Breaking down The Command Zone Stats

[Red_Wyrm]

I can't believe this.

I can't believe how long it took for me to figure this out.

You want to see what overthinking something looks like, scroll up to the top of this page and re-read all of it. I completely overthought all of this. Had I just remembered my first day of stats class, none of this would have happened. This is literally the first thing you learn.

Let me explain...

The first thing you learn about in statistics is the difference between a sample, and the population. The population is everything. If you are looking at the average height of people worldwide, the population is everyone. Every person on Earth. If you are looking at the average height of people in the United States, then the population is everyone living in the United States. And if you are examining the win percentages of commander games, the population is every possible game you could ever have. Every commander, every deck variation that commander could have, every possible combination of decks that could go against each other, and every possible outcome of those games.

As you can imagine, it is impossible (or at least hugely impractical) to measure the population.

So instead, you take a sample. The sample is where you only measure a group people, or you only look at a some commander games, not all of them. But with a good enough sample, you can accurately estimate the properties of the population. Now I thought that with 304 commander games, the Command Zone had a good sample size. And they do; 300 or so games is a very good sample. I've said this already.

Where I messed up, is that I thought that the sample was estimating all commander games in existence. But I watched a few of the games, I saw the decks that were being used. And then it hit me:

These are YouTube videos, they are being done for entertainment. That's why combat damage was the most common win condition; watching someone win with a combo is boring, but with combat damage, it's more entertaining to see someone pull ahead. That's why Helix Pinnacle is a more common win condition than Approach of the Second Sun; it's more entertaining to watch. Those 304 games aren't a sample of all possible commander games, they are only a sample of the possible games made by YouTubers.

I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner.


Summary

Wrapping this up now, I'm not going to spend any more time on it.

• All results for The Command Zone's stats were found to be insignificant. Just because the correlation coefficient was -0.19, doesn't mean that Sol Ring decreases your win chance.
• None of the results found by The Command Zone will reflect your games. I mean, they might, but it's not likely.

Right, I'm going to lay of the stats for a bit now. I'll wait until something else catches my eye.

So, give it an hour.

So can we conclude that amount of available mana affects win %, or price of the deck? Just not to the degree calculated by the command zone?

Perhaps conclude is a bad word, but I think looking at the stats and common knowledge tells us this could be the case? We just cant assign a % value to them.

[Soren841]

It's really not the case though.. Flash only costs 2 mana 

The best wincons are always cheaper

[Red_Wyrm]

It's really not the case though.. Flash only costs 2 mana 

The best wincons are always cheaper

From my understanding this is the case in cEDH, but in a more casual setting, the game is usually won by 8+ mana spells. Expropriate, cyclonic rift, Insurrection, Craterhoof Behemoth. Big bombs like that. Not so much getting a combo off quickly.

[Soren841]

cEDH is also the only place you'll get any sort of real meta or data on a scale larger than a single playgroup for EDH. All casual data will be skewed by a million different factors so it means next to nothing anyways

[Red_Wyrm]

cEDH is also the only place you'll get any sort of real meta or data on a scale larger than a single playgroup for EDH. All casual data will be skewed by a million different factors so it means next to nothing anyways

That is a great point. Thinking outside cEDH, just casual, I think across most playgroups it's a general trend that more mana plays a factor in winning. Although if you've hit every land drop, but drew lands/ramp all game, I guess it doesnt matter your mana count if you cant use it.

[robort]

cEDH is also the only place you'll get any sort of real meta or data on a scale larger than a single playgroup for EDH. All casual data will be skewed by a million different factors so it means next to nothing anyways

Be careful, data skewing happens in cedh as well.

[Soren841]

Decks aren't skewed by budget or janky stuff the way EDH is. Everything is optimal and there's actually a meta.. much better for gathering data

[Morganator 2.0]

So can we conclude that amount of available mana affects win %, or price of the deck? Just not to the degree calculated by the command zone?

Perhaps conclude is a bad word, but I think looking at the stats and common knowledge tells us this could be the case? We just cant assign a % value to them.

No. No to all of this.

