Cort wrote:QUOTE (Cort @ Jan 11 2011, 05:59 PM) i am not here to teach you how to use the internet -- but I will.
Please don't a) hotlink images without giving credit and b) don't hotlink or pagelink to sites stealing
other's content.
(The original article at least linked to
another content stealer who, while still not attributing the source, at least links to it.)
Who cares. Using the gaussian distrubution is much easier (read: feasible) than using beta or weibull or another invention. I have used the gauss distribution on worse suited problems than ranking allegiance, succesfully.
The gaussian distribution has several advantages.
#1 Many people (read: 1%) understand how it's working.
#2 The MLE which is used for calculation new values after a measurement (even if it's 1-0 result) is a mostly linear calculation if it is guassian. Doing a MLE for other distributions like limited gauss, beta e.t.c. requires the solution of a nonlinear optimization problem which takes into account all games played and uses every players parameters (here:mu,sigma, but they can be different) as variable. Seldom do we know if the algorithm can converge to the correct solution but for gauss is a quadratic problem (read: easy) whose solution is the well known update fomula.
#3 It has worked once when MS used it for trueskill.
For me, as an engineer the argument #3 ranks much higher than anything else.
Allegskill has some unsolvable problems because every game has 1 bit for 20 players (maximum).
Also who cares about stealing pictures, it's the internet after all. I bet 90% of pictures in this forum are stolen and without source. Or more.
I have a johnson photo in my profile since 2010.