The Math Behind the Unluckiest Moments in all of Pokémon

[@Hutch2Much]

idk how to describe it but this guy looks like kraft mac and cheese

[@jikemusic8081]

I actually see it

[@adef]

tysm

[@justanexistingperson]

lmao

[@chcknfsh]

I agree, and not in a insulting way. But those who see it see it and those who don’t are just Yanny/Laurel or whatever 🎉

[@007blond]

😂😂

[@ethanbrenna9798]

I love how the safari zone guy was already realizing how crazy improbable it was well before even the halfway mark.

[@jazzisfrommars2476]

Speedrunners know their ways around calculators. The tools used in making TAS (Tool Assisted Speedruns) and absolutely dissect the coding of games for intended and unintended consequences blows my mind. Aside from how many hours they spent in those grass patches to just kinda know what's normal/not and by how much, they mentioned the approximate odds of an encounter in each tile during the run too-- so I'm sure it wasn't too much of a mystery that it was absurd.

[@bobbob1730]

Absolutely, also shen might be the person who has spent the most time playing gens 1-3. If it has happened to anyone it makes sense it would be him

[@justinmadrid8712]

@@jazzisfrommars2476 Bruh. Even a 6 year old playing RBY for the first time would realize something was wrong with that grass lol...

[@mhf0gamer]

shen is a math teacher, i believe. couple that with literal thousands of hours playing the earlier gens of pokemon, he is definitely the guy to know how absurdly improbable that was lol

[@justinmadrid8712]

@@mhf0gamer Again, even a 10 year old who has played Pokemon once or twice, would suspect something was wrong if no wild Pokemon appeared for that long. The incident may have unintentionally created with the 'Manip technique'. Or, if you want to be really cynical, the could have intentionally used the 'Manip technique' to do this to make an interesting youtube video.

[@LordGame2222]

the chances of that safari zone no encounter streak are so astronomically low that I feel it is SIGNIFICANTLY more statistically likely that there was some hiccup in the game's backend causing the encounters to not fire than it is that the game was calculating the encounter chance correctly the entire time

[@novat9731]

It was probably cosmic rays.

[@ThatKidTitan]

As a statistics PhD student, this was a very satisfying watch! You explained probability spaces better than some professors would 😂

[@9bit927]

His breakdown of the phoenix club statistics had some questionable choices but otherwise was good

[@adef]

This is genuinely the nicest comment I've ever received. Thank you!!!!!

[@tannerboos2268]

Masters student here, completely agree. This guy is amazing at explaining math!

[@ThatKidTitan]

@@tannerboos2268 absolutely - good luck on the masters!

[@swagmoneybuge]

Good luck on the doctorate!

[@CascoonFan27]

That last clip is so stastically unlikely I'd bet $1000 that there's an unknown game mechanic to explain why he didn't run into any encounters versus the reality that he just did what he did.

[@mellevala]

Yeah, also is gen 1 we're talking about

[@PrismaAce]

@@mellevala which is why we know this isn't a gen 1 moment, and is just insane luck

[@nebnos]

yeah i was gonna say the same its almost definitely a weird/rare bug of some sort, i dont think people actually realise how unbelievable that would actually be

[@ScyrousFX]

@@PrismaAce No, you don't know that. The commenter pointed out that because of how broken gen 1 is, anything involving such astronomical odds is likely a bug and not ''insane luck''. Another thing that confuses me is how seemingly unique this clip is. Has anyone been able to find similar clips of unlucky tall grass? Not 1 in 3 trillion odds, but even something like 1 in 1 million, or 1 in 100k? There should be plenty, no? Gen 1 has been played by tens of millions of people over the span of 2 decades. Tall grass is a very common tile.

[@niedas3426]

Haven't we reverse engineered the gen 1 code already? If there was such a mechanic, we would have known.

[@LunarWing6214]

I spent 10 years attempting to catch a feebas in my pokemon sapphire. I would spend 1-2 hours a day 3-4 days a week just fishing in the god damn river. I still have nightmares about it. But on a bored ass day at work (in a call centre) I was fishing while on call with an angry customer. Just letting him rant away, when FINALLY a feebas appeared in my face! I abruptly put this guy on hold to put all my effort in to catching it! the dude was very pissed off at me but I did not care! My quest to finish my sapphire pokedex was over!

[@BroudbrunMusicMerge]

And yet the raw odds of that final event is still 7 billion times more likely than the raw odds of Dream's infamous speedrun

[@PbnjGuy]

He admitted it was in fact cheated tho, just unintentionally

[@BroudbrunMusicMerge]

@@PbnjGuy Yeah

[@RRustyyy]

@@PbnjGuy "unintentionally"

[@ellie8272]

​@@PbnjGuyAfter all the time he spent saying it wasn't cheated? Yeah I don't exactly trust the guy

[@datjasminecat]

@@PbnjGuyHOW DO YOU ACCIDENTALLY CHEAT

[@youdontknowwhoiam2449]

Something I like to think about in situations like that triple legendary bird run is that, there are a fair few more coincidences that would be equally unlikely but equally noteworthy. I mean you could get the three starters youd normally get, the three middle or final evolutions of these mons, you could get three different evolution stages of the same pokemon, the three legendary dogs, the three regis, etc. Its very unlikely to get the three birds, but its a bit more likely that eventually someone would get a strange coincidence like that

[@Fransphoenix]

Underrated comment

[@rwbyab7423]

Yeah, I feel you, it’s like in Dungeons and Dragons where players will gasp getting two mat 1s in a row and say “there’s a 1 in 400 chance of that happening!!” But technically there’s a 1 in 400 chance of getting any two combinations of numbers so that doesn’t actually mean much. There’s a 1 in 400 chance of getting a 2 then a 13 but nobody freaks out about that lol

[@ZerrieGD]

@@rwbyab7423 That's because the two natural 1's are a noteworthy combination, much like the bird trio. It means something because it's the worst possible outcome of 2 rolls. Getting a 2 and then a 13 is like getting... idk like phanpy, rhydon and flaafy as your starter selection. Of course no one's gonna freak out about that, it's unremarkable.

