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I have a question about my Mathematics Stack Exchange post: Help with understanding an example from the book 'Fooled by Randomness'

Dear all, I just spent a few hours today after reading the same book excerpt and trying to understand its calculations.

Although there is an accepted answer to the same question that I had after reading the book and this question being an old question, it was not clear on how to get to the same results presented in the book.

Before my answer, it was not clear the mathematics steps to get there (z-score and probability calculation).

I had some effort starting from the accepted answer to reproduce the results. So I decided to contribute with this information on the question. I think that my answer to this old question supports a better understanding of how to get there, but a downvote was given to it.

My question is: Is that an automatic downvote from the system based on rules such as oldness of the question or been already answered despite the contribution that I think that I made?

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    $\begingroup$ While there is no "automatic downvote from the system," there is a Review Queue called Late Answers. So likely your post answering "an old question" was placed in this queue by the system automatically. From there ordinary Community members (with review privileges) would have been prompted to consider what new information is being added. This may result in a mix of upvotes, downvotes, etc. So it's fine to post new information, but diligence in highlighting what new information is being presented vs. "effort starting from the accepted answer" will increase the chance of a favorable review. $\endgroup$
    – hardmath
    Commented May 13, 2020 at 22:39

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There is no such thing.

Some people, however, feel that in order for a contribution to an old question that has already amassed some good answers, one needs to go the extra mile to prove that it's worth adding an answer.

It follows that some people are easier on the draw when it comes to downvoting answers like that.

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