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Posted by 481: I can vary my assumptions all that I want and that still tells me nothing about a gunfight until it occurs.
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It does tell you what you might reaonably expect.
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You can press calculator buttons 'til the numbers wear off of them, but you are still playing "what if" based off of assumed and arbitrary numbers and it doesn't mean anymore than it did without those numbers. Playing "what if" with numbers is still playing "what if".
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First, the assumtions can be reaaonably assessed within ranges uisng empirical data, and as Bart pointed out, the hit rate assumption need not be arbitrary.
Second,
all forecasting, estimation, simulation, and prediction excercises, whether they involve weather, combat, financial returns, medical prognosis, reliability, servce life--you name it--constitute " playing 'what if' ", to use your characterization of the term.
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I can assume a "hit rate" of 90% or 9%, but it is still just an assumption. I can assume one bad guy or two, but it is still just an assumption.
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What is your point?
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I can assume that I have "X" number of bullets, but that is just an assumption.
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No. That's a known fact.
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No one needs an exercise in math to tell them that-
-if you run out of bullets, you'll be unable to shoot back
-no matter how good a shot you are, some of your shots will miss their mark due to the stress of a gunfight
-it is harder to shoot two bad guys with guns as opposed to one guy with one gun
-if you are a lousy shot and use up all of your bullets before stopping the bad guys, they'll most likely shoot you
-launching more bullets might produce more hits
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Of course not. We all understood all of those things, logically and intuitively.
What John's exercise does for us is provide a reasonable quantification of the likelihood with different round counts.
You may have had an appreciation for the difference, but I did not, John says that he did not, and I seriously doubt that we are alone.
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I've never seen a calculator laying around at a gunfight. (and I've borne witness to that type of mindless carnage too many times to have missed such a ridiculous thing)
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What is the point of that comment?