[@rwbyab7423]

@@ZerrieGD fair, perhaps an example more in line with the original comment would be to claim it is equally unlikely to get two 13s in a row or two 7s in a row. While less noteworthy, the odds of getting those specific three Pokemon is equally astronomically low and, now that you've randomly named them off, if it ever occurred I'd be very surprised!

[@mediocreaaliasa501]

YT won't let me delete this comment.

[@Donut-ke4vb]

Fun fact, on one play through of Pokémon FireRed when I was a kid, I went to catch Mewtwo. This was my third save, and I decided I wanted all my legendaries in regular poke balls. So, when I got to Mewtwo, I just threw a poke ball on the first turn for kicks and giggles. It worked. Watching this video encouraged me to run that moment through the catch rate calculator, to find out my luck was a 0.416% chance. That was my luckiest moment playing Pokémon, and those odds still don’t come close to the caterpie incident😂

[@hexagonalmann7495]

That happened to me with Giratina in Platinum lol. I was maybe 14 and told it all my friends and they were so impressed

[@dovesr0478]

The safari zone thing is SO unlikely that I'm wondering if it may have been caused by a bit flip. Then again, considering the probably billions of cumulative hours spent playing Pokemon RBY since it's release it almost doesn't seem that crazy.

[@SpookySkeletonGang]

Yeah my go to was some sort of glitch haha. Even with all the hours spent playing Pokemon, 1 in 3 trillion is enough to where there's a very good chance it shouldn't have happened. Insane stuff.

[@Gimas96]

​@@SpookySkeletonGangWith that kind of luck he could have won the lottery jackpot.

[@AWanderingSwordsman]

In order for that to happen, the seed for that event sequence has to exist. Assuming it does, which was very improbable, it's actually not nearly that unlikely. If it does exist and wasn't a glitch, it's likely that several other people have also encountered that and just not recorded it or realized how unlikely it was.

[@lordmudkip7344]

@@AWanderingSwordsman yeah, I doubt the rng is large enough for those odds to make sense. either the sequence exists or it doesn't and that is what ends up determining the likelihood for some more common events we can assume the rng is truly random I think, but for stuff like this I doubt it

[@coreyhall5065]

@@SpookySkeletonGang Considering the games have been out for decadess, re-released on the e-shop, have been played by millions, and have tons of footage that hasn't been recorded. I wonder if it's more or less likely to have happened to someone else? With the amount of play times of these game it's got to have happened to someone else or at least be close right?

[@ashtonsalow7356]

As a now former math teacher this gets me super excited, and i would absolutely want to use this in a lesson. Unfortunately my students wouldn't have appreciated this the same way i do. I hope another teacher out there is able to get their students pumped about math with this video.

[@andrebrait]

Tbh, I found it over the top complicated for just talking about a bunch of numbers divided by 100.

[@StiggyAzalea]

Imagine knowing that you could've won the power ball over a thousand times but instead you just walked a little bit in a several decades old gameboy game

[@De_Gekke_Lamas]

The chances of winning the power ball twice would be (2,3×10^8)^2 = 5,29×10^16 or one in 52,9 quadrillion, a lot less than one in 35 trillion. He couldve won the power ball once, but not twice, let alone thousands of times.

[@daaaaaaanny]

​@@De_Gekke_Lamasthat's the odds of winning the lottery twice in a row, not twice in general

[@offwhitemma]

talk about wasted rng

[@BlackScythe191]

I actually had luxray's bite in platinum flinch 7 times in a row. Bite has a 30% chance of flinching multiply it by itself 7 times and i hit a 0.02187% chance. That is crazy.

[@ninetailedara3802]

I find that hard to believe, but i'll believe you since i got it 5 in a row once.

[@NuckChorris12345]

​@@ninetailedara3802I mean, considering all the crazy stuff that happened in this video, the chance of that happening seems entirely likely compared to everything else

[@p4leking]

Missing all 8 focus blasts in an online battle scarred me for life. I have not used moves below 90% accuracy ever since.

[@cheeze588]

That reminds me of them time I missed steel wing 7 times in a row idk what those odds were update: it's like 1 in 10k

[@ArtisChronicles]

​@@p4leking fissure, stomping tantrum is still a great strat

[@jnjsorr]

The double shiny encounter odds at 19:15 didn't account for the other slots in the 4 encounters. There are 6 possible combinations of 'double shiny' (and the possibility of 3 and 4 shinies, though this is pretty negligible). By my calculation the odds are 1/11,186,631

[@hsk5363]

this is true but you could argue the odds of getting any string of pokemon with exact shininess, ivs, nature, and PID is extremely rare. probability only matters when you have a desired outcome, and having 2 shinies in specific slots was not a desired outcome here, having 2 shinies was the desirable outcome that occurred.

[@jnjsorr]

@@hsk5363 Agreed. Odds can be very deceiving - be it on accident or otherwise

[@HelloIAmAnExist]

According to my probably inaccurate calculations it's 1/16M

[@jnjsorr]

@@HelloIAmAnExist i manually worked out my odds, but just confirmed it correct with binomial distribution. Not too sure where you went wrong, happy to check if you send through your maths

[@HelloIAmAnExist]

@@jnjsorr I believe you, just wanted to share what I got

[@AustinJohnPlays]

11:12 I tried :'( Edit, I love math and this was recommended to me so i'm watching it and enjoying it :)

[@nept2ned]

oh hey, its ajp! how r u?

