Comparison of NPC Crew Skill Level and their Gender... Male Bias perhaps?
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(15 pages of discussion skipped - going to stick to data and not wade into people's messy discussions)
I'm skeptical. Looking at your numbers, three of the five ranks came up as within two coin flips of each other with Mostly Harmless coming out more Female than Male. A fourth rank is within three. Only the "Expert" rank is an outlier, and it's not inconceivably far off. Of 250 randomly-generated pilots there's 111 female and 139 male representing a 44% Female/56% Male split. Most Elite players with Engineers will be thoroughly familiar with how weird an RNG can be.
Even if there was some hidden underlying code messing with the Expert results, it seems like a weird way to "send a message" about gender splits. In actual gameplay I think the hired Experts tend to be the most fire-and-forget pilots, often just hired short-term for PvP and other high-risk things, while players looking to hire a pilot longer-term will generally pick from Harmless pilots to save cash in the long run. So the message is... the "expendable expert" pilots are more male than female?
I'm skeptical. Looking at your numbers, three of the five ranks came up as within two coin flips of each other with Mostly Harmless coming out more Female than Male. A fourth rank is within three. Only the "Expert" rank is an outlier, and it's not inconceivably far off. Of 250 randomly-generated pilots there's 111 female and 139 male representing a 44% Female/56% Male split. Most Elite players with Engineers will be thoroughly familiar with how weird an RNG can be.
Even if there was some hidden underlying code messing with the Expert results, it seems like a weird way to "send a message" about gender splits. In actual gameplay I think the hired Experts tend to be the most fire-and-forget pilots, often just hired short-term for PvP and other high-risk things, while players looking to hire a pilot longer-term will generally pick from Harmless pilots to save cash in the long run. So the message is... the "expendable expert" pilots are more male than female?
Okay, I not going to read through all of this. Instead I'm simply going to point out: Your rig (beeing it a pc or a console) has most likly not a real random number generator.
In fact, if you run a pc you could buy a real rng as a expansion card, they are used for high level cryptography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_random_number_generator.
The RNG functions that are commonly used for gaming are normaly based on the tick count, the number of calculation cycles the cpu went trough since system start. Thats a really large number that changes extremly fast. These methods are pretty okay for gaming, at least until someonte tries to apply some statics to the results and points out that they look strange. What I'm hinting at here: these functions have a tendency to produce weird looking patterns.
You dont have to trust me here if you have excel somwhere. Just give it a try
=IF(RAND()<0.5,"M","W")
The results speaks for itself
Edit:
For clarity: This table contains 'random' results, not taken from the game
In fact, if you run a pc you could buy a real rng as a expansion card, they are used for high level cryptography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_random_number_generator.
The RNG functions that are commonly used for gaming are normaly based on the tick count, the number of calculation cycles the cpu went trough since system start. Thats a really large number that changes extremly fast. These methods are pretty okay for gaming, at least until someonte tries to apply some statics to the results and points out that they look strange. What I'm hinting at here: these functions have a tendency to produce weird looking patterns.
You dont have to trust me here if you have excel somwhere. Just give it a try
=IF(RAND()<0.5,"M","W")
The results speaks for itself
Edit:
For clarity: This table contains 'random' results, not taken from the game
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That isn't due to pseudo-random number generation, that's just the effect of a small sample size, which makes it a good illustration of what's likely happening in the game.
Random means unpredictable, if you get close to a 50/50 ratio with a small sample consistently then that's very predictable and not random at all. Those results are what random actually looks like, the results cluster and will be weighted one way or the other until you have a large enough sample, they should not be evenly distributed.
I wonder how long it is before a bunch of "reputable" publications end up writing entire stories about how "Elite Dangerous has sparked a debate about gender roles in society" etc etc. All this chin wagging over what is probably
rand()%crew_count;
The bias too, in the OP, is obvious. Sure you can mince words but the OPs other contributions in the thread, not to mention the clickbait title, kinda skew expectations just a wee bit.
