What are the chances of you getting an heirloom in Apex Legends?

@RockDokRock As I was reading this thread, the first thought that came to my mind was "With so many people participating in this thread, you'd think that probability would favor that at least one person, other than RockDockRock, would understand how basic probability works."

My second thought was the realization that most people who would bother to be on an ea.com thread are probably children.

My third thought, though, was remembering that basic probability was taught to us in like... 3rd grade... so, yeah, this is kinda crazy... I was so baffled that I just had to weigh in.

You tried, multiple times to explain it, but no one even acknowledged you: Calculating the probability of an outcome in one event, where the odds are known, is not the same as calculating the probability of one outcome over the course of multiple events, where the outcome odds are known for each event.

Your coin flip example hit it dead on the money. I think, perhaps, that the thing people are failing to understand is that the probably changes over time, as each event [in a series] is executed (i.e. each coin is flipped). Who knows, maybe someone will read this and get it:

Suppose we're going to flip a coin two times and me and you are making bets about whether or not heads will be flipped at least once. From that moment, there are exactly four possible outcomes across the two coin flips:

TT
TH
HH
HT

The result *will* be among those four possible outcomes and it is no more likely to be one than any other. There are no other, possible, outcomes, and, you can observe that of the 4 possible outcomes, 3 of them include at least one "heads" result. Thus, 3/4 of the results include heads, thus 75% of the results include heads, thus there is a 75% chance that heads will come up in two flips.

That does not mean that heads will "definitely" come up. It just means that if I tell everyone on Earth that "heads is a sure bet!" then approximately 3 out of 4 of those people will think that I give sound financial advice and about 1 out of each 4 people will think I'm a scammer.

However, if, the first flip is "tails" and we stop to calculate what the probability of the _next_ flip will be, then we would realize that _now_ the odds of heads coming up both in the next flip and across the series has reduced to 50% (made evident by the fact that "H" only exists as the last character on 2/4 of the possible outcomes; i.e. with the first event now known, 2/4 of the total possible results have been eliminated because they're no longer possible).

That really is basic probability theory and people have been building wealth on top of that since money was invented. It's as sound as anything that has ever been realized in all of human history; it is no longer open to debate here on the round Earth.

Yes, obviously the coin flip is an over-simplification and the calculation that EA is running is more sophisticated, but that does not make it any less subject to basic probability math. If the odds of any possible outcome from a single event are known, then you can calculate the probability of that event occurring in any series, of any size, using the same formula.

The only two things that remain open for debate are:

1. What are the odds that any given box will contain an heirloom (as many have cast doubt on the 0.5% figure)?

2. How similar each box opening is to real, random, chance; has it been biased?

Although we know that the probability does imbue biases, based on the fact that there is a 500 box guarantee (which is, itself a bias), we also know that it has not be biased beyond the possibility of statistical analysis and probability modeling, because a) Respawn, itself, provides probability models on the purchase screen and b) it's illegal to do that, virtually anywhere.

So yeah, there are things still worth debating but, what is not open to debate, is RockDockRock's logic. It's 100% accurate and anyone arguing with him _actually_ doesn't understand how probability works. Go watch a video if you still don't get it 🙂