[@Gexthereptile]

Literally just came from watching and completing your 8f shiny mew tutorial

[@nept2ned]

@@Gexthereptile did you get the shiny mew?

[@Gexthereptile]

@@nept2ned yea, along with a shiny mewtwo and the legendary birds, after that 8f stopped working and just caused my game to crash, still insanely happy tho

[@nept2ned]

@@Gexthereptile nice, did you transfer them or nah you should probably clone them aswell if you want

[@lollertoaster]

The Safari Zone Anomaly had to heave happened due to a bug in random generation. As you probably know, in programming there is no actual random numbers, only pseudo-random. There must be an input to the random function in Pokemon Red that outputs a long chain of high (or low) numbers. This is something pseudo-random generators do sometimes.

[@natebrd]

As a software engineer I was looking for this comment

[@Ascera_exists]

Yes

[@derkevevin]

Yeah, it's just much much more likely that any kind of bug happened, even a "super rare" one than this one in 3 trillion thing happening.

[@nodrance]

you do realize truly random number generators are also capable of outputting long strings of high or low?

[@theallpure]

@@nodrance You do realize that "truly" random number generators don't exist? And that's not even getting into the quality of a gen 1 psuedo-random # gen

[@Linnea-nb2jh]

I'm really happy you included the explaination that if you do enough attempts at something, the highly unlikely becomes almost guaranteed.

[@driftwisp2797]

I wish he'd talked a bit more about how if you see something and then say "Wow that's unlikely", it's much less unlikely than if you predicted it. Like, if you roll a million sided die and get exactly a 69 that's one in a million. But there are so many more values that would have made you say "Wow, that's one in a million" like if it rolled a one, a one million, a 420, a 42069, ect. The odds that the die will roll a number are 100%, even though the odds it will roll whichever particular number it rolled is one in a million.

[@ChristAliveForevermore]

Emphasis on "almost"

[@krislynn5965]

#BatmanWasRight

[@SilentHotdog28]

Well I tried to get a shiny female combee, it took me about 100 eggs and I didn't get any males. My friend did about the same amount of eggs and got 3 shiny Beldums.

[@PirocoLouco]

I once got a shiny on the 6th egg, but 3 shinies in 100 eggs is really absurd luck, even considering the masuda method odds of 1/512.@@SilentHotdog28

[@ryanwilbur3554]

Man, I actually managed to naturally get Pokerus once. In Pokemon Black, I caught a Liligant and put it in my party, not thinking much of it. I then went to grind some levels with it, and was shocked when the lady at the Poke center told me that my pokemon had a disease. Now I know just how lucky I was!

[@MrNigel117]

i found pokerus before my first shiny

[@ShinyShilla]

I don't know if I caught a Slakoth with pokerus or it got it on the way to box it not knowing it had the virus, but I never had any pokerus event after emerald.

[@vikleth]

@@MrNigel117 dude me too i got pokerus two or three times on different pokemon games before getting a shiny

[@TopOfAllWorlds]

I got natural pokerus once or twice as well!

[@itzl2124]

Lilith? Wdym

[@Isabelle-mp8rk]

did you know that in stadium to fix the 256 accuracy glitch, they made it reroll the check incase it hit over 255, but only once. so in stadium you have a 1/65536 to miss, same as a back to back gen 1 miss, now a back to back stadium miss would be insane.

[@LinkaleeLewis]

I'm surprised Werster's stadium miss wasn't mentioned in the video. It happens just after the 17 hour 37 minute point in his stadium 1 complete the game speedrun.

[@LinkaleeLewis]

I just got to the part where Shenanagans doesn't get any encounters. Werster also has a clip titled "the longest 2 minutes of my life" where he doesn't get any encounters for about 90 seconds of surfing. The encounter rate while surfing has got to be a lot less than the safari zone's rate, but he also spends 30 more seconds looking, so now I'm curious what the odds of that happening were.

[@Justpassingby204]

@@LinkaleeLewisWerster is awesome, but he lowkey got cancelled and he’s kinda ostracized so I imagine some ppl purposely ignore him unfortunately

[@tmtmtlsml]

@@Justpassingby204 How do you lowkey cancel someone? Isn't the point of cancelling to be as highkey as possible about it?

[@pedrocarvalho6609]

​@@Justpassingby204over what? am new to the community and have been watching his streams, love him

[@ShinyIvyLeaves]

How have NONE of my probability & statistics teachers used that square probability space visual? That is so helpful!!!

[@THGMR-ox7sd]

Same

[@QueenLethargy]

if my teacher had used it i probably wouldnt have almost failed high school

[@arturocevallossoto5203]

It's in the book ...

[@dayandere2669]

​@@arturocevallossoto5203There's a book?

[@andermium]

One thing to note is that RNG is never entirely random. Definitely in Gen 1 pokemon I wouldn't be surprised if there is some sort of way to end up in a cycle as the RNG calculation isn't very complex yet (to my knowledge)

[@Kanbei11]

Speedrunners are already routinely manipulating encounters in gen 1 so they can do it fairly easily if they choose. The world record gets no encounter in Mt Moon which I suspect is a similar number of steps to that safari zone clip

[@manumaster1990]

there is no such thing as "random" its just a term applied to an effect to witch we dont know the cause.

[@ottokarl5427]

You can do something called "DSum" in Gen1, which allows you to manipulate the RNG heavily. It isn't an exact science, since you need to count Frames/Seconds, but it works pretty well for Top-Runners. That being said: Shen is one of, if not the best DSum-er in the community, especially in the Safari Zone. I vaguely remember that there are some encounters he was at one point the only one being able to DSum. So him hitting this many DSums by accident seems absolutely impossible, even more so than this happening

[@Wilsonbros123]

The last clip has to be even more significant than that, because when you change directions whether you’re moving through a tile or not it also registers as an opportunity for an encounter. So when he’s switching directions walking back and forth it’s adding to the already substantial count of 230+

[@Mistborn94]

It's roughly 1 in 725 trillion. I counted 79 steps.

