Summary[]
I was curious: in the 156 podcast episodes for which the DS9 board game is being played, how many times would we expect to land on particular board squares?
I simulated 100,000 complete podcast runs (i.e. 156 podcast episodes, simulated 100,000 times) using Python (source code is here), playing out the board game for each run. Here's what I found.
Question | Answer |
---|---|
How many drunkisodes (CoCo NoNo, Quark's Bar, Mornhammered) are expected? | About 23 (likely range: 18 - 27) |
How many non-drunk special episodes are expected? | About 14 (likely range: 10 - 18) |
How many trips to visit each other (Looking At Each Other During) are expected? | Either 1 or 2 (likely range: 0 - 3) |
How many live streamed episodes (Fuck It! We'll Do It Live!) are expected? | Either 3 or 4 (likely range: 1 - 6) |
Method And Assumptions[]
- I calculated 156 turns through the entire duration of GG DS9, as follows:
- The first die roll was during episode 197, Space Butthole Curriculum (S01E19).
- There are 26 episodes per DS9 season from 2 through 7.
- There will be one turn for every episode except S07E26.
- Thus, there's 1 turn in S01, 26 turns in each of S02 through S06, and 25 turns in S07.
- If the piece moves to a space butthole square, I assume the butthole is followed immediately: the next podcast episode will use the square that results from following the butthole.
- Rolls that would move beyond square 100, land on square 100 instead. (For example, on board square 97, if a 4 is rolled, I assume the move is to square 100.)
- Suppose at the end of podcast X, the piece moves to square 100. Then, I assume at the end of podcast X+1, the piece moves to square 1 (i.e., there is no die roll: the game starts over). At the end of podcast X+2, I assume the die is rolled once again.
Detailed Results[]
In the tables below, the "10-90% likely range" is the number of times we'd expect to land on a square in 80% of the 100,000 podcast runs (specifically, the 10th and 90th percentiles of the number of times we visit a particular square). For example, here's how many times we landed on "Looking At Each Other During":
Times | Count | Times | Count |
---|---|---|---|
0 | 18,141 | 4 | 3,829 |
1 | 35,000 | 5 | 687 |
2 | 28,739 | 6 | 71 |
3 | 13,529 | 7 | 4 |
The numbers in the "Count" cells add to 100,000. The 10th percentile of those "Times" values is 0, and the 90th is 3, but in about 4.5% of podcast runs, Ben and Adam will have to visit each other four times or more.
Special square occurrences[]
Square | Expected number |
10-90% likely range |
---|---|---|
Drunkisodes | 22.8 | 18 - 27 |
Non-drunk specials | 14.0 | 10 - 18 |
Drunkisode square occurrences[]
Square | Expected number |
10-90% likely range |
---|---|---|
CoCo NoNo | 1.4 | 0 - 3 |
Mornhammered | 1.9 | 1 - 3 |
Quark's Bar | 19.5 | 15 - 24 |
Non-drunk special square occurrences[]
Square | Expected number |
10-90% likely range |
---|---|---|
Caught in the Nebula | 1.4 | 0 - 3 |
Fuck It! We'll Do It Live! | 3.6 | 1 - 6 |
Looking At Each Other During | 1.5 | 0 - 3 |
Measure of a Man | 2.2 | 1 - 4 |
Starship Mine | 1.2 | 0 - 2 |
The Naked Now | 2.2 | 1 - 4 |
The Nth Degree | 2.0 | 0 - 4 |
Probability distribution plots[]