You'll notice in the earlier posts I mentioned a null hypothesis. The null hypothesis is always nothing. "There is no correlation" or "there is no trend". The goal of statistics is to provide evidence that rejects the null hypothesis, so that you can give evidence to the alternate hypothesis; "there is a correlation" or "there is a trend".

In none of the tests I did was I able to reject the null hypothesis, so we must accept it; there are no correlations between anything.

And this comes down to the wide range of decks that were used; if you try to make a rule (ex: more lands increases your chance of winning) there are just too many decks out there that breaks those rules. You might find success if you narrowed the hypothesis that you're testing (ex: Boros decks with more lands have an increased chance of winning).

[robort]

First we have to come to a conclusion as to what exactly constitutes as budget. Is budget $25.00? $50.00? $100 and so forth all the way into the thousands? The stats on command zone concluded as their opinion as budget below $500.
What is defined as budget can mean differently from person to person.

Second we also have to come to a conclusion what exactly constitutes as optimization. This also ranges based apon what one defines it at. We could call it best optimization at winning. Then that brings in stats command zone talks about but is also inconclusive. Does the chance of winning actually increase by going first? Does the chance of winning increase by who does play the most lands? Does the chance of winning increase by who gets the most mana? Does the chance of winning increase by what commander I choose? We can agree that some just won't no matter what because they just don't do much of anything. Does the chance of winning increase based apon color choosing? Established to an extent with the colors but nothing really conclusive. Does the chance of winning increase with how much a card cost? This is also part of the budget aspect. This also follows into the "keeping up with the joneses". Per wonderful example of Command Zone with Smothering Tithe. People so when Josh had that on the field and he played wheel of fortune. People jumped on the bandwagon/keeping up with the joneses on Smothering Tithe. Does winning increase with skill? No brainer here but the more skill you have at something the better you are at it then someone who has just started. Even though there are exceptions here as well because some people can just get that skill really fast after having just started. Hence slow learners and fast learners.

Optimization has also been proven while disproven to not work. I hate to use this as an example but go into sports. Look at teams who have payed the most for optimization compared to those whom haven't. Yet some teams who haven't payed for optimization have gone out to win the big brew ha ha and so has those whom have paid.

When looking at things like these stats like those of the Command zone it gives some sort of general idea. Things are plausible but not conclusive. Until there are full complete studies on every single aspect of commander we will only have things that just give a general idea but nothing fully conclusive.

[WWolfe]

It's also hard to take some of this info seriously as some of the video series have soft ban lists. Cmdr Vs tries not to use Cyclonic Rift or combo decks. Command Zone tries to stay away from early game winning combos. Both have themed games where some of the results wouldn't happen in your normal games. There's another one (I can't think of the name}, had a custom rule where you couldn't do an infinite combo more than so many times. 

These video series play a 'fun to watch but not comparable to real games unless you house rule their exact rules' format.

[robort]

But there is also another thing that wasn't mentioned. If I remember correctly from older videos Josh doesn't use tutors anymore. So how many of his games that are part of the stats are decks that he doesn't have tutors in.
Also are the decks the Command Zone also used based with the assumption of how they recommend how you make an EDH deck?

[WWolfe]

I'm not sure but I feel like I remember seeing Josh use a tutor in a recent Game Knights  (and I'm not counting the most recent episode where his Boros deck was built around Sunforger). I know Jimmy has.

ETA- maybe it was an older episode that I just re-watched for some reason?

[Red_Wyrm]

I'm not sure but I feel like I remember seeing Josh use a tutor in a recent Game Knights  (and I'm not counting the most recent episode where his Boros deck was built around Sunforger). I know Jimmy has.

ETA- maybe it was an older episode that I just re-watched for some reason?

No no I remember him using a worldly tutor I think on an extra turns episodeand that's a fairly new series.

[WWolfe]

The latest Extra Turns was almost 5 months ago and not what I was thinking of.

[Red_Wyrm]

The latest Extra Turns was almost 5 months ago and not what I was thinking of.

Well I dont remember him.saying at any point in the past 5 months he doesnt use tutors. So either way I think it just helps prove your point. I know in the game knights I think with their special guest dude Josh used defense of the heart.