[@Koni.1122]

@@Mistborn94 to be honest that is so unlikely, it might have been a glitch

[@Mistborn94]

@@Koni.1122 honestly that's pretty likely. Seems like it. Maybe a weird bit flip glitch or something

[@jamesringo7070]

​@@Mistborn94alrighty, get someone figuring the odds of that one out

[@Mistborn94]

@@jamesringo7070 Wish I could. Don't know nearly enough about programming to even begin.

[@MStrong95]

Someone should make the most unlucky TAS possible for each Pokemon game... Like you still beat the game very fast but just everything that can go wrong does

[@jonathanmarlin9448]

It'd be simple but tedious to swap the odds. Nigh impossible to catch a caterpie at 1 hp with an ultra ball but almost guaranteed to catch Mewtwo at 100% with a Poke ball

[@alecdejongh5008]

Not possible. The random number generator in the game isn’t actually a random number generator. It’s a pseudo random number generator. It starts on a set seed and advanced each frame to a different RNG tile. That’s how the speedrun TAS ensures perfect luck on metronome among other things. Given a computer’s temporal resolution it stops becoming a random number generator and starts being a rhythm game.

[@NightKev]

What does that mean though? The player has the worst possible luck? So... they just lose, then. The player wouldn't be able to reach the first town. Not much of a TAS.

[@alecdejongh5008]

@@NightKev yeah so the TAS could just wait until a frame where every move would miss and ensure every single move ever misses so the game can not be progressed.

[@yata7450]

Smallant

[@_anj_]

that safari zone clip omfg THE FACT HE WAS JUST EATING LMAOO

[@DarranKern]

The amount of speedrun footage showing bad luck from just Werster and Gunner alone could turn this into a weekly series

[@chris9086]

Werster has gone longer without an encounter in Gold too, although I'm not sure if the probability is the same. See his video "The longest 2 minutes of my life" (actually 1 minute 30 seconds).

[@bwessel09]

As a math professor myself, I think you did an amazing job explaining these concepts. Plus digging around for these clips is a lot of work and pulled out some great ones

[@bighossen]

This one of my personal favourite youtube videos of all time, probabilities fascinate me and this video relating to gaming is just up my alley!

[@davidpopolizio3781]

This video was just so well put together. Your voice is easy to listen to, you're consistent with your speech speeds and pronunciations, the data is presented in a fun way and in an order that's satisfying. I'd enjoy videos exactly like this from you

[@adef]

More are coming :)

[@marvinschumann6832]

On point!

[@Imirui]

22:11 One of the things that should be included in the calculation is that in gen 1, the first 3 steps after a wild or trainer encounter can't generate a wild encounter. So, assuming this hasn't been factored in, this is actually a (1- 30/256)^227 chance. Or, 5.15398987 x 10^-13

[@ZTenski]

Personally, I think a cosmic ray bit-flipped the top bit in this counter variable, and that is how it happened. Flipping the top bit would set the counter to 128 instead of the usual 4. So the first 128 steps would be gauranteed no encounters, which makes this a bit more likely. Of course, what are the odds that he would encounter a bit flip like this lol.

[@ElysiaWhitemoonOmega]

@@ZTenski or as someone also said, it may have been a bug with a previous repel, that resetted when he opened the menu. this is gen1 after all, but then again, it could really be unlucky odds

[@lemonke8132]

@@ZTenski it's probably more likely than 1 in 3 trillion lol

[@TopOfAllWorlds]

It doesn't work like that. Opening the menu doesn't have anything to do with repels. ​@@ElysiaWhitemoonOmega

[@FakeRlot]

@@lemonke8132 it isn't actually, cosmic rays have been known to fuck with computers and flip bits ever since the computer was first invented

[@sierrrrrrrra]

17:58 thanks for pointing this out!! This is a fallacy/common misunderstanding: just because something is improbable, doesn't mean it couldn't happen. If something happens with probability 1/gazillion or any small number, there is always a number of attempts that will make the event more likely to happen than not. Bonus: that number is log(1/2)/log(probability of success) rounded up to the nearest integer.

[@MarcelVos]

The best way to think about this is to imagine a lottely with a billion tickets that are bought up by a billion different people. The chance that you personally win is super tiny, but the chance that SOMEONE wins is 100%.

[@QwasTooShort]

For people who might be wondering, the reason getting pokérus is extremely unlucky for a speedrun is because speedrun strats often involve putting enemies in a certain HP range to manipulate AI behavior, and having twice the values you're supposed to have will just render these strategies completely unusable

[@guinea_horn]

Idk why he didn't explain this. All that build up for a tangent about the social network and then a segue into something completely different. Editing/scripting mistake?

[@Clover298]

@@guinea_hornCould’ve just overlooked it. Sometimes you think something is obvious and don’t realize its not so clear.

[@ButtaDawg05]

@@Clover298He did explain it though, what are you talking about? From 10:38 - 12:26

[@Clover298]

@@ButtaDawg05ok? i commented this before watching the full video, why are you getting mad at me and no the other two who pointed this out in the first place?

[@vanesslifeygo]

Odd, the most that 4 EVs, which you need at least TWO knockouts for - in order to possibly get four EVs, is 1 more stat point at LEVEL 100. Story mode doesn't go near level 100. Is the range of tolerance really that razor thin?

[@Stony2103]

The last shen clip reminds me so much of Werster, who tried surfing for an encounter east of mahogany town, just to hear about 90 seconds of the surf theme and descend into madness.

[@andyplaysgundam]

Exactly. "Where is the shxt of my fxxk"

[@cataddict_]

The dude in the safari zone like less than halfway describing it as the rarest thing hes ever done is crazy.

