Talk:Showdown Update/@comment-36054405-20190624042005/@comment-34346976-20190624095745

No, don't do it. You'll over-estimate it's strength if you test it in off season since fewer people use boosters in off-season, which affects the *RELATIVE PERFORMANCE* of your car. Since few people use boosters in off seasons, you get a larger stat difference between you and the opponent, and your car seems good. However, more people uses boosters during a season, which makes you feel the car’s ‘worse’ than what you’ve tested during the off seasons. For example, let your car's speed be X, the mean speed of your opponent's car be x. Recall how you calculate the z-score, which is (X-x)/σ, where σ is the standard deviation between you and your opponent’s car, which is calculated as √((Xa-x)2(Xb-x)2…(X-x)2… (Xn-x)2/ n, where n is the total amount of datum collected.

During off seasons, your car's z-score=(X-x)/σ=Z

During seasons, your car's z-score=(X-x')/σ' where x' is the mean speed of your opponent's car during seasons and σ' be the new σ=z.

Since your opponent's cars are faster, x'>x, σ>σ'

Although the σ decreased, X-x has decreased MORE than how σ decreased (in many cases, even though something BIG happened to the datum, for example, adding or removing a data, the σ only increases or decreases a little). As a result, z-score decreases.

Hence, the relative performance of your car decreases when transitioning from off season to the new season.

As a result, you over-estimated the car’s relative performance.