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Originally Posted by fluid.forty.one
Well what are the odds of flaco making two quality posts that close together?
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Depends. Are we talking about independent, or dependent, variables? In other words, is Flaco equally likely to make a non-quality post the second time out as he was the first time? If so, this would certainly make the problem at hand far more manageable.
If, however, Flaco is of the high-variance type and he occassionally gets on an unlikely roll of quality posts, each dependent in some way on the one before...then the calculations get messy.
Let's take the easy route and assume that every trial is independent. In that case, all we need to do is to determine the likelihood that Flaco makes one quality post in one try.
Let's see. He has made about 6000 posts in one year's time. That's, what, a little under 20 posts a day, ballpark? I reckon he's good for a couple quality posts a day. So we'll figure it one in ten that Flaco makes a quality post.
Take one-in-ten and multiply it by one-in-ten, and those are your odds that Flaco makes two quality posts in a row. Looks like one in a hundred to me.
Of course, the math experts will be along shortly to correct me.