Xst Blinders.

~*ST*~
---
Winner of the Spring 2004 "Best. Game. Ever." Contest
"If my fate is to be destroyed... I must simply laugh!" -Magus

CATS: It's the close-up picture. It's no coincidence.

Sonic: You really think he could've done much better against Cloud? No thank you.

No, I'm saying that Cloud's performances on CATS and Sonic foretold that he could beat Link.
---
Squall Leonhart's Road to the Summer Contest 2005 Championship
Round 2: (3) Mag...Er...(6) Knuckles the Echidna

I'm speaking upset-wise, of course. Like it or not, there haven't been many matches where the stats failed as miserably as they did in these two.
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"You can't have gone over a kilometer up. 1500 meters, tops." -Samus Aran
"I'll express my love to you slowly, later." -Setzer Gabbiani

An even 43% for Kratos now. Not too bad at all.
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Squall Leonhart's Road to the Summer Contest 2005 Championship
Round 2: (3) Mag...Er...(6) Knuckles the Echidna

And Kratos hits 43%. Impressive.

---
SC2k5: 22/24
Today: Sonic vs. Jin Kazama

Crono's hair defines his personality. "I'm a badass rebel who likes to cut stuff with my sword."

He also likes to run into girls. Literally. And he's obviously a big mama's boy. And he's got a killer sex drive if he's sticking around Marle so much. Hell, he's probably banged Lucca a few times and maybe even snuck in a few intimate moments with Ayla.
---
All user contests are wrong. All except mine, that is.
http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=8&topic=22809755

From: Sir Crono | Posted: 8/13/2005 2:20:06 PM | #055
No, I'm saying that Cloud's performances on CATS and Sonic foretold that he could beat Link.

Yes, but the brackets were locked down before these matches. Hence, anyone with a serious attempt went with Link (or the occasional Magus).
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"You can't have gone over a kilometer up. 1500 meters, tops." -Samus Aran
"I'll express my love to you slowly, later." -Setzer Gabbiani

Heh.

Crono impales monsters with his hair and combs his sword.
---
"You can't have gone over a kilometer up. 1500 meters, tops." -Samus Aran
"I'll express my love to you slowly, later." -Setzer Gabbiani

Now that I think about it, forget Lumine Hall. Nothing Crono ever did can compare to Magicant.

---
2nd Place, Spring Contest 2005
World Champion: Gyruss, Link's Awakening, Mega Man X, Solstice, Super Mario World, Zombies Ate My Neighbors

Well, you still can't say that the stats "bombed" in Cloud/Link. It would be impossible for them to account for what would happen.

And the hints were there for Magus. Just nobody bothered to take them seriously.
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Squall Leonhart's Road to the Summer Contest 2005 Championship
Round 2: (3) Mag...Er...(6) Knuckles the Echidna

I think Kratos has proven himself worthy of being in another contest. Correct me if I'm wrong, but at his current strength, he could possibly beat Ness.
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"Thank you, Mario. But our princess is in another castle."
-Toad in Super Mario Bros.

http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=8&topic=22847441

This is a topic I made on X-stats and extrapolation I would appreciate it if you looked at.

The biggest assumption in the x-stats is that votes and preferences are transitive. And that's easily provable false. It may be the best assumption that you can do and a reasonable one, but it's been proven time and again that there will be a lot of cases that don't work that way.
---
The Insane A-Team: Trivia XII team
Gamefaqs Fanfic Project Archive: http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~newheims/ffproj.htm

For that matter, do you know where I could get in touch with creativename or RPGuy96? It might be possible to modify the model or just put some more disclaimers on their page
---
The Insane A-Team: Trivia XII team
Gamefaqs Fanfic Project Archive: http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~newheims/ffproj.htm

If you want to talk to RPGuy on AIM, his s/n is RPGuy96.
---
Squall Leonhart's Road to the Summer Contest 2005 Championship
Round 2: (3) Mag...Er...(6) Knuckles the Echidna

Crono knows the words "yes", "no", and has a lot of courage; these are all firsts for an RPG lead and makes Crono a better character than Ness as a result.

