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95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

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Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

#131

Post by arbirk »

rapjr9 wrote: post #125

In machine learning 95% accuracy is not very useful. It means the algorithm will be wrong 1 out of 20 times. So every 20th word in speech recognition will be incorrect, your medical diagnosis will be wrong for every 20th person, your face will not unlock your phone every 20th time, every 20th person will not be allowed to log into a web site. There are some machine learning applications where 95% is good enough or ev…

Rank percentiles and statistical test accuracy / model accuracy percentiles can not be compared.

The author of the article seems to be confused about statistics.

Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

#132

Post by [deleted] »

rapjr9 wrote: post #125

In machine learning 95% accuracy is not very useful. It means the algorithm will be wrong 1 out of 20 times. So every 20th word in speech recognition will be incorrect, your medical diagnosis will be wrong for every 20th person, your face will not unlock your phone every 20th time, every 20th person will not be allowed to log into a web site. There are some machine learning applications where 95% is good enough or ev…

[deleted]

Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

#133

Post by xboxnolifes »

coldtea wrote: post #77
xboxnolifes wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In every competitive game I've ever played (Overwatch, CSGO, LoL, TFT, Rocket League), the top 5% definitely wasn't "that good". In my mind, the top 20% are people who actually play. If you are stuck anywhere below that, you aren't even trying to improve. If a leaderboard says you haven't even cracked top 50%, then that leaderboard is definitely cutting players that don't play much from the bottom of that list. In mo…

> Then the top 5% is when you start understanding the game at a competitive level. The very start. On the other hand, your handle is "xbox, no life". The whole OP premise is: "Reaching 95%-ile isn't very impressive because it's not that hard to do. I think this is one of my most ridiculable ideas. It doesn't help that, when stated nakedly, that sounds elitist. But I think it's just the opposite: most people can becom…

Congrats on the ad hominem I guess? My name is a joke.

> Even more so if you're 95% on more than one things (imaging meeting someone that's 95% programmer, conversationalist, cook, guitar player, marathon runner, business owner, ... He would automatically be hella more impressive than the huge majority of people you meet)...

Being in the top 5% for more than 1 thing is trivially easy. Top 5% is just 1 in 20 people who have attempted. Most people have tried cooking at least once. Most people have ran at least once in their life (Hell, just completing a marathon would put you in the top 5% of of people who run). The pool of people who have attempted programming by now is pretty massive (and it's a pretty big conversation about how many do not succeed).

Being in the top 5% of just these is really not difficult. It only seems difficult if you only compare people trying to be in the top percentile and not every person who has ever participated.

Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

#134

Post by bobkazamakis »

jjoonathan wrote: post #130
coldtea wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then the top 5% is when you start understanding the game at a competitive level. The very start. On the other hand, your handle is "xbox, no life". The whole OP premise is: "Reaching 95%-ile isn't very impressive because it's not that hard to do. I think this is one of my most ridiculable ideas. It doesn't help that, when stated nakedly, that sounds elitist. But I think it's just the opposite: most people can becom…

Ah, the iron laws of gaming strike again! * Anyone who is worse than me is a scrub * Anyone who is better than me has no life

That man in front of me going too slow is an idiot! That man behind me going too fast is a maniac!

Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

#135

Post by Rd6n6 »

xigency wrote: post #17

Admittedly, I only skimmed this. But within the space of video games, I’m not sure Overwatch is a stunning example since it’s generally a casual game. I’ve been playing various iterations of Counter-Strike and StarCraft for decades. Sometimes with deliberate practice, including reading strategies, playing custom maps to practice certain skills, and watching series aimed at improving level of play. And despite the hun…

I’ve made it to the top 5% in a few competitive games, top 1% or 0.1% even. Once you get there, it’s surreal because of how sloppy you know you are: everything you do is still so clumsy and you still have so much uncertainty. It’s just that most other players are even more clumsy and even more confused (often more confident however).

Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

#136

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

barrkel wrote: post #96
xigoi wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they clearly don't know how to make a web app for accessing cloud storage work decently fast…

Doing that at a startup would be easy, since you control the whole stack and can tune it to the use case, and almost certainly don't have problems of scale. It's 90% getting the technical stuff in place, assuming you have the budget. Doing it at a place like Google is a different matter. The job isn't tuning a stack. It's coordinating multiple teams that own different services, and trying to make general-purpose serv…

To be fair though, that's wholly within the scope of what one would expect a Principle Engineer to do.

Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

#137

Post by nindalf »

Fnoord wrote: post #101
xboxnolifes wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In every competitive game I've ever played (Overwatch, CSGO, LoL, TFT, Rocket League), the top 5% definitely wasn't "that good". In my mind, the top 20% are people who actually play. If you are stuck anywhere below that, you aren't even trying to improve. If a leaderboard says you haven't even cracked top 50%, then that leaderboard is definitely cutting players that don't play much from the bottom of that list. In mo…

I remember back in the days I had dial-up and installed a Tetrinet server. I could beat anyone, except this one girl who was competitive with me. People came and went. I could slack a bit, get on their level, yet still win. Then I got DSL and my ping improved, making the game easier. OTOH, some people (mostly, good ones) sticked around, and ultimately improved. I had to play better. Until, at some point, we had multi…

It’s easy to measure other peoples effort in video games.

Anyone who puts in more effort than me is a try hard/no lifer.

Anyone who puts in less effort than me is a casual.

Only I put in the exact right amount of effort.

Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

#138

Post by bombcar »

twofornone wrote: post #16

>But I think it's just the opposite: most people can become (relatively) good at most things. I think this point of view is not only blatantly false but also much more dangerous than most people realize. It sets an unrealistic standard across all disciplines, with a wide range of detrimental effects: 1. People entering majors that they are not qualified for, taking on more debt and failing later than than they otherw…

If you rewrite what was said as "most people can become top 5% at the thing" it's obviously not possible.

It's more a "most people won't even try, but you should try."

Re: 95%-ile isn't that good (2020)

#140

Post by NeverFade »

jvanderbot wrote: post #129
xigency wrote: post #17

Admittedly, I only skimmed this. But within the space of video games, I’m not sure Overwatch is a stunning example since it’s generally a casual game. I’ve been playing various iterations of Counter-Strike and StarCraft for decades. Sometimes with deliberate practice, including reading strategies, playing custom maps to practice certain skills, and watching series aimed at improving level of play. And despite the hun…

TFA: The "one weird trick" is that, for a lot of activities, being something like 10%-ile among people who practice can make you something like 90%-ile or 99%-ile among people who participate An important point is that you're now better than 95% of starcraft players if you reach middling competitiveness against those who compete regularly. At 50th pctile in competitions youre absolutely better than the vast majority…

It's not clear what being 99% among people who play very casually actually gives you. In many cases it's not a lot.

Take chess, for example. By practicing regularly on Lichess, you can achieve a skill level that will beat 99% of casual chess players. However, you'll almost never play against this people. You'll play against other folks on Lichess, who all play regularly, and a top 1% of all chess players can easily be in the bottom 50% of the people you'll play on Lichess. It's not clear what you gain from being better than 99% of people who don't play on Lichess with any regularity, and you'll therefore never encounter.

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