[@soundaholixx]

One of the biggest surprises i had as an adult was finding out pokérus was real lol

[@malachiatkinson7245]

I believe I've gotten it twice, once in Omega Ruby and once in Platinum

[@MildChunkySalsa]

I don’t blame you, I believe it’s rarer than shiny pokemon. The one time I encountered it was Pokemon Platinum and Soul Silver, I didn’t even think about the probability of a Pokemon getting it. Not even the probability to find it in both games lol

[@kushd22]

the probability that adef drops a banger of a video is 100% because unlike the pokemon in some of these clips, he just does not miss. what a fun video 👏

[@jerridburroughs1791]

P😊😊😊😊p😊😊p

[@PastorSKAR]

I never thought I'd be watching a 20+ minute math video and yet here I am and I couldn't click away. We'll done @adef! You are honestly a brilliant communicator and entertainer and should probably have your own TV show tbh. Math teachers should drool over this! Bravo! I just subscribed! 👏

[@louisathellama]

Actually intelligent people don't make themselves seem smart, but explain things in such a way so that YOU feel smarter. You've absolutely nailed it. Not only did you make statistics more fun by relating it to Pokemon, but your explanations were so easy to follow that it was much easier to appreciate the probabilities 😄

[@Patterrz]

I can't believe I watched the entire negativity bias section and still thought to myself "nah like i'm SUPER unlucky like REALLY bad luck"

[@adef]

Sometimes that bad luck just hits different LMAO

[@gatorboymike]

One time, my mom and I traded the same Pokemon to each other in Pokemon Go. Both of them came out of the trade with exactly identical stats as before the trade. The odds of that are just under one in three million.

[@Yuma-g3i]

...I got the 3 segmented version of Dudunsparce on my first playthrough of scarlet. I didn't even know it was the rare form, as it was the only one I saw... Until area zero, where I thought it was strange that the Dudunsparce only had 2 segments.

[@tfx9223]

main character attitude

[@titouanboulanger6877]

Larry has a Two segmented tho…

[@thekittenwolf]

No way!!

[@Yuma-g3i]

@@thekittenwolf I mean, I did explore the entire region before going to school, due to accidently discovering the jump the gap "hack" which resulted in me catching the troublesome Dunsparce on accident as I couldn't run, so I tossed a pokeball while my last pokemon was at 3 HP, expecting it to fail and for me to get a faint screen. I also wasn't expecting it to evolve, as it never had a evolution in the past, so why now.

[@mrnoneofurbusiness7942]

scarlet/violet sold 25 million copys. so the number of people who had a 3 segmented dudunsparce from their first evolution is about 250.000. this may seem crazy to you but there are 249.999 people where the exact same thing happened out there

[@Riccky12]

The summoning salt sound killed me

[@punninglinguist]

I'm definitely the type of person to calculate the probability of unlikely video game RNG whenever it happens to me, and that last clip blew my mind even more when contextualized with my own experience. the most unlikely RNG outcome I've ever encountered myself was approximately a 7 in a million chance, and some quick math is telling me that if I were to get that same once-in-a-lifetime unlikely RNG twice in a row, it'd still be 140x more likely than what happened to Shen in that last clip. that's absolutely insane. forget least likely thing that has ever happened in a pokémon speedrun; that might very well be the least likely thing that has ever happened in recorded video gaming history

[@Dooty-Doot]

This guy's low sub count is ansolutely criminal! This is inanely well-made content!

[@bobross547]

I fully well agree that he make have good content but I had a stroke reading this It took my dyslexic ass 10 minutes to understand I need to go back to elementary school or something

[@Schnort]

​@@bobross547they miss spelled "absolutely" and "insane" so that probably tripped you up.

[@ghosthitt849]

That's crazy I assumed he had high subs and didn't even notice until I read this.

[@Californ1a]

I was initially thinking of Werster's Wally shiny ralts clip, which also had Wally's zigzagoon miss the first tackle, and came out to around 1/163k. But those later ones are definitely crazy.

[@Skeldoor]

Hey first time viewer. Your presentation in this video is sick, really enjoyed it. You tell a good story. Good job mate

[@xXhiXxification]

While having the birds is very rare and impressive, i think the reaction would be as crazy with any other trio so the odds of having one of "those kinda starts" is a bit higher.

[@reio1951]

Yes exactly, the odds mentioned in this video only apply if you went into the randomiser with the goal of getting those 3 pokemon specifically lol. Otherwise getting the 3 birds is just as unlikely as getting Gloom, Smeargle and Murkrow

[@xXhiXxification]

@@reio1951 Yes and No. What i meant to compare it too is it beeing as impressive as getting another trio of that kind like Uxie, Azelf and Mesprit or a full evolution chain like Charmander, Charmeleon, Charizard.

[@reio1951]

@@xXhiXxification false, probability wise it’s the exact same. If you had some special link to Gloom Smeargle and Murkrow itd be no different than it is now where you don’t

[@danielj.8876]

​@@reio1951That's not the point though. Randomly getting 3 unrelated pokemon is the expected outcome, because randomly getting three related pokemon is pretty rare. It's not as rare as the number shown though, because there are other trios of related pokemon that would get the same reaction from a player going "omg what are the odds". Of course the calculation is right for the birds especially, but for the general event of getting 3 noteworthy related pokemon to show up happening the probability is somewhat higher.

[@blueberryoatmeal4009]

​​​@@reio1951The probability he calculated applies to any given triad of Pokemon, not just the legendary birds. It doesn't only apply if you have them in mind specifically.

[@kelly2001]

When my friend and I were helping each other complete our National Dexes in B2W2, we both encountered a full odds shiny Audino within a week of each other. I’ve seen a lot of crazy stuff in Pokémon, but to this day that’s probably the wildest thing that’s happened to me.

