No, it's just random, and the human mind really dislikes it. So yes, you're imagining things.

Not that you're getting those missions over and over again, but that it has any meaning or that it signifies any change. It's just the roll of the die.

Because there's so few of them in your agents' mission pools.
Yup.

You are not alone. He's unbelievably Trolling ME about PI and ICE sales vs. Fuel Block sales over in another Thread.................

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=946966#post946966

http://www.eve-wiki.net/index.php?title=Agents#Effective_quality
Effective Quality = 20 + (5 * Level of Negotiation) + Effective Standing (Technically the first 20 is the agent's base quality, but, similarly to access, since Incursion 1.5 it is always +20 for the purpose of calculating rewards.)

Effective quality (EQ) determines from what end of the mission pool the agent will select missions. The high the EQ, the shorter the trips will be for couriers and the closer the kill targets will be. Also, it seems to improve the chances of the agent offering the harder and more rewarding missions. This actually means that with higher standings and Negotiation an agent may offer you harder, instead of easier, missions. The better rewarding missions are often the harder ones although they also often require a lot more time so the effective reward may not differ as much as it seems. Effective quality also directly affects the reward and your standing gain with the agent and their corporation, for every mission.

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Agent#Agent_Levels
As you run missions for an agent, your standings towards the agent and its corporation will improve. As your standings towards the agent improve, you will be offered more rewarding missions. Rewards are affected by: 1) agent level 2) agent location (security level of the system) 3) agent standing 4) Negotiation skill level

Of course, rewards are affected by missions you get, too :)

As for agent quality influencing the pool of missions, I don't know of anyone who's run enough missions to figure that out. So unless someone has a lot of data or a reliable dev comment (and devs have been wrong before,) I'll go with "show me the numbers and/or code."

Context. The "rewarding missions" are simply the ability to run higher level missions.

Even though on this my anecdotal evidence seems to align fairly well with that of Crimson - I agree entirely with Tippia's assertion that this is at best, anecdotal.

So let me put this in another way.

What kind of data (that us mortal players) can be gathered which would be the best to show things one way or the other? I'm willing to invest some time in gathering said data and see what happens.

We can provide exactly the same evidence as you can, and provide exactly the same kind of support you can. The difference is that we are not trying to prove anything GÇö you are. We are simply stating that