I have a total of about 7 CPD (HP11) crunching. Since about a month ago I'm experiencing much, much lower blockrate. Currently it's about one block per 2-3 days. Wondering who finds all those blocks?
Also I noticed (since day 0) that my machines often find a few blocks in a row (over 1-3 days) and then find nothing for days/weeks. I even had 3 blocks within a few hours a few times. Can anybody confirm, that it is more likely to find a block when a block has been found in the past hours? I can't believe this is pure luck.
Yes. They come in groups. It's not totally random. There are hidden parameters that are not well understood. In the hidden parameter space there is tide of "luck". I can only guess the parameters are related to network speed, performance of the whole network, and the condition of your peers who are network neighbors at the moment.
Sorry, I can't agree with this, and I have found several thousand XPM in total now. I think you are falling into the trap of seeing patterns where there really are none:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ApopheniaSimilarly a gambler remembers theirs successes more than their failures (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias), especially when they also perceive a 'lucky streak' or 'a round of wins':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot-hand_fallacyOur brain evolved to allow us to find and kill things really well, while not being killed by other things ourselves, to do well socially and to have lots of
sex offspring. Interpreting temporal occurrences like found XPM blocks, and indeed any kind of mathematical concept was never really what the brain was evolved for. To get around these limitations of our own minds we created the field of statistics.
I suspect if you perform rigorous statistical testing you will see there is not really the phenomenon you describe.
Saying that, I found a total of 22 blocks on a crappy notebook with 2,5Ghz dualcore i5 (0,64 CPD HP11). I guess that's all pure luck 
