Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

Mark Twain once said that there are 3 types of lies in this world: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.  I'm here to tell you that our beloved Killboards are a form of a lie.  You see, most people assume that KB efficiency of a character/corp/alliance tells you how many people they kill for every death (or, how much isk they blow up per every isk lost).  This in fact, is only part of what that efficiency number shows.  I believe the best way to present what these numbers really show is to give a few simple examples.

For our examples we will use two corps, Secret Agent Corp vs Shape Corp.  Each corp has 3 members.  For the Agents, the members are Agent 003, Agent 005 and Agent 007.  For the Shapes, the members are Square, Circle, and Triangle.  We will assume that each pilot flies a ship of equal value (to make the numbers nice an even) and only flies that ship.  Also, each example is independent of all the rest (Ie: Example 2 does not take into effect what happened in example 1).

Example 1:

Agent 005 has 3 1v1 vs Square.
Agent 5 wins 2 of the fights.
Square wins the third.

Killboard Result:
Secret Agents Efficiency: 66.667%
Agent 005 Efficiency: 66.6667%
Shapes Efficiency: 33.333%
Square Efficiency: 33.333%

Conclusion: 1v1s give you true efficiency numbers.

Example 2:

All 3 Agents have a fight vs all 3 Shapes.
All 3 Agents survive while all 3 shapes die, then the Shapes reship, and come back and kill all 3 Agents without losing a ship.  Total ships lost, 3 each side.

Killboard Result:
Secret Agents Efficiency: 50%
Agent 003s Efficiency: 75%
Agent 005s Efficiency: 75%
Agent 007s Efficiency: 75%
Shapes Efficiency: 50%
Squares Efficiency: 75%
Triangles Efficiency: 75%
Circles Efficiency: 75%

Conclusion: When you have multiple people from a corp fighting together (ie: fleeting up), the efficiency is (artificially) improved for each individual member (assuming they all get on the kill) by the number of members in the battle (Assuming the overall corp efficiency is 50%, each individual member's efficiency would tend toward 75% for 3 members, 90% for 9 members, 98% for 49 members, and so on, even though the corp efficiency has not changed and is still 50%).

Example 3:

Agent 007 hooks up with 2 new players from a Russian corp (Aptly named Backwards N): Ivana and Natalya (both dudes in real life) and they decide to camp a gate together.  The Shapes show up promptly, and all 3 are blown up.  The Shapes reship, and this time they kill all 3 ships.

Killboard Result:
Secret Agents Efficiency: 75%
Agent 007s Efficiency: 75%
Backwards N Efficiency: 66.667%
Ivana's Efficiency: 75%
Natalya's Efficiency: 75%
Shapes Efficiency: 50%
Square/Triangle/Circle's Efficiency: 75%

Conclusion: As you can see, when you fleet up with members of a different corp, not only does each individual's efficiency show as artificially high, but the corp efficiencies show high as well.  The more non-corp people included in your fleet, the higher your corp efficiency will be raised (artificially).

In Summary, what have we learned?
We have learned that pilots who tend to 1v1 a lot will have lower efficiencies as compared to people who fleet up a lot.  Said another way, if you want to artificially increase your toon's killboard efficiency numbers, join fleets.  Extrapolated another way, the larger your fleets are on average, the larger the artificial boost to your KB efficiency (One would expect members large 0.0 alliances to have artificially higher KB efficiencies than smaller corps who get the same 'true' efficiency).

What else have we learned?
We have learned that corps who tend to fleet with members outside their own corp will have higher corp KB efficiencies than those who do not.  Said another way, if you want to artificially increase your corp's KB efficiency, join fleets hosted by other corps/alliances.