The Plexiglass Principle as it Applies to Mousehunt

Mousehunt is, in its conception, a game of chance. Each hunt gives you a certain chance to encounter, attract, and catch a mouse. This is an obvious statement to anyone who has played the game for even a moderate period of time. That same population of semi-regular (or greater) players will notice that throughout the game, catching seems to come in waves or stretches of "good luck" and "bad luck." This is no more evident than in the later stages of the game (such as Derr Dunes) where the mice are significantly more powerful and harder to attract than in other zones.

It is also important to notice that a great number of Mousehunt players tend to slack off or quit once they reach the Tribal Isles because of this perceived increase in "bad luck." I became incredibly frustrated once spending a decent stretch of time in Derr because of "bad luck." However, as I spent more time in the area, I saw my catches begin to lean towards the "good luck" side of the equation, and then sat down to write this article.

The "Plexiglass Principle" is a theory that was originally applied to baseball by Bill James, a well-known baseball statistician. The principle itself is more commonly (and simply) known as regression towards the mean. As Mousehunt is a game based on numbers and statistics, this idea apples extremely well.

This principle states that "good luck" and "bad luck" will eventually cancel one another out and that over time the probability of events regresses towards the mean, or what it *should* be. Now, this can be confusing. If you flip a coin 100 times, you will expect to get 50 heads and 50 tails. However, if you have flipped the coin 50 times already and got 50 heads, you are not expecting your next 50 flips to all be tails- you expect your next 50 flips to be 25 heads and 25 tails. The idea is that, over time, you will flip the coin enough times (10,000? 100,000? 1,000,000 times?) and the percentage of heads and tails will be equal. The 50 heads you got initially will be canceled out by sheer numbers. This same idea applies to dice, poker, and definitely Mousehunt.

In Derr Dunes while using crunchy (xmas cracker, gingerbread base, lucky shield), I caught about 10 mice in my first 70 cheese. Obviously, this was extremely frustrating as it is very far off of the 35% or so that you *should* catch at. However, as time has elapsed and I have used more and more crunchy, I have seen my catch rate with that setup and crunchy cheese come right back to about 35%. This is not necessarily due to stretches of good luck, but simply due to the idea that statistics and projections will *always* return to where they *should* be. In this case, the stats regressed to be back to about the 35% catch rate that is to be expected.

So, my dear mousehunters, keep this in mind throughout your careers. Stretches of "good luck" are great fun, but can't be relied upon. Likewise, stretches of "bad luck" are simply an aberration and don't mean that you are destined to fail (although, checking your trap setup always helps ;) ). Persevere and you will always see that you catch at the rate that you are supposed to.