[@Jazgodel]

Quality content lmao. Thank you for showing me the most unlikely event I’ll ever watch probably

[@gaashmusic]

I’m speechless this video is so well done, your humor and editing is on point and this was the best probability lesson I’ve ever seen lol

[@dropinota]

I wish I knew of you taking clips for this. MDB had a metronome only run of Fire Red where he rolled 3 OHKO moves in a row and they all hit. Honestly one of the luckiest things I've ever seen in Pokemon.

[@thatfuzzypotato1877]

I wanna do the math on that one, holy crap Edit: ~0.0000027%

[@ignacioperez5479]

​@@Sion-wn8teis like 27/10.000.000

[@johnwest6690]

Ryukahr also did a nuzzlocke where he got like 5 ohko moves to hit I think.

[@Aidan-se8yk]

@@thatfuzzypotato1877 The number you got is wrong. i think i know what you did wrong but im not sure. i believe you first went to check the moves that metronome cannot call in generation 3 and came back with 17 moves, then you went to check how many pokemon moves there are (maybe you tried to check specifically in gen 3 but the answer came back with the total amount) and got 900, you then subtracted 17 from 900 to get 883 and divided that number by 4 (there are the same amount of OHKO moves in gen 3 through gen 9) getting 220.75 which you took the inverse of (1/220.75) then cubed (put to the power of 3 for the 3 OHKO moves called in a row) and multiplied by .3 (the listed accuracy of OHKO moves) ONCE to get ~0.000000027 or 0.0000027%. to get the actual odds with the given accuracy of OHKO moves (OHKO moves are weird ill get to it in a bit) you would start with the 354 moves that are in fire red and subtract 17 from it getting 337 moves metronome can call then you would divide that by the 4 OHKO moves to get 84.25 which you would take the inverse of then immediately multiply by .3 before cubing it to get ~0.000000045 or 0.0000045%. however, because OHKO moves hate being simple this is not the actual chance of getting 3ohko moves in a row with metronome and hitting them all. OHKO moves actual chance of hitting is not as simple as the listed 30% as that is only the chance of them hitting if both pokemon are the same level. if they are not the same level then for each level the user is above the target the accuracy increases by 1%, so if the user is 20 levels above the target they will have a 50% chance to hit, and if they are 70 levels above they will hit 100% of the time. because of this, if you dont know the levels of the pokemon in the battle it is impossible to calculate the actual odds. thankfully, since i have no life at all, i sat through 16 minutes and 25 seconds of the video until the first OHKO move is used by a level 56 against a level 37 giving a 49% chance to hit followed by a level 41 giving a 45% chance to hit then followed by a level 35 giving a 51% chance to hit. plugging those numbers in that leaves the odds at ~0.00000019 or 0.000019% or, as expressed as a fraction, ~1/5,177,030

[@thatfuzzypotato1877]

@Aidan-se8yk not quite the method I used I oversimplified it a bit aince when numbers get this insane the practical difference (for something like pokemon stats) is close to nil, but if I am incorrect, I concede

[@kurukuroni3486]

For something more positive, the most unlikely thing I've ever had happen to me in a Pokémon game was finding a Shiny Blissey with Pokérus in Ultra Sun.

[@fantasticwhovian3061]

Wow, that's insane! And here I thought my shiny alpha luxio was rare lol 😂

[@johnwest6690]

I got a shiny totodile in Gen 4 with an Adamant nature. It was the starter and nature I was looking for. That's 1 in 6,014,700 The point he was making about thinking critically about probability, is that insane odds happen all the time. In fact, it'd be unlikely for unlikely things to not happen than for them to happen.

[@bluskies3554]

The Safari Zone has always been a harbinger of misfortune and unluckiness, so it feels very apt for thr most unlikely occurrence to be within that area. Also, really great video, felt like it checked all the boxes.

[@MagnusXL]

I'm glad you've shown me other members of the double 256 miss club. If you play enough games you're going to hit something like this eventually, but it's always amusing to see.

[@nharviala]

9:00 This is true. Back in Pokemon Yellow, when I was first playing the game, I had Ice Beam miss twice in a row, gen 1 misses. To this day, I still don't instinctually trust "100% accuracy" moves in modern games because of that one influential moment as a child.

[@Laezar1]

yeah I used to think it was normal that all moves have a chance to miss, mostly because tackle was missing a lot (because it's only 95% accurate) and because of negativity bias I never really noticed when a move was much more accurate than that or when in later gens I ended up not missinng with 100% accurate move. Didn't helpthat gen 1 doesn't let you see the accuracy of move and also that I didn't understand in later gen what the number represented, couldn't be percentages cause obviously all moves have a chance to miss =p Also ended up with me grossly underestimating the accuracy of not 100% accurate move, like, slam misses a lot, but I thought it missed almost all the time because instead of comparing to the chance to hit of a 100% accurate move I was comparing that with the chance to miss of these moves, and while it only hit something like a third of the time these move hits, it misses like 50 times more or something. which feels garbage. I also am honestly wondering if it's a glitch or if it's intended to be like a D&D critical miss and they just realized in gen 2 that it was a garbage idea lol

[@blasecube]

TBF, nowdays theres a distinction between attacks with 100% accuracy and the ones that cannot miss. The latter, IIRC, just completely skips the calculations to prevent this kind of issues.

[@Laezar1]

@@blasecube I mean it's not just nowadays. swift also did that and it was exempt from the 1/256 glitch. That actually solidified my belief that the baseline for moves was to be able to miss because a move that can't miss was a special tm given to you.

