"Thinking about the Research of Pokemon GO"

#PokemonGO: From some posts on this subreddit, I find that there is often confusion about abstract topics such as biomes. This post is meant to provide a framework for thinking about such research based on various ‘philosophies of science’. Hopefully the ideas here can help other researchers think more critically about various approaches to research in Pokemon GO. This is not a post for general readers looking for actual information about how the game works so you have been warned... The Two PhilosophiesThere are two somewhat opposing ways of thinking about how science and truth are related. On one side is the idea that there is an absolute truth and the purpose of research debates is approach this truth. On the other side is the idea that truth is not meant to be discovered but the purpose of scientific debates is to help us categorize and make sense of a disorganized world. Being based on programming code, Pokemon GO must have absolute truths. If we had full access to every piece of code and schematics of Niantics data centers, we could pretty much uncover this truth. But this doesn’t mean that all research here is about discovering this truth. I’ve seen posts like: “Perhaps Niantic doesn’t think about nests the same way we do”. It could be that our understanding of nests is entirely made up but also perfectly valid under the second philosophy. The next section provides an illustration of how this can be the case. Generating Probability DistributionsImagine if there was a place that would spawn only Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle. To decide which should spawn, two coins are flipped. The server spawns a Bulbasaur if both are tails, a Charmander if one is heads and the other is tails and a Squirtle if both are heads. One person observes this and posts that this location has 25% chance of spawning a Bulbasaur, 25% chance of spawning a Squirtle and 50% chance of spawning a Charmander. A second person observes this and says there are two rarity tiers for this location. Charmander is common while Bulbasaur and Squirtle are uncommon. Commons spawn twice as often as uncommons. Both people are perfectly correct but neither actually discovered how spawn rates are determined on the back end. Note that the first philosophy of science still applies though since neither person can claim that Mewtwo spawns at this location. Why does this matter?Sometimes the best explanation for something is not what Niantic does in the backend but the simplest accurate model. The Grand Unified Catch Theory can provide an example of this. It is presented as one comprehensive catch formula but it is possible that Niantic uses many small formulas that give us the same results for catch rate. We know that the server sends the catch rate for each ball separately to your phone. Then, medals and berry multipliers are added to determine the color of your capture ring. It would be more efficient for a server to apply throw bonus multipliers to these intermediate numbers than do a recalculation with a comprehensive formula involving all multipliers. But these middle calculations aren’t really useful to think about so presenting one formula as opposed to several is just as accurate but simpler. The other reason this matters is to make sure we are all talking about the same thing. Anyone can make up a categorization or definition that is accurate based on existing data. But new data can cause certain categorizations to be no longer accurate or one method of categorization simpler than another. Take nests for example. One accepted definition involves a set of spawn points where a species of Pokemon is common but the species changes every two weeks. Another definition defines a nest as a place where a Pokemon is more common than nearby areas without caring about migrations. When people say that a nest Pokemon spawns at a nest spawn point on average 25% of the time, they are basing this off of this study which identified nests using the second definition. Scanners that identify nests also use the second definition. Since a nest under one definition is not necessarily a nest under the other definition, error exists when a methodology applying one definition is used to talk about nests under the other definition. This error may be negligible but is still something to keep in mind. Or for a more recent example, a study by u/ketchupkleenex uses a definition of biomes where one spawn point can only have one biome. It then defines “pots” as tiered lists of Pokemon. In some older posts, many people discussed the idea of “overlapping biomes” where one spawn point can have multiple biomes. When these posts discuss biomes they are discussing something more similar to a pot in the u/ketchupkleenex study. Reading posts from both people without this understanding can lead to confusion about what a biome is. ConclusionIf I had to give a few takeaways from this post they would be:When doing research, it’s often more important to have an accurate, simple and useful description than figure out every detail of what Niantic does.We should strive to have clear consistent definitions. If one word has multiple definitions, a researcher should make sure it is clear which definition is being used.Thanks for reading and hopefully you found this insightful. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2oOGUBl