Topics

1

Random Randomness / Yo dudes (and dudettes)

« on: May 19, 2014, 23:21 »

I think Wendy's might have just won all marketing campaigns ever:

https://www.facebook.com/Baconator/photos/a.361295897270150.79122.324656167600790/708900889176314/?type=1&relevant_count=1

Discuss

2

X and Y/OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire / VS Recorder Replays

« on: February 21, 2014, 01:10 »

So, I'm sure we've all had some ridiculously fun battles over our time.  And I hope you guys saved replays of what you believe to be your favorite battles (even if you only save your favorite wins, they can be interesting like mine).

So, let me start off!

AL4W-WWWW-WWW3-EMFK
My in-game team versus a set of the typical legendaries.  It turns out Florges and Aegislash can take down the entire set of pre-Bank legendaries.  She and I had a battle before (where her Charizard mega evolved), but it wasn't auto-level, all my guys were level 100, and her guys weren't (like her Togekiss was level 47).  It's even more one sided than this one.

BQBW-WWWW-WWW5-N68T
A triple battle with someone I consider to be a really good battler.  She and I keep getting down to last few guys.  The two of us battled twice today and this is the first match (I lost the second match, because of Garchomp Hax and she used a Special Mega Tyranitar (but waited to Mega Evolve it when I brought out my Politoed)).  If I wasn't lazy, I would get another team ready to fight her instead of using the same one constantly.

U5JG-WWWW-WWW5-KZ8G
A really REALLY fun ubers multibattle.  As it turns out, Ho-oh is a ridiculously good Pokemon.  The four of us had three battles exchanging partners.  My battle with her as my partner is the most one-sided out of them.  I mean, when you watch it, you'll see that it ends 4-0 (her Darkrai fainted after doing its initial job, and my Ho-oh fainted because of Life Orb recoil).

UWVW-WWWW-WWW5-DNKY
My only non-legendary team that I have transferred over versus a team of 6 legendaries (though only two of them are ubers).  I took down another team of all legendaries but this one was more interesting than the other.


So, share yours!

3

General Pokémon Discussion / So I Managed to Put This on an Exam...

« on: February 13, 2014, 14:51 »

I am a teaching assistant for an undergraduate probability course.  My goal for this term was to throw in a question even tangentially related to Pokemon on a midterm.  That's because 3 years ago, I took a graduate probability course by the same professor (who is also my current research adviser).  He had us write a paper about how probability plays a role in your life.  A lot of people were writing about their research, but I wasn't involved in any at the time.  So I wrote a paper on Pokemon.  I even wrote a Matlab program to simulate a battle between a Blissey and a Giratina to show how the different probabilities affect who wins.  The professor still remembers it even now (because it's unique).

So that's why I wanted to include a Pokemon related question on an exam.  During the second midterm, I finally succeeded, though I realized I could have used more recognizable names, but I was too involved in X&Y to consider it.

Either way, I propose the question to you guys to see if you can solve it (and sorry if it's in the wrong section, but it is related to Pokemon).



Lysandre Labs produces 200 Holo Casters a day. Each manufactured Holo Caster coming off the assembly line is
deemed faulty with a probability 1/100 , independently of the other Holo Casters. What is the probability that no more
than 5 Holo Casters are deemed faulty during a given day?



I'm going to try to do others during the next two exams, but last time I tried to use actual Pokemon I was turned down during the first exam.  I really wanted to do a question on the voltage of Pikachu's thunderbolts.  Assuming they're IID, they should follow a Gaussian distribution and thus I can ask students to find the top percentage of Pikachu's thunderbolts given a mean (about 10kV according to the Japanese name of the attack) and a variance.

4

X and Y/OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire / A Theory about Turning Acquaintances into Friends...

« on: November 17, 2013, 01:45 »

So I have a theory about turning acquaintances into friends after empirically noticing it myself.

Essentially, you have to alternating either trading or battling with one another.  So, for instance, if a Passerby asks you to trade, you accept, trade a little, and exit.  Then YOU ask him to trade, if he accepts, you trade some more, and exit.  I noticed that that seems to prompt the adding a friend option.

I haven't done much battling, but it just happened with me.  I traded with some passerby who was collecting Vivillon forms (if you were wondering, she had mine).  I offered to trade some more with her.  Then after she challenged me to a battle (that I literally won with only one hit until death), the prompt to adding her as a friend appeared.

I'm wondering if you guys noticed that too.  This was killing me for a while about how to get it done until like recently.  It'll be hard to test this, given the nature of humans and their own motives, but it's a theory worth attempting to test.