You seem to be obsessed with having a pedantic debate on statistics. I have absolutely no interest in that. If you want to CONSTRUCTIVELY discuss how public pools can be defended in an environment where people are actively trying to cheat them I would be very interested in seeing what you think.
Bitcoin mining *is* statistics. If you don't understand them, you don't understand mining.
As I said, pedantic.
And with a Ph.D in engineering and over a decade in semiconductors I can assure you I understand the statistics just fine.
I look forward to your analysis of what actions a pool should take to defend against exploitation by miners either intentionally withholding block solutions or operating defective hardware.
All I have attempted to do here is explain the what multipool experienced was not unusual. My mistake lay in thinking that you didn't understand that. However from your last post, I see that you claim to understand the stochastic nature of pooled mining rewards, but you find it pedantic. You understand, but you don't care.
Well, that's where I get off. If you understand that it was not particularly poor luck, then I have nothing to explain to you. I does however leave me wondering why anyone - when discussing the topic of bad luck in bitcoin pool mining - should care about the opinion of someone who doesn't think the process is important?
Well while you and I may share a love of numbers and or how numbers are used in statistics many people here are earning their living via mining.
It has become apparent that pools have an Achilles heel and finding good ways to protect the heel are needed. We do not need to fight about definitions of good luck, bad luck ,random activity. We need to come up with plans to help guard against all the pools Achilles's heel that has been found.
I am not sure if right now everyone even agrees that this Achilles's Heel is factual and indeed does exist. I agree multipool was given a very short lease. I agree that the math did not show their bad luck to be extraordinary. On the order of 10,000 to 1 would be really bad it was not at that level. Or even close to that level. It was under 100 to 1.
The problem is they were close to 16% of the entire pool and no safe guard is in place. 1 month with 1 block would be less then 1000 to 1 and that does happen every once in a while. But with no deterrent no safeguard attracting of a real villain that knows we sit wide open has to exist and in fact be higher then if we have a safeguard or deterrent.
So other then setting the entire pool to solo mining 2 hours of every day or 1 hour of every day or 3 hours of every day what would you suggest?
Also do you agree that for the time period that the pool is in solo mode this danger would not occur?