Site Searching Statistics Questions

[thejeff]

Maybe I'm misreading his intent:
Are those binomials just for no searches done?
If so, how does finding a site with a search affect things?

Edit: Ok, you posted while I was typing. Thanks. I was thinking of them independently. And I still think that may be possible.

I'd love to see a table without the probabilities for the different paths/terrains. Assume 40% and equal chances. Just chances by number of sites found and number of paths searched would be great. Seeing the hard numbers would help me think about it, at least.

I'd be very impressed if you could come up with a nice table with all the probabilities. Way to many variables to format nicely.

[Evilhomer]

When I think about how much time wasted on this, it makes me proud to have started this thread. I just want to take Evilhomer and VedalkenBear and kidnap them to work in my math dungeon. Where...sinister math things are done...yeah...

Oh, yeah someone started this thread...hmm let me check the original questions . (and please not the evil math dungeon)

1) If you use a site searching spell like Haruspex and don't find anything, does it have any effect on the chance of finding a site of another magic path? I would think that not finding a nature site would also eliminate the chance of finding a nature/astral site or nature/anything site as well. So as you eliminate more and more magic paths, the chance of there being a site in the remaining paths gets smaller and smaller. Is this correct?

Here is the deal as I belive. Searching with say a nature spell and not finding any nature sites will not change your chances to find a "pure" astral site.

It will obviously remove sites that can be found using both astral and nature (if there are such sites, not delved into the database to be honest).

Searching using a nature spell and finding one or more nature sites will will decrease the chance of finding additional "pure" astral sites on some later search.

2) Follow up question. If you search nature 1 and don't find anything, how does that affect your chances of finding a site at nature 2, 3, or 4? Presumably the greatest chance of finding a site is at level 1, but the better sites are rarer. Is this correct as well?

Searching with nature-1 and not finding anything will drastically decrease the chance of having nature site(s) in that province. It will NOT however change the chance of having a site that requires higher nature to find (n2-n4 search needed). So you will not decrease the chance of having a rare nature site there. Funny enough if you find a nature site using n1, you decrease the chance of having rare nature sites there.

Easy rule of thumb: start searching provinces where you have not searched before and work your way up. Try to search with atleast level 3 in each path in each province that you belive you will be able to hold.

[VedalkenBear]

If I can get the data, I will provide the probabilities. With appropriate calculations shown so that people can check it for inconsistencies.

[llamabeast]

Ah, what a lovely forum this is. This makes me happy. There can't be many game forums where you'd get such an educated discussion. Sadly I'm too tired to follow all this now, so I will try to take a look tomorrow. I really like probability questions.