[@LunaticJ]

I know I’m a complete stranger to youc but when I was at a speedrunning event last year, there was a large group dinner one night and I ended up in a conversation with 360Chrism, EZScape, and Shenanigans. One topic that was brought up was creators in the speedrun community who had the potential to blow up. I then mentioned you. Seeing this video (great vid btw) get so much attention in just 1 day re-affirms my prediction. Keep it up! I believe in you

[@adef]

Man, this comment is so unbelievably kind. I've seen a bunch of your stuff and it is all so killer!!! This is a huge compliment, thank you man!!!!

[@B4K4xNi]

Can't believe you inadvertantly explained the Monty Hall problem in a way I finally understand with that legendary bird breakdown.

[@crazydud2432]

I think the most insane luck ive had in pokemon was back in either sun or ultra sun. I was in a route on the first island trying to find a Munchlax at like 5-10% chance to show up so I could get a leftovers. After a half hour of making sure I was in the right spot and not finding one, I eventually found a random full odds shiny Zubat. the crazy part was that my very next encounter was a full odds shiny Metapod, I caught both ran to the pokecenter and came back. i had one random encounter then I got another full odds shiny Zubat, 3/4 encounters back to back where shinies BEFORE I found the Munchlax.

[@ajm34]

Me when I lie for no reason

[@supremepanta9564]

Sorry man i think that was in your dreams

[@crazydud2432]

@@supremepanta9564 Actually I still have the original save file and the proof! I traded the Zubat up and he is now a Crobat in a newer game but I still have the original Metapod and now a Butterfree. Since its the original save I can see they were both caught on 6/9/2017. I also dont have a completed pokedex so I dont have the shiny charm and they are definitely full odds 1/4096 Im currently in some college math classes so I finally have been able to calculate the probability of finding 3 shiny pokemon in any 4 encounters, about 4P3(1/4096^3) or roughly 1 in 17 billion. which is still more likely than the videos final example of the no encounters in the grass 3 million. However add in the fact that it came before the 10% chance Munchlax encounter which I had been trying to get for over an hour and my odds become a lot worse. im still dumbfounded by it

[@SuperMarioOddity]

I meant to tell the truth, I just kinda forgot

[@joelanderson4899]

I don't know what it is about about Sun/Moon, but I know a few people, including myself, who have encountered 2 full odd shinies in these games relatively close to each other in a playthrough. this makes me more inclined to believe your comment than I otherwise would

[@SilverPlays2503]

Cool video, i just have to correct this one 19:16. Those are not the actual odds, you have to calculate the chance of getting 2 shinies in 4 encounters since those double encounters were at the same time, and for that you have to use binomial distribution, aprox you get a 0,0000089% or a 1 in 10 million chance.

[@jakesmith2246]

I once walked all the way through Viridian Forest without a single encounter. I knew my way so I went directly, but it seriously shocked me at the time.

[@Winasaurus]

Not too unlikely, plenty of the tiles in there actually can't generate encounters.

[@mrnoneofurbusiness7942]

i just pulled up the map of viridian forest on bulbapedia (try yourself). keep in mind that every tile that has a flower in the bottom right cant produce an encounter. you can walk throu the entirety and only step on 15ish tiles where you get encounters. so its pretty likely you make it without an encounter.

[@milosperhour_]

I feel like a 3 segment Dundunsparce should be called a Dundundunsparce and then you can do a dramatic "dun dun DUUUUN (sparce)"

[@JocelynOnline]

I've always had a hard time paying attention to math lessons, but this held my attention the entire time. You explained things very well while keeping it entertaining! Great stuff!

[@boomsandapples2640]

Actually, the most unlikely thing in Pokemon is Lavos's series, because, as you know, "Unfortunate" doesn't even begin to describe his series.

[@weegeerules1]

The most unlikely thing that’s ever happened to me is during a casual playthrough of Soul Silver, I managed to go through the entire Sprout Tower without a single wild encounter. I even ran around a little bit cause I remembered there being encounters yet still never got one.

[@ArtisChronicles]

No encounters in sprout tower is a good day for me unless I'm going for early gastly

[@sawkchalk6966]

I think a lot of us have Maths related trauma of varying levels. Having a video about statstics that was fun, well represented, and legible was very therapeutic. Maths is pretty cool actually.

[@breklaberif7553]

The most unlikely event is me subscribing

[@kylescott9529]

As a stats nerd (and a guy with a Masters that includes statistics in its name) thank you for letting me geek out on numbers in one of my favorite games for 24 minutes 😆

[@jylecrennan]

Data science grad here: Remember that odds and percentage chance are not interchangeable, as the “odds of [event A] happening” is the probability of A occurring DIVIDED BY the probability of A not occurring. For example, the PROBABILITY of rolling a 5 on a fair, 6-sided die is 1/6, thus the probability of NOT rolling a 5 is 5/6. Now the ODDS of rolling that 5 are (1/6) / (5/6) = 1/5, and we would write this as a ratio of 1:5 (1 to 5). We can use this to say “for every 1 roll of a 5, we expect 5 rolls of no 5, for 6 total rolls.” It’s a little different, but still notable to avoid confusion. Other than terminology being a bit mixed up, none of your math is wrong so great job on all that!

[@theduchyofmilanball3157]

Okay but Chugga randomly getting a shiny koffing first try is a moment that will always hold a special place in my heart.

[@ShayyTV]

your editing is getting more and more clean every video, keep up the good work!!

[@adef]

thank you shay!!!!

[@Jprd2692]

I’ve just discovered your channel in the last week or so. It’s quality content and you deserve tenfold more subscribers.

[@mysteryabsol8703]

I have a PhD in physics. Am I going to watch a video where adef explains basic probabilities? Hell yes.

[@enoyna1001]

What was your thesis about?

[@mysteryabsol8703]

​@@enoyna1001convergent beam electron diffraction in epitaxial thin films. It was a real page turner 🤣

[@imthatoneguyirl]

Obligatory "unfortunate doesn't even begin to describe my series."

