Haha! A good question....
Part of the reason I locked it is embarrassment at my kindergarten-level Excel skills... I'm sure the formulae could be done much better! Anyway, the password to turn off the locked cells is "Steamgiftslockemup111".
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Well, with a little math and guesswork...
I'd say that on average I enter in giveaways that are either very popular (AAA titles) or relatively small (group giveaways/CV giveaways,) so totally guessing here -- an average probability of winning of about 1:1100. I've entered 950 giveaways, so...
1-(n^x)
Looks like my odds of having already won are ~%57.854, not that I've won.
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While I take your point, even a small number of low entry giveaways can make a significant difference to the figure. If only two of the 1,100 entries were giveaways with just two entries, all things being equal, I might expect to win one game from those two alone.
Since the giveaways I've entered are a real mixture I was just curious about the odds. Also, it helped pass a quiet half-hour or so!
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This is cool, I commend you for your effort. Another fun way of viewing the stats is ordering the cells by name and seeing how many giveaways you entered for a certain game.
That said, I couldn't complete it as it's making my Excel cry for some reason (had to force quit), but maybe that's because Excel for Mac was always a buggy mess. Will have to try in OpenOffice or boot into Windows and try there. Just a thought, do you think you could upload it as a Google Spreadsheet? That would be awesome.
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I don't have a google account, but I understand that Google docs natively supports Excel .xlsx files these days, so you might be able to do it this way?
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Hmm.. just tried it but Google doesn't seem to like it for some reason. It got garbled and isn't displaying as it should. Thanks anyway, though.
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Never mind, got it working! Took me a while to load my 2632 entries into the sheet, and the numbers are in:
Expected games won: 3.9591 (so let's say 4)
Actual games won: 2 (Rome: Total War after 70 entries; Kung-Fu Strike after 27 entries).
Luck: You are 49.48% unluckier than expected
Haha... so there we have it. I can now officially claim to be an unlucky sod, and I even have the numbers to back me up :D
Okay, now to some more data mining... I want to see how many entries I have for a given game... this is going to be fun. EDIT: I find out that I entered 167 giveaways for Hitman: Blood Money (many of them multiple copies) before I finally just traded for it. Runners up are Terraria with 123 giveaways entered, Indie Gala 9 with 119 entries, Torchlight with 117 (before I got it in HIB 6), and Supreme Commander 2 with 105 entries, and plenty more games around the 50-80 range. Not that anybody cares, mind. Just sharing the discoveries I made with your cool little spreadsheet.
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cg had something like this done a couple of months ago but never implemented it. Wish he had - it's always a nice stat to see!
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+1
Fortix is the ambrosia of Steamgifts giveaways...
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Haha. Don't fret. I'm working on it. Besides, the exercise gives me my healthy glow...
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Actually went through and copy and pasted all of my entries x.x
Closed Entries: 2,598
Expected Wins: 61.0215
Actual Wins: 91
Luck: +49.13%
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Problem with you is that you mostly won in private or small gift group giveaways. So obviously you have greater chance to win on those than public giveaways.
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Entering small giveaways won't affect the luck % calculation in a positive way unless he wins more than he is statistically "entitled" to...
By way of explanation, if he enters ten giveaways, each with only two entrants, if he wins four games, that is still a lot of wins for ten giveaways (more than most of us would manage in the usual course of events), but he will still be deemed "unlucky", having won less than the five games one might expect going by mathematical probabilities.
:)
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12% luckier than expected, not bad! Pretty cool little spreadsheet, this ought to be a built in feature.
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Would be nice to have a few more personal stats for us to obsess over :D
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Another example of why our race is supreme.
Also will try this out when I'm not on an ipad!
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Thanks, this is kind of interesting. I had almost 60 pages to copy and paste, but it didn't take too long. It calculated that I should expect to win about 4.6 games and I actually won 6, making me 30.5% luckier than expected. Not bad, and probably better than I expected given that the vast majority of my entries are public ones with generally lower chances to win than on group or private giveaways.