I'm unable to speak about Ness since I never finished EarthBound, and I have no real desire to do so depsite my multiple attempts to do so. All I was arguing was that to claim that Crono has no personality or is basically just an "avatar" isn't correct at all. His personality isn't exactly interesting nor is deep or complex, but he does have those qualities one would look for a good 'hero.'

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Cloud Strife: What’s going to happen to the Planet?
Sephiroth: That… will be for you to decide.

Yes, Big Cow, you're absolutely right. Votes are in no way transitive.

But don't tell that to the stat junkies. They cling to their little hobby religiously.

And Tifa WILL NOT beat Sonic.
---
Knights of the Old Republic> Your favorite Square RPG

I honestly have no idea why, but if Ryu ends up beating Bowser, I'm thinking we're going to have a lot of OMG TEH XSTRAPS PHAIL AGAIN complaints. Anyone else have that impression?
---
"You can't have gone over a kilometer up. 1500 meters, tops." -Samus Aran
"I'll express my love to you slowly, later." -Setzer Gabbiani

Worthless and unreliable are two different words, man.

They are reliable. I don't see where they have shown to be completely unreliable. There are matches that make no sense, but to claim that as a whole they aren't reliable is just asinine.

---
Cloud Strife: What’s going to happen to the Planet?
Sephiroth: That… will be for you to decide.

Even if Tifa were able to beat Vyse worse than Sonic would be PROJECTED to, I still don't think it would automatically fit her in past Sonic. I don't think strength translate in a linear manner once you get to the elite levels.

A vast majority of people may like Tifa better than Vyse, but the bottom line still comes down to whether they like Tifa better than Sonic... no matter how much Tifa beats Sonic's projected percentage. If Tifa and Sonic both faced Vyse directly, THEN I would be convinced. But I don't necessarily trust the X-stats when dealing with blowout matches as such, even though it may be an indication.

I'd be willing to bet that if Tifa beat Sonic's projected percentage against Vyse, but then STILL lost to Sonic, most people in this topic would assume that Vyse must have dropped in popularity...
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MM are my INITIALS "There are only 10 kinds of people in this world, those that read binary and those that don't."

I don't see why, considering Ryu ranked ahead of Bowser in 2004. It would just mean that something went wrong in the Spring Contest, which many of us suspected. Sephiroth isn't exactly the most dependable base.
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Squall Leonhart's Road to the Summer Contest 2005 Championship
Round 2: (3) Mag...Er...(6) Knuckles the Echidna

And Tifa WILL NOT beat Sonic.

If she gets 75%, you better damn well believe that she has an extremely good chance to beat him.

---
Cloud Strife: What’s going to happen to the Planet?
Sephiroth: That… will be for you to decide.

I'd be willing to bet that if Tifa beat Sonic's projected percentage against Vyse, but then STILL lost to Sonic, most people in this topic would assume that Vyse must have dropped in popularity...

I'd actually be willing to bet that most people would claim that Sonic increased, especially considering how Knuckles performed.

---
Cloud Strife: What’s going to happen to the Planet?
Sephiroth: That… will be for you to decide.

Tifa beating Sonic's projected percentage on Vyse merely means that she has a fighting chance to win. It doesn't necessarily mean that she will. That's basically all we're looking for in that match, to see if she can stand up to him or not.
---
Squall Leonhart's Road to the Summer Contest 2005 Championship
Round 2: (3) Mag...Er...(6) Knuckles the Echidna

From: Sir Crono | Posted: 8/13/2005 2:30:07 PM | #073
I don't see why, considering Ryu ranked ahead of Bowser in 2004. It would just mean that something went wrong in the Spring Contest, which many of us suspected. Sephiroth isn't exactly the most dependable base.

