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I need to speed up an algorithm that takes as input the number of chips of several players in a tournament. Their chips can be seen as a normally distributed curve.

Since my algorithm can handle a maximum of 10 inputs and its purpose is to calculate each player probability of ending the tournament in a determined place I thought to divide the gaussian curve in 10 «ranges» and put them as input of the algorithm.

Since I'm not a mathematician I would really appreciate to hear your opinion of this method, are the outputs trustworthy? Or they'll have a significant level of error? Should my 10 ranges be divided equally or should I take into consideration the fact that there are more players in the central ranges and divide them proportionally to that?

Thanx in advance Giorgio

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Is this essentially a duplicate of math.stackexchange.com/q/97712/15941? There the gaussianity seems to be knowing the minimum, maximum, and average number of chips rather than anything more specific or trustworthy. Perhaps there are no reasonable answers that can be provided for this question (or the other one). – Dilip Sarwate Jan 11 '12 at 17:34
Thank you man! I didn't get any answer nor comments there and I'm struggling to find a method to calculate this. What would be an example of parameter or input useful to calculate this? I really don't know! – Tom Dwan Jan 11 '12 at 17:40
You might want to try to elaborate more on the specifics. With more concrete values, the math may be more forthcoming. – Matt Groff Jan 11 '12 at 18:22

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