The math thing? He always goes on rants about odds, nothing new.

At least it was somewhat relevant and a fair argument, thus way he gained some points. But yea.

But what if he is telling the truth and we lose a power role?
I do want him to show up before the deadline and clear up some things though.

Hmm, but by the same token Flub may be a town power role (I would hope he'd claim before being lynched though). In fact it has occurred to me that paz might be a mafia role cop who found a really important town power last night and this whole thing is a gamble to get us to lynch them after which paz will do his best to wriggle out of it ('I must be insane/paranoid etc.').

This is the way I see it:

There are 14 players in the game. Normally a player cannot use their ability on themselves, so there are 13 possible targets (my own role and a doctor role would be the exception - I can jail myself and a doctor could protect themselves).

As you quite rightly point out (and assuming random selection):

I have a 1 in 14 chance of jailing the person who is selected by the mafia to carry out the night kill.
There is a 1 in 11 chance of the person carrying out the night kill to target the person who has been jailed.

However, the laws of statistics state that for these 2 events to happen simultaneously, then you would multiply the fractions. In this case, giving a 1 in 154 chance (this differs from my previous number as I forgot I could jail keep myself).

Yes, I agree with this. Telika is choosing the method that suits his argument, and I'm choosing the method that suits my argument. Both are equally correct.

I chose Telika at random from the list of players that were not on my main suspects list on day one. Apparently this is good practice in these games.

I'm quite pleased that I claimed early as it's generated some really good discussion and made the game much more interesting.

Also, I'll vote pazzer before the deadline if he doesn't show up again. He has past form for doing a disappearing act towards the end of a day.

I think that if you were honest, you wouldn't be requiring a maths lesson, and would notice, by yourself, the flaw in your rhetorics. You would realise spontaneously that, if, say, a doctor selects a target, he has 1/numbers_of_other_players chances to select the mafia's victim. If there is a doctor protecting someone, the mafia has 1/numbers_of_townies chances to target the protected person. Both probabilities o not combine.

If you roll a dice, you have 1/6 chances of matching a predefined number. Even if this predefined number was selected by a dice roll.

If you roll two dice, you have 1/6 chances of getting the same roll.

1-1
2-2
3-3
4-4
5-5
6-6

versus six times a variation on five remaining combination :

1-2
1-3
1-4
1-5
1-6

2-1
2-3
2-4
2-5
2-6

etc.

In other words, no, a doctor wouldn't have one-out-of-150 chances of protecting the victim every time. It would make the role virtually useless.

The same goes with jailing. You selected one target, its chances to be the target (~1/total) is the same as his chances of being the killer (~1/total). If you need to bring it down to details, it's the sum of victims he could have chosen, versus the chances of him being chosen as a victim multiplied by the possibilities of different people making the choice.

Or you can phrase it differently. You picked a number. There was (probably) going to be one killer and one victim. There was one chance out of total-possible-jail-targets for him to be the victim, and there was one chance out of total-possible-jail-targets for him to be the assassin. It's the same.

It's not a matter of choosing a calculation perspective. There are maths, and there are manipulations. You're not just "choosing the method (aka results) you want", when yu calculate probabilities. Your teacher won't take it for an excuse for grading your test if your answer is false.

Possible results from rolling 2 dice:

1-1
1-2
1-3
1-4
1-5
1-6
2-1
2-2
2-3
2-4
2-5
2-6
3-1
3-2
3-3
3-4
3-5
3-6
4-1
4-2
4-3
4-4
4-5
4-6
5-1
5-2
5-3
5-4
5-5
5-6
6-1
6-2
6-3
6-4
6-5
6-6

If 1 represents Telika, then the probability of Telika being rolled twice is 1 in 36.

This says nothing. It is a fallacy, because you pre-define the necessity of me in particular being the co-targetted person. But you would have had the same situation of anyone was targetted twice. If JMich was targetted by jailer and killer. If Flub was targetted by jailer and killer. Etc. You have to multiply the chances by that. If the explanation is simply that the jailer and the killer targetted the same person, then it could have been the case with (as far as we know) any player. There would have been no increased coincidence of him being, "in addition" himself. Same as if you targetted the person who happened to be the killer : being targetted and being given the killer role by Joe are both independant from his name. You are just arbitrarily adding a parameter.

Have you done probabilities, in school ?

you missed 1, you got :

1:1

and

1:1

because you included

1:2
2:1
1:3
3:1
2:3
3:2

and so on.
so according to your calculation it is 2/36 = 1/18 (not saying whether it is right, though :))

(I am enjoying reading this. )

pazzer's a no show for two days and you still vote to lynch me...

seems logical

This would be compensated by the other symetrical doubles, but that's not the point. The point is that the same situation would arise for each one of these doubles. Which number it is is not important, only the structural relation between them, is.

And the absurdity of this discussion is that, intuitively, NMillar would understand that the chances for a successful killblock (by a blocker or a doctor) is not in the 1/150s.

Where is JMich, the resident technical matter-of-facty GOGer, when he's needed ?

School was a very long time ago, and no, I suck at maths.

ahh, no, I know, that's why I am not telling what the answer with the dice is.

Anyway, I also do not think that the chances is so high as he says. It is using the wrong type of calculations.

Indeed it is based on the wrong premiss that all players are equal, which nmillar himself stated they are not (http://www.gog.com/forum/general/gog_mafia_19_a_slalom_mafia/post906)...

Oh, we're voting based on inactivity? Thanks for telling me.