Stoofer's 2nd Law

[Mr. Flay]

Vote: Mr Stoofer

for falsifying evidence!

http://www.mafiascum.net/cgi-bin/wiki.p ... r%27s_Laws

I can't believe you'd be so bold. Die scum!

[Mr Stoofer]

But Norinel's post came

after

I added the word "probably"!

[ralphmerridew]

It wasn't a C9 game or even Newbie mafia, but in More Mountainouser (copless), except for the last instant, Fuldu and I were never voting for the same person at the same time, and I only successfully lynched that final day.

[Tamuz]

http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=329

Check it!

[Thok]

Thok's corollary to Stoofer's second law: If necessary, Mr Stoofer will vote somebody in a thread just to make Stoofer's second law apply.

[Mr Stoofer]

I like it! I'll add that to the Wiki for Stoofer's 2nd Law

[VisMaior]

heh

[Delvar]

An infinitely extended thread will have at least 1 post containing '

vote: name

' has a problem in the statement. It (Stoofer's law) asks for the outcome(vote statement) exists in a thread where we can assume an infinite length; we can imagine an infinite thread has at least one post of any given combination of letters; e.x.

a

b

a5j iobh2a

raj's law.

raj is always right.

raj shouldnt be lynched.

you must love raj.

and therefore we can say that the sequence '

vote: name

' will exist just as much as even

voTE: NamE

will exist, or any other variant. Stoofer's law is indeed correct; and it doesn't even require Mafia players to be around. Thus I ask for it to be changed to remove the part where Mafia players exist; it is extraneous.

And the equation? P = 1 - 1/n for n as threadlength. Not exactly correct; but it satisfies my assumptions that infinite thread length grants a vote post.

[Tamuz]

Reiman sums are for Nazi's. Don't you dare bring calculus into this...

[VisMaior]

Thus I ask for it to be changed to remove the part where Mafia players exist; it is extraneous

No its not. The law might be not exact enough: the mafia players existence must be there because the name part is the name of a mafia player.

[Mr Stoofer]

Vote: Anyone who thinks that Stoofer's 2nd law is satisfied by picking out random letters from a number of different of posts

[VisMaior]

Also, just that it is endless, does not impy that it contains anything. Like, an endless sequence of 1s will never ever contain any marmelade.

[Delvar]

Thus I ask for it to be changed to remove the part where Mafia players exist; it is extraneous

No its not. The law might be not exact enough: the mafia players existence must be there because the name part is the name of a mafia player.

The series of letters will arise anyway; it is not necessary for the 'posters' of this infinite thread to be mafia-players.

[rajrhcpfreak]

y did you quote me?

[Thok]

Thus I ask for it to be changed to remove the part where Mafia players exist; it is extraneous

No its not. The law might be not exact enough: the mafia players existence must be there because the name part is the name of a mafia player.

The series of letters will arise anyway; it is not necessary for the 'posters' of this infinite thread to be mafia-players.

Yes-but will the letters be bolded properly?

Daykill: Delvar

[Delvar]

Of course. [, b, and ], (/ included) are all equally likely to appear as any other letter/character.

FOS: Thok

[EnderX]

@Delvar:

Your description on how Stoofer's 2nd law becomes a tautology (I'm assuming that's what you're implying, at least) has a flaw to it. Please reread the law itself:

As a discussion in the Mafia Discussion Forum grows longer, the probability of someone voting for someone else in the thread approaches 1.

The key word here, I believe, is the word

discussion

. What you are implying is a thread of infinite length, but randomly chosen or arbitrarily chosen combinations of letters/numbers/symbols in each post. Such a thread would not consist of true discussion, which is generally fairly ordered and focused, even if the discussion topic itself isn't. As a result, your hypothetical thread no longer qualifies as a valid example of Stoofer's 2nd Law. In order for the symbol set [,b,], ,V,o,t,e,:, ,«Name», ,[,/,b,] to occur in a discussion format, those involved in the discussion must at least know of, and feel it legitimate discussion, to include that particular set of symbols in the thread. And based on the evidence,

that

only happens when at least one of them is a Mafia player, with the chances of the symbol set occuring increasing relative to the number of Mafia players within the discussion. I'm not sure if the increase is linear, non-linear geometric, or exponential, however.

[Delvar]

Given enough time, since the human race has already developed a 'mafia' game, I'm sure a discussion forum will 'create' this game from the process of forum evolution.

[EnderX]

But that undermines your earlier argument as well, since in that case, you still require Mafia players to create the discussion posts. You cannot get away from having them involved.

[bigAl]

With a great use of my precious free time, I have determined

Stoofer's Constant, K, to be equal to 155

, in the equation P = 1 - (K/(K+n)). (Using experimental data from the latest five pages of Mafia Discusion - I did not include any topics after Mr. Stoofer stated his second law, as it seemed biased. Then I fiddled around in excel for a while, trying to find a way to determine the probability. My probably incomprehencible excel file can be downloaded here: http://members.shaw.ca/abphillips/new_o ... toofsK.xls)

Oddly enough (or perhaps not oddly), the MafiaScum community seems to go though phases of people voting or not. As I was skimming through the threads, I would often get many threads in a row with no votes and then later many threads in a row with votes.

Here's my awsome graph:



EDIT: Made the graph smaller. Dragging a corner of it didn't work; instead I just set the zoom a bit lower and took a screen snap shot.

[Mr. Flay]

Oddly enough (or perhaps not oddly), the MafiaScum community seems to go though phases of people voting or not. As I was skimming through the threads, I would often get many threads in a row with no votes and then later many threads in a row with votes.

Actually, I'm not at all surprised that it goes in phases - voting in non-game threads is primarily a social activity, and seeing it done in one thread will make other players more likely to do so elsewhere as they realize it's "acceptable" fun to be had here.

If you're worried about the size of your graph, you should be able to grab a corner of it and resize it down (about 2/3 the size should be good). Excellent deduction work though!

[Mr Stoofer]

With a great use of my precious free time, I have determined

Stoofer's Constant, K, to be equal to 155

, in the equation P = 1 - (K/(K+n)). (Using experimental data from the latest five pages of Mafia Discusion - I did not include any topics after Mr. Stoofer stated his second law, as it seemed biased. Then I fiddled around in excel for a while, trying to find a way to determine the probability. My probably incomprehencible excel file can be downloaded here: http://members.shaw.ca/abphillips/new_o ... toofsK.xls)

Time for an update on this, I think. What is Stoofer's Constant in respect of posts over the last 12 months? (i.e. since Thok's Corollory and mith's Observation started to have effect?)

[bigAl]

OK, new stats:

Here's the graph for the past several months (everything from about 24th of jan, 2006 (when stoofer first coined his law?) to feb 15th 2007)



the combined data from last time and this time:



Also, a graph of all the posts (I forgot axis lables - for the x: blue is how many posts it took for someone to vote for somelse, red is the length of the thread if no one voted in it yet , y is the number of threads that that's happened in - sorry if that's confusing):




Edit: By the way this was all taken from the mafia discussion forum. There was quite a peak in votes right after the Law was made known, and then it died down a lot.

[Mr Stoofer]

Good work big Al. Let's aim to get Stoofer's Constant down below 100 for the year 2007.

[Blackberry]

Thok's corollary to Stoofer's second law: If necessary, Mr Stoofer will vote somebody in a thread just to make Stoofer's second law apply.

Completely agree.

Stoofer has already done it in both my threads in the current Mafia Discussion forum...

*sigh* It's rather annoying.