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4 We's per case
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GrOwInG_FeAr
GrOwInG_FeAr

Dec-7-2006 09:33

alright , the fact of having 3 WE's in 1 case caused my other detective to retire :(:(:( ... i was on a ridiculously hard case ... and i had 4 alibis i dnt know ... 1 of which i ddnt even get from the suspect .. the other 3 i do have , but i had to bribe for them ... anyways , i found a WE for one suspect , i bribed and found that he had a real alibi .... then i found another alibi belonging to the person that i ddnt even get an alibi frm , i accused and it turned out to be wrong ... so RAnstetts theory is correct ... there can be 4 WE's per case

Replies

henryc
henryc
Old Shoe

Dec-7-2006 18:55

As I said yesterday, though I haven't found 4 WE in a case, I have twice found multiple pieces of bogus WE in a case. I verified this by checking the case file and seeing WE against three different people.

This means either there were 4 WE, or there was only one WE pointing to the guilty person. If the latter is true, then Serges' final point is incorrect. It does require every other person to deny knowledge of someone before you can eliminate them as a suspect. If there are 3 WE in these cases, the formula for solving a case stated by Ran is still correct. There just is no instance of WE + WE in these cases.

I think this situation hasn't been observed more often because of the way players solve their cases. To positively detect it requires asking for WE against two people who end up having valid alibis.

henryc
henryc
Old Shoe

Dec-7-2006 19:49

I was able to find an example of multiple bogus WE in the first case I solved after writing the above note. I found 5 !! WE on a RH case with 7 people. There were 3 people with valid alibis; all had one piece of WE against them. The remaining two WE were against the murderer.

I created a .bmp of the case file. How do I copy it here?

Tz_BG
Tz_BG
Well-Connected

Dec-7-2006 20:15

In regards to Serges post and henryc's reply, I just finished a case where the same situation occurred. I asked around town and learned that 3 people thought they knew. Two of the three did not give evidence against the actual killer, who I already knew from PE evidence. Under the assumption that there are always 2 WE against killer, there must be at least 4 WE for this case.

henryc - I would recommend putting the file on a web site somewhere and posting a link here.

Tz_BG
Tz_BG
Well-Connected

Dec-7-2006 20:19

As I thought about what I wrote and has been written by others, I realized there are two basic assumptions here which if untrue could throw things off.

1) Killer always has 2 WE against them.
2) When the townies say someone thinks they know, they always have WE against someone.

Have either of these been stated somewhere as true by Ben?

AraLives
AraLives
Battered Shoe

Dec-7-2006 20:21

No, Tz. I and many others have been accusing on 2 WE for a long time with (at least for me) no adverse effects.

Tz_BG
Tz_BG
Well-Connected

Dec-7-2006 20:52

That isn't quite what I meant Ara. I'm not talking about the assumption that 2 WE = guilty. It seems pretty established that 2 WE = guilty. I'm referring to the assumption that there are even 2 WE against the killer on every case. Is this always the case? I don't personally know of a situation where it doesn't happen but there is no reason that I've seen that indicates it must happen.

Serges
Serges
Vigilante

Dec-8-2006 05:02

Tz_BG, I wholeheartedly believe the killer always has multiple pieces of WE against them because of Ben's assertion that there are always at least 2 ways to solve a case. Thousands of cases have been solved with 2 WE as the deciding factor; there's no reason to doubt this aspect of the formula as far as I can see.

As far as your 2nd assumption, that seems mostly common-sense. Why would a townie confirm that someone has WE when in fact they don't suspect anyone at all? It seems as though the "Doesn't know anything" part of the townies' information covers that possibility.

With those being "truths" about Sleuth, the examples discussed previously confirm the suspicion that cases can have more than 3 pieces of WE, and multiple bogus WEs. Which means again that the only way to eliminate a suspect entirely through WE is to ask ALL other suspects (minus one) if they suspect the person. Since a killer has 2 pieces of WE and can't suspect himself, getting "X"-1 suspects to not suspect him/her must mean acquittal. (X is the total number of suspects in the given case, excluding your suspect in question).

R Anstett
R Anstett

Dec-8-2006 05:59

Henry, if you email that to me I would be glad to post it up on an agency website for everyone to be able to see.

Perhaps we can add this to the mythbusters thread now?

There will be at a minimum 3 WE per case with as many as 6 possible?


We still do not know a definative number but will help settle any other debates on the matter.

Tz_BG
Tz_BG
Well-Connected

Dec-8-2006 09:02

As a math major, I have to point out that thousands of cases being solved that way does not make it true. Very likely but not true. I would quote the whole two suspects with same name thread as an example. Thousands of cases don't have two suspects with the same name but there is a rare chance it will happen. And I agree that the most obvious and reasonable interpreation of the townie hints is to take that at face value. I'm just asking if Ben has ever flat out stated that the two assumptions are correct. Note that 2 ways to solve every case does not imply guilty party has 2 WE against them since there are two stated mechanics for solving a case fake/no alibi + PE and fake/no alibi + WE. That is 2 ways to solve a case to me. Now I certainly take advantage of the 2 WE method whenever necessary and it holds in thousands of empirical tests. But as we have seen, some of the assumptions people have been making about WE are wrong. I was just trying to get the very basic assumptions down and confirmed before moving on to the number of WE in a case. Without assumption 1 above though, the numbers Ran has given are off.

reda
reda
Well-Connected

Dec-8-2006 10:51

Apart from what Ran already posted (newbie faq) I found this in sleuth help:

"There are always multiple pieces of physical or witness evidence pointing to the guilty suspect. "

This is the only thing Ben has officially said about this matter.

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