I hugged my arms close to my body. When I glanced at the girl, I caught her looking at me. I looked away.
“Candy, now?” She started to bite at her thumbnail. Looking at her other hand, I saw her nails were bitten to the quick.
Hrm.
He moved her hand away from her mouth, “Four more questions, pet, then candy. Tell me the numbers for the same situation, but if I sent the Travelers instead.”
“pet”? …not sure how to feel about that.
“Sixty point two one zero zero nine percent chance they all come back. Forty-four point one seven four three percent chance but someone gets hurt or killed.”
So in other words, the Travelers would be better suited for this job. Makes sense, really. Sundancer’s power, for instance, would be a thousand times better against Kaiser himself than Skitter’s.
“Good girl,” he turned to look at us, “The Travelers are powerful, so it stands to reason their chances are higher. But I’ve found that your group benefits more from a use of my power.
Interesting. So that means it’s not a constant +x p.p. boost to an outcome’s probability, but it can be represented in such a way, just with varying efficiency. Which also tells me that he can’t simply decide the outcome entirely – there is still room for failure.
As for why the Undersiders benefit more than the Travellers, maybe it’s that the Undersiders rely more on luck?
Pet, tell me the numbers for the same scenario, for both the Travelers and the Undersiders, but let’s say I was helping them in my usual manner.”
“That’s two questions. Two teams, two questions. No cheating. I get really bad headaches when I try to get too many numbers.”
Yeah, I agree with the girl, this is two.
“Okay. Answer those two, then there’s one more before you get your candy. I just need to know the chances that the teams will come back intact.”
The girl nodded, a little too quickly and eagerly, “Those people there have a thirty-two point zero zero five eight three percent chance to come back with nobody dead or seriously hurt if you help them. The Travelers have a forty-one point-”
Wait, did the numbers go down? Maybe it’s because she didn’t specify “nobody seriously hurt” in the last batches.
Which kind of messes up what Coil was trying to do here.
“No, stop,” Coil stopped her, “That doesn’t make any sense. You gave me different numbers before. Those numbers are lower than the ones they’d have if I didn’t help.”
“It’s the numbers in my head.”
When adjusting one variable to demonstrate the effect of that adjustment, you need to make sure the terms of the experiment and all other variables are the same. Coil’s mistake, as far as I can tell, was the word “intact”.
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