What is the chance of having a 3-month pool luck at 97.29% when btcguild is the 2nd/3rd largest pool?
It must be pretty low I guess, right?
Eligius, a little under BTCG, is at 95% for 90 days. Someone is having good luck, and it doesn't seem to be any of the big pools.
M
Size has nothing to do with Luck. If someone is having bad Luck, it does not imply that someone else is having good Luck. Luck does not balance out, it just averages out over time. Luck is just that, Luck.
If you flip a coin 10 times, it is not hard to get 7 heads.
If you flip a coin 1000 times, it is unlikely to get 700 heads.
For a small pool that on average finds 1 block a week (12 blocks in 3 months), it is not surprising if it finds 11 blocks (91.6% luck).
For a large pool that on average finds 10 blocks a day (900 blocks in 3 months), it is very very unlucky if it finds 825 blocks (91.6% luck).
So, if my understanding is correct, the pool size does matter.
That's not the way probability works. Flipping a coin and getting heads does not remove it from future flips or increase the chance of getting tails - no matter how many times it is flipped. Period. You are just as likely to get 10 heads in a row as you are any other result. So just because you increase the number of flips, it does not increase or decrease the likelihood of getting one result over another (for flips < infinity).