[@swaggermuffins]

This video has convinced me the lottery is even more incomprehensible than I can imagine

[@HunhuhPlayzMinecraft]

I know my way around probability well, and I can appreciate just how well you break this stuff down! The mix of humour with interesting clips while learning about probability is so good! Script writing is on-point. I bet you'll go far!

[@natedogmarik2554]

As a math major who has graduated, this was actually very enjoyable to watch and I wish this was around when I was taking a discrete structures course cause geez probability was biting me in my ass but was so clear in the video. Maybe I just learned from my mistakes in class and just understand it better now, however I definitely loved every bit of this video. Earned a sub from me!

[@grit1]

Technically the chances of any combination of pokemon being up there is always .00001%

[@2Jucario]

I knew it was going to be that Azu clip before it happened, that was an amazing moment. thanks for all the math, it definitely helps put things into perspective

[@Marthielo]

the editor making every single square appear one by one: 💀

[@hospitalcleaner]

after effects repeater function has entered the chat

[@LordShonji]

Probability Theory breaks alot of that old VGC world teams with how astronomical they had full shiny, max iv, and correct natures between gen 5-8 to show pretty much impossibly legitimate all those teams were gotten the same way for every person that competed

[@ShouldOfStudiedForTheTest]

04:10 To anyone wondering: You can actually calc with percentages. The thing is that % = (1/100) and by squaring the 5% you also square the % hence mulitplying the 25 by (1/10000) which gived you the same right answer.

[@Toastfreak]

One time at the Battle Maison I lost because my opponent got enough consecutive Protects for my last Pokémon to faint purely from toxic damage (which I'm pretty sure is 7.)

[@tadferd4340]

Well the Battle Mansion and equivalent features in pokemon games are known to cheat.

[@robocopyright3115]

Toxic should take 6 stacks to kill (1+2+3+4+5= 15/16, 15+6 > 16) But even 6 back-to-back protects is 1/14,348,907 or 6.97*10^-8, rip bro

[@SendoPLUS]

Genuinely one of the best KZbin videos I've ever watched, you explained everything so well and the last clip blew my mind

[@Kosmicd12]

Amazing video adef gamer! I'd call it bonkers wild and blunder free (but like genuinely though, very very good)

[@balorex709]

So happy that this video is taking off, excellent editing and presentation for an interesting topic. Proud to be following you since the beginning, keep it up and see ya in your streams king

[@Ezzekiel73]

15:01 I love how the second thrash was also through confusion, making that waaaaaay higher lmao

[@jakecolefilms]

This was so well crafted and incredibly informative. My small thinky brain no good with maths but the way you explained it was so inviting and gave me a new appreciation for statistical anomalies.

[@aquawoelfly]

The thing about probability is no matter how unlikely something is if you make enough attempts it eventually it should happen. I mean if the game has been started billions of times a 1:500million chance has almost certainly happened a few of those times.

[@thisissostupidqsdfva]

Captain obvious reporting for duty🫡

[@Nyilith]

@@thisissostupidqsdfvanah hes saying this cause stupid mfs in here dont believe that lucky events can happen

[@tappajaav]

@@thisissostupidqsdfva We don't need your services today, captain obvious. Dismissed.

[@HeeminGaminStation]

One Night while playing DnD with friends we finally got to the Big Boss the DM had played for the night and the most insane thing happened, I rolled a 20... my friend rolled a 20... the third member of our party rolled a 20... and then the DM rolled a 1... the boss died in one round

[@heyitsfiore1373]

Awesome video, pretty fun to watch! You can definitely see all the work put in it, good job :)

[@E4tHam]

Cool video! My assumption for the cause of Shen's safari zone is due to a glitch in the hardware. It's much more likely that a stray muon or a faulty transistor altered the code. Also, Werster had a similar experience in his video titled "The longest 2 minutes of my life" Also, I slightly disagree with your analysis for your random starter Pokemon. Yes, having the 3 birds appear is 1 in 9511040, but there are ~100 equally cool arrangements. (Bulbasaur Ivysaur Venusaur; Raikou Entei Suicune; etc.) I think it's more honest to say that finding any cool arrangement of starter Pokemon in the randomizer is ~1 in 95110. (Still super low chances)

[@BthIX]

This video encouraged me to get a gambling addiction

[@matthewjensen991]

You clearly put a ton of work into this video and it paid off, great job! I'd love to see more videos of this style in the future, very thought provoking and entertaining.

[@Ashgrey0]

This is quality content and deserves more views for the work put into it. Especially loved that optimistic bit when you were talking about negativity bias😊

[@HunterVook]

If its not 100%, its 50%.

[@AllBeganwithBBS]

It felt so silly that you decided to teach the basic probability maths you did, but I definitely respect it.

[@jsem94]

Man, your pedagogical skills are insane. Honestly. That safari zone shit was utter insanity.

[@TheInfamousWoahgoat]

I will now give some positivity. One day, I was shiny hunting beldom in Ultra Moon. On the third cry for help, it was shiny! No shiny charm either because I have nobody to trade with. I was trying to capture it in a beastball, but eventually I just threw an ultra ball at it when it woke up. I didn't use false swipe, I know Take Down would just end it.

[@AllegedlyHuman]

Yo, congrats! I bet that felt amazing - I sure know it did when I got my full odds Regirock in 320 encounters - *and* it was a 1/16 square shiny to boot!

[@marckeilcasting5829]

Jesus christ. My jaw dropped through the basement and even further throughout this video. Thanks adef for enlightning me once more. You are a true chef!

[@CTKnoll]

This was such a fun video to watch! You already were one of my favorite GDQ hosts, and now you have a subscriber!

[@vincentsquared1304]

DAMN! Newspaper article "LOCAL MAN IS HAPPY" caught me off guard