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Assuming I've done this correctly: Expected games won = 5.8955, Actual games won = 2. You are 66.08% unluckier than expected.
I need to enter more private giveaways.
Also, you have waaaay too much time on your hands, AtomicWoodchuck. But, I love you for it because I heart stats.
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Haha. It really didn't take that long! Glad you got something out of it though :)
Sorry to hear of your comparative misfortune :( The solution to improving your luck isn't to enter private giveaways with low numbers of entrants though. While this will win you more games, it doesn't make any difference to your "luck" statistic:
For example, if an average person entered ten giveaways with two entrants each, they would expect to win five of them.
If your luck held, you would expect to win 1.7 of these ten giveaways. We can round that up to two, since you deserve a break :) It might net you some extra games, but your "luck" as calculated by the spreadsheet would remain unchanged.
On a positive note, you might consider the following: Sacrifice two virgin chickens under a full moon. Drain the blood into a beaker (250ml is best, although a 500ml might work at a pinch) adding in a hair-strand from your grandfather, and another from your firstborn. Microwave then, when heated to an even 67 degrees Celsius, mix with 500ml of full-bodied stout (I used Guinness, but you should consider a Russian Imperial Stout for the higher alcohol content) and drink quickly, with minimal breathing. Just by way of a brief disclaimer, I can't guarantee the consequences in the afterlife or, indeed, the next morning. Keep several aspirin and a little morphine close to hand...
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1st of 3 ninja-friendly installments. Your change of fortune begins here. Ready your shuriken...
ALCNI
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125 pages later and I'm 13.36% luckier then expected!
Hoorah! Although to be honest since I have 15 wins I thought I'd be even luckier.
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oh my bad, my internet bullshit policy page just communicated me i could catch cooties from this and declined to permit the download...
for sure, did anybody get it? i have it already and i don't mean cooties...
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Sorry for the cooties. Maybe Fileswap will prove to be a more sanitary solution?
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mmmm, this download did work and my vintage excel converted the file into something.
now i guess i have to do the copy&paste exercise and discover if it worked %P
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If you're still having trouble, give me a shout. I can probably re-upload the file in an old school format :)
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So, you think you're unlucky? Maybe the opposite?
Given the fantastic games I've won, I have always felt lucky on Steamgifts, but statistically? Hard to tell. With different numbers of entrants for each giveaway, and multiple games sometimes appearing in a single giveaway, who knows?
Well, as a filler during the "procrastination" stage of my afternoon I've put together an ugly (but hopefully effective) little spreadsheet to give you a DEFINITIVE answer!
It requires a little patience, since you DO have to copy and paste each of your Steamgifts Entries pages in to the sheet. Took me a little under 12 minutes for mine (100+ pages), but I did discover that in terms of games won vs % chance of winning, I'm 19.23% luckier than the odds would suggest... Over a reasonably large sample of 2,800 giveaways (less a few, since some of these haven't ended, so aren't included in the calculation), that's significantly lucky. YAY!
The % figure won't work if you don't have any wins, but the spreadsheet will at least show you the number of games you might expect to have won, based on the odds.
Available here:
http://www.fileswap.com/dl/TcLBxy4Jj4/
or here:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/p6tpvd
^^^ For those concerned, it's a macro-free Excel file. You won't catch a virus, unseemly warts in unusual places, or cooties from this. It's safer than a pack of safety matches, safety pinned to a Safe-Seal(TM)-sealed Safeway bag, safely locked away within a safe in a safe-house.
Click on the "Click here to start download from sendspace" halfway down the screen, not on the other crap :) If it starts talking about iLivid, you've gone wrong somewhere!
Excel file contains instructions for use. It's really not that complicated though :)
Hope this is of use to someone!
If something isn't clear, or you spot any glaring errors, please let me know.
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