No no no, I mean we're going to have a lot of complaints from people who don't know what they're talking about, see we all picked Bowser, and assume the stats projected Bowser to win.
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"You can't have gone over a kilometer up. 1500 meters, tops." -Samus Aran
"I'll express my love to you slowly, later." -Setzer Gabbiani

Yes, Big Cow, you're absolutely right. Votes are in no way transitive.

But don't tell that to the stat junkies. They cling to their little hobby religiously.

The x-stats work fine if voters pidgeon hole into one or two groups, then all you need is a little SFF tweaking to make them a reasonable guess.

The problem is if a hundred thousand people all have different preferences and rankings of the characters, then in no way are those rankings going to be transitive. See my topic for an example. If A beats B by 60% and B beats C by 60%, that doesn't mean A beats C by 68% as the x-stats suggest. A could still lose to C in that case.
---
The Insane A-Team: Trivia XII team
Gamefaqs Fanfic Project Archive: http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~newheims/ffproj.htm

Exactly. If she scores 75%, it isn't a guaranteed win for Tifa against Sonic, but it does show that the match in no way has a winner that can be called with complete confidence.

---
Cloud Strife: What’s going to happen to the Planet?
Sephiroth: That… will be for you to decide.

Yes, Big Cow, you're absolutely right. Votes are in no way transitive.

But don't tell that to the stat junkies. They cling to their little hobby religiously.

The x-stats work fine if voters pidgeon hole into one or two groups, then all you need is a little SFF tweaking to make them a reasonable guess.

The problem is if a hundred thousand people all have different preferences and rankings of the characters, then in no way are all those rankings going to be transitive. See my topic for an example. If A beats B by 60% and B beats C by 60%, that doesn't mean A beats C by 68% as the x-stats suggest. A could still lose to C in that case.
---
The Insane A-Team: Trivia XII team
Gamefaqs Fanfic Project Archive: http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~newheims/ffproj.htm

I second that. Basically, if Tifa breaks 70%, expect to see us hyping that match to no tomorrow, no matter how high she gets. Okay, so if it's 78%, **** Sonic and **** Megaman, Crono's next in line.
---
"You can't have gone over a kilometer up. 1500 meters, tops." -Samus Aran
"I'll express my love to you slowly, later." -Setzer Gabbiani

The main idea behind the X-Sts is that there are enough of these anomalies within a group of 100000 voters to cancel each other out.
---
"You can't have gone over a kilometer up. 1500 meters, tops." -Samus Aran
"I'll express my love to you slowly, later." -Setzer Gabbiani

Okay, so if it's 78%, **** Sonic and **** Megaman, Crono's next in line.

Then Vincent doubles Dante. It'd be funny, you have to admit. =p

---
Cloud Strife: What’s going to happen to the Planet?
Sephiroth: That… will be for you to decide.

I'd love to see that happen. Already the cookie-cutter Final 4 of Samus, Snake, Crono and Megaman made way for an all-out brawl between Mario, Samus, Snake, Zelda, Tidus, Bowser, Ryu, Crono, Vincent, Sonic, Tifa and Megaman. If we were to find out there was someone else than Samus, Crono and Mario gunning for the championship it would be insane.

This is the best contest we've ever had. Bar none.
---
"You can't have gone over a kilometer up. 1500 meters, tops." -Samus Aran
"I'll express my love to you slowly, later." -Setzer Gabbiani

I'd be willing to bet that if Tifa beat Sonic's projected percentage against Vyse, but then STILL lost to Sonic, most people in this topic would assume that Vyse must have dropped in popularity...

Precisely. Anything to keep the Xstats valid.

---
Knights of the Old Republic> Your favorite Square RPG

This contest still has a long way to go to top 2003 or the games contest.
---
Squall Leonhart's Road to the Summer Contest 2005 Championship
Round 2: (3) Mag...Er...(6) Knuckles the Echidna

The problem with the game contest was that only one division was of any interest. Here you have pandemonium all over the bracket.
---
"You can't have gone over a kilometer up. 1500 meters, tops." -Samus Aran
"I'll express my love to you slowly, later." -Setzer Gabbiani

For every match the Xstats gets wrong, isn't there a bunch more they predict pretty well?