I used to wonder how people were able to contruct such elaborate delusions about, for example, the game's lore, and really run with it. E.g. Formidine Rift and all that endless searching. I don't really need to wonder any more though, this entire thread is simply madness!
rand()%crew_count;
The bias too, in the OP, is obvious. Sure you can mince words but the OPs other contributions in the thread, not to mention the clickbait title, kinda skew expectations just a wee bit.
I used to wonder how people were able to contruct such elaborate delusions about, for example, the game's lore, and really run with it. E.g. Formidine Rift and all that endless searching. I don't really need to wonder any more though, this entire thread is simply madness!
Thanks for this! Fascinating and Repped! I'll be playing RND games tomorrow I can see ...
LoL ... I have to confess to making the title a little bit of click bait though <fessed-up>
Who the hell cares?
Seriously, this is a game. It is not supposed to be some Gender experiment.
And considering there are female Leaders in the game, this thread is yet another example of trying to make something out of nothing.
Can't get away from the ridiculous need to balance everything perfectly. Maybe there should be an accurate count of male/females currently on Planet Earth. What is there are more of one gender than the other? Is God/Evolution sexist?
Take this rubbish out of gaming.
That is all.
Seriously, this is a game. It is not supposed to be some Gender experiment.
And considering there are female Leaders in the game, this thread is yet another example of trying to make something out of nothing.
Can't get away from the ridiculous need to balance everything perfectly. Maybe there should be an accurate count of male/females currently on Planet Earth. What is there are more of one gender than the other? Is God/Evolution sexist?
Take this rubbish out of gaming.
That is all.
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I hope so. There is certainly enough material.
The hostility of posts like this justify the need for gaming research into the diversity and ethics of online gamer communities.
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Four if you count former President Halsey. Might still count since she's migrated to the Alliance and likely would take up something there given her status as something of a Holy Figure lately.
. The Empire has been a Patriarchy for the last millenia. The very first Emperor decreed the position and title of Emperor as such to go to the firstborn son. Emperor Arissa Lavigny-Duval is the first female emperor in the history of the Empire made only possible by her father the Emperor before her.
Where is the outrage over the Empire's sexism? You'd rather complain about an RNG generation?
Erm.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
Ed can you please frame this and hook it up in front of the entrance of Frontier HQ?
I'll buy you tea and biscuits.
Ironic, since the sexism you convey in trying to shut down this thread demonstrates real life politics in this video game [sic].
"When there's more than one person debating, it becomes politics. When they are of different genders, it all is sexist."
Wow, really?
Have you seen the hostility in these forums over virtually every aspect of the game?
The 'hostility' of my post has absolutely nothing to do with 'diversity' or 'ethics'. Quite honestly, I couldn't care less about either. There are very likely more male players here than female. Why? Who knows, but it isn't my fault.
The urge to attack anything that means X group of people has more 'something' than Y group is becoming a western disease. It doesn't matter if it's race, colour, gender, hair colour or how many toes someone has. Somebody, somewhere, feels the need to 'make a stand', and then immediately attacks anyone who says anything against it, citing they're obviously something-ist.
Do I personally believe in gender equality? Of course I do, the concept of women being under-represented in real life is something that is still being worked on. Glass ceilings, wage discrepancies... in most cases these are unacceptable, and need to be 'fixed'.
More male avatars in a computer game than female? No, not so much.
This entire post is a typical example (admitted by the OP) to generate clickbait - and the only reason you do that is to try and garner enough interest for one of the ridiculously SJW-driven online 'publications' - I use that word very loosely - to post about what the OP has written, usually for hubris and notoriety.
And responses like this one, justify why people like me get so annoyed when yet another 'diversity' topic is brought into something that is of no importance whatsoever. What, you think someone at Frontier decided that this game MUST be somehow predominately male inhabited?
Give me a break...
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