Playing dices - A guide to probabilities in Pokemon

[J9794]

Hello and welcome to my first guide post. My intention is to give you the tools so you know how to determine the chances of a certain event (like getting a flawless pokemon or a shinny).

First of all, probabilities might be a bit tricky at the beginning, and intuition doesn't always work here. Then, we are going to go by 2 simple rules for probability:

1. If A is an opposite event to B (if one happens it's impossible the other happens), the probability of A can be calculated as 1-probability of B.
2. The probability of 2 independent events happening together is equal to the multiplication of the probabilities of the separate events.

You might be asking yourself what are independent events. Let's say we have 2 events, one is that the pokemon you'll find next in the grass will be shinny, and the other one is that the pokemon after that will be shinny. 1 in 4196 is the chance of finding a shinny pokemon. If you find one shinny, does the chance of finding another are decreased? Of course not, that's the definition of independent events, they are events which probability doesn't depend on the other event happening or no.
So, what would be the chance of getting 2 shinnies on a row? (1/4196) * (1/4196) = you have 1 chance in 17606416 of finding 2 shinnies in a row. A piece of cake, isn't it?

Now, we are going for a more interesting use of probabilities. What's the chance of X happening, if I try N times? (For example, what is the chance of getting a shinny in 100 attempts of finding one). There's a formula to calculate it, but if you don't want to memorize it, think in it in this way: Getting AT LEAST one shinny in 100 attempts, it's the opposite of NOT GETTING ANY shinny in 100 attempts. By now we should be able to calculate the chances of not getting any shinny 100 times in a row, what's the chance of not getting one shinny? 4195/4196, what's the chance of not getting one 100 times in a row? (4195/4196) to the 100th = 0,976 aprox. Then, the chances of the opposite happening is 1-0,976=0,024. That's around a 2,4% of chance, still very bad I know .

I'll update this later with the probabilities related to breeding because I need to refresh what I remember from probabilities a bit , hope this will be useful for somebody.

 

[Hikki]

Hello and welcome to my first guide post. My intention is to give you the tools so you know how to determine the chances of a certain event (like getting a flawless pokemon or a shinny).

First of all, probabilities might be a bit tricky at the beginning, and intuition doesn't always work here. Then, we are going to go by 2 simple rules for probability:

1. If A is an opposite event to B (if one happens it's impossible the other happens), the probability of A can be calculated as 1-probability of B.
2. The probability of 2 independent events happening together is equal to the multiplication of the probabilities of the separate events.

You might be asking yourself what are independent events. Let's say we have 2 events, one is that the pokemon you'll find next in the grass will be shinny, and the other one is that the pokemon after that will be shinny. 1 in 4196 is the chance of finding a shinny pokemon. If you find one shinny, does the chance of finding another are decreased? Of course not, that's the definition of independent events, they are events which probability doesn't depend on the other event happening or no.
So, what would be the chance of getting 2 shinnies on a row? (1/4196) * (1/4196) = you have 1 chance in 17606416 of finding 2 shinnies in a row. A piece of cake, isn't it?

Now, we are going for a more interesting use of probabilities. What's the chance of X happening, if I try N times? (For example, what is the chance of getting a shinny in 100 attempts of finding one). There's a formula to calculate it, but if you don't want to memorize it, think in it in this way: Getting AT LEAST one shinny in 100 attempts, it's the opposite of NOT GETTING ANY shinny in 100 attempts. By now we should be able to calculate the chances of not getting any shinny 100 times in a row, what's the chance of not getting one shinny? 4195/4196, what's the chance of not getting one 100 times in a row? (4195/4196) to the 100th = 0,976 aprox. Then, the chances of the opposite happening is 1-0,976=0,024. That's around a 2,4% of chance, still very bad I know .

I'll update this later with the probabilities related to breeding because I need to refresh what I remember from probabilities a bit , hope this will be useful for somebody.

Cool! I can tell you spent a lot of time, way more time than I have spent here ------------> http://forum.3dspedia.com/threads/tips-on-double-battles.13873/ even though I will post more on mine, your guide is amazing! I hope that you would do a bit of clean up because some parts of your guide are hard to understand. Keep it up!

 

[J9794]

Cool! I can tell you spent a lot of time, way more time than I have spent here ------------> http://forum.3dspedia.com/threads/tips-on-double-battles.13873/ even though I will post more on mine, your guide is amazing! I hope that you would do a bit of clean up because some parts of your guide are hard to understand. Keep it up!

Thanks for the comment . And yeah, I feel like my post could be better written, would you tell me which parts where hard to understand so I can try to focus on rewriting them when I update?

 

[Hikki]

You could refined/restate the two basic rules to make it clear to understand and add an example with it so you could see how you would apply them. I was confused about what X and N were in the second paragraph but I think you were just reffering to variables. You could also change all the "shinnys" (Spelled wrong) to Shiny. That is is about all.