But you never hear about those matches. It's only when they **** your brackets that everyone whines about them.
---
All user contests are wrong. All except mine, that is.
http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=8&topic=22809755

Human nature, Wylvane.

Human nature.

Yeah, human nature sucks.
---
"You can't have gone over a kilometer up. 1500 meters, tops." -Samus Aran
"I'll express my love to you slowly, later." -Setzer Gabbiani

The 16/32 bit one was interesting.
---
Leon's Quest For Ultimate Glory:
1. Tripling Gordon Freeman.

You still had DK/Duck Hunt, LttP's matches with FFVI and CT, FFVII cruising past OoT then going 50/50 with CT during the night. There was plenty of excitement beyond Division 128.
---
Squall Leonhart's Road to the Summer Contest 2005 Championship
Round 2: (3) Mag...Er...(6) Knuckles the Echidna

You still had DK/Duck Hunt, LttP's matches with FFVI and CT, FFVII cruising past OoT then going 50/50 with CT during the night. There was plenty of excitement beyond Division 128.

Meh, DH/DK and FFT/MGS were fun but not really that significant in the long run. CT/LttP's probably the only match that's even worth noticing, and it still doesn't compare to Starcraft's run or SSBM's numerous close matches.

And the best match in that contest was LoZ/Adventure. Simple as that.
---
All user contests are wrong. All except mine, that is.
http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=8&topic=22809755

I loved SSBM's run. It always won in a close match, and people always proclaimed it's demise in the next match.

---
SC2k5: 22/24
Today: Sonic vs. Jin Kazama

Meh, DH/DK and FFT/MGS were fun but not really that significant in the long run.

I'll take fun and excitement over significance, personally.
---
Squall Leonhart's Road to the Summer Contest 2005 Championship
Round 2: (3) Mag...Er...(6) Knuckles the Echidna

The main idea behind the X-Sts is that there are enough of these anomalies within a group of 100000 voters to cancel each other out.

People have studied these issues in democracies for quite some time. Non-transitivity is the norm rather than the exception. If you have people with randomly distributed preferences between three characters, the most likely outcome is a non-transitive ranking.

The reason things work as well as they do is that preferences are highly correlated, RPG fans tend to prefer RPG characters and so on. But the larger the numbers get the more likely you are to see these exceptions, not the other way around. Voters do pidgeonhole well in a lot of cases and for really major characters you can make fairly solid predictions. I'm just saying that assumption of the model is notably imperfect, and I even have problems saying it would work perfectly in the simplest cases.
---
The Insane A-Team: Trivia XII team
Gamefaqs Fanfic Project Archive: http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~newheims/ffproj.htm

I'll take fun and excitement over significance, personally.

Starcraft's run still has them beat there.

Starcraft over Wind Waker?
---
All user contests are wrong. All except mine, that is.
http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=8&topic=22809755

I'm not saying that StarCraft's run wasn't more thrilling, but to say that those matches weren't that good because they didn't mean much is something I disagree with.
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Squall Leonhart's Road to the Summer Contest 2005 Championship
Round 2: (3) Mag...Er...(6) Knuckles the Echidna

People who rely solely on the stats don't win. The stats aren't 100% accurate, but that doesn't make them worthless.

Anyone want to analyze how accurate the stats are?
---
All user contests are wrong. All except mine, that is.
http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=8&topic=22809755

I'm not saying that StarCraft's run wasn't more thrilling, but to say that those matches weren't that good because they didn't mean much is something I disagree with.

They were good, but that doesn't mean they made their divisions any more exciting. Oh, hell no.

128 > 16 > 32/64 > 8
---
All user contests are wrong. All except mine, that is.
http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=8&topic=22809755

An exciting match is an exciting match, regardless of the significance.
---
Squall Leonhart's Road to the Summer Contest 2005 Championship
Round 2: (3) Mag...Er...(6) Knuckles the Echidna