Ok, I have a serious pet peeve...
 

And I know many of you won't care or understand, but...

Can we please, please, please stop abusing and disusing the word "variance" on this forum. I wince in pain, honest-to-goodness pain, when I read the following posts which come up time and time again.

"I'm down x buy-ins over the past month, but that's just variance and ...",

or

"I know it might just be variance, but I've got a lot of 5th place finishes and ..."

Everybody please stay with me here. Variance is a very specific probability concept. It is a measure of the degree of spread in the probability distribution that defines a random variable. It is NOT a catch-all word to justify your losing streaks. If you finish 5th time and again, that's not an indicator that the variance demon is out to get you. If you have lost 20 buyins over a few weeks, that's not a sign of "bad variance". Variance is neither good nor bad. If you finish last everytime your variance of results is 0, but that's not good. If you finished first half the time and last half the time, your variance would be pretty damn high, but that's not bad - your ROI would be sweet.

So in conclusion, everyone here who hasn't read a graduate text in probability theory from cover to cover should never, ever post again. Well, maybe that's a little extreme. But honestly guys, please help me out here.

Re: Ok, I have a serious pet peeve...
 

You need to get over this pet peeve or stop reading the forums, it is only going to get worse.

Re: Ok, I have a serious pet peeve...
 

I don't think it should be my responsibility to get over my pet peeve. I think everyone should be required to put in their post subjects "Hey, mosdef, I am using the word variance in this post in a reckless and cavalier fashion so please do not read!" if they are going to use the word variance in this post in a reckless and cavalier fashion.

Re: Ok, I have a serious pet peeve...
 

I think it is understood here that it refers to a "random walk" from the mean. Whether this is the correct usage or not is a matter of debate but when someone writes "negative or positive variance" I think about it that way...there has been a deviation from there average play. What someone's mean play is another subject for debate as well.

Oh and:

Can we please, please, please stop abusing and disusing the word "variance" on this forum.

If you agree not to say "disuse" I won't say variance. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Re: Ok, I have a serious pet peeve...
 

No deal.

Re: Ok, I have a serious pet peeve...
 

i think that you've just seen an abnormal amount of misuses of the word variance lately. don't worry, it's just variance. it'll all even out.

citanul

Re: Ok, I have a serious pet peeve...
 

[ QUOTE ]
i think that you've just seen an abnormal amount of misuses of the word variance lately. don't worry, it's just variance. it'll all even out.

citanul

[/ QUOTE ]

nh

Re: Ok, I have a serious pet peeve...
 

Also, I am willing to bet that the people who post the type of thing I'm talking about don't know anything about random walks.

A small number might, but that would just be because of bad variance.

Re: Ok, I have a serious pet peeve...
 

HA!

Re: Ok, I have a serious pet peeve...
 

[ QUOTE ]
i think that you've just seen an abnormal amount of misuses of the word variance lately. don't worry, it's just variance. it'll all even out.

citanul

[/ QUOTE ]
LMAO

Who cares how you use the word? a) get over it, because people will keep using it(even though many of them probably don't know what variance is and use it to sound smart) b) get a freakin life...have you seen the gammer used in this forum?

Get your panties out of a bunch and stop wasting my time reading these worthless posts. NO ONE CARES AND THEY WILL KEEP USING IT!!