recovery missions

[tab]

kernonauts obtained after recovery mission are always engineers?

i got 3 engineers in 3 recovery missions.

[Snark]

Nope, it's random.  Just luck of the draw.

Though certainly it can seem like there's a pattern sometimes!

[Wemb]

10 hours ago, Snark said:

Nope, it's random.  Just luck of the draw.

Though certainly it can seem like there's a pattern sometimes!

This is a fascinating subject - humans are awful, really, really _awful_ at creating random patterns.  Human (well, mammal) brains evolved to be good at spotting patterns so we could see the sabre-toothed tiger in the bush - and consequently, when we try and write supposedly random sequences we almost always subconsciously avoid what we think look like patterns - such as sequences of recurring numbers.  Having three engineers in a row is entirely consistent with it being a random sequence  - if you feel it's not, it's really because your sample size is too small and you're a clever ape.

Wemb

[Mister Dilsby]

I'd expect that one of every 27 career saves would get 3 engineers in a row. Another one in 27 would get three pilots. One in eight would get three males, one in eight would get three females. 

If you consistently get three of anything in a row in all your games, might I recommend a trip to Las Vegas or Atlantic City?  

[tab]

ehm... 4 out of 4

[Arsonide]

We've made quite sure that gender and class are totally random. There used to be some issues, but they were fixed a while back. Any patterns are coincidental now.

[Geschosskopf]

On 2/6/2016 at 8:54 PM, tab said:

kernonauts obtained after recovery mission are always engineers?

Wow.  In my world, "recovery" means useless corpses in bodybags, not useful engineers.  To get them, I have to do "rescues" and trust to luck of the draw on the skill set .  What mod are you using that brings the dead back to life as the only Kerbals with any purpose at all?

[Warzouz]

Well, you can't really establish a rule with only 4 items. You need much more. Let's say that if your saying your 4*engineer is not random, you have a very high chance of being wrong.

Drawing 4 time in a row an engineer has around 1% chance. Not an occurrence you'll not see in your life time.

[Snark]

8 hours ago, Warzouz said:

Drawing 4 time in a row an engineer has around 1% chance. Not an occurrence you'll not see in your life time.

And actually, it's effectively more common than that.  What's "unusual" isn't the act of getting four engineers in a row, it's the act of getting four of the same thing in a row.  And that has a 1 in 27 chance of happening, i.e. nearly 4%.

So, how many KSP players does it take, each one playing one career, in order for there to be at least a 50% chance that one of them will get four-of-the-same-profession in a row for their first four rescues?

Nineteen.

The likelihood that the lucky winner(s) will then come here to the forums to post about it is left as an exercise for the reader. 

[tab]

the fifth is a pilot

[Snark]

4 hours ago, tab said:

the fifth is a pilot

That sounds like the punchline to a joke.  "Three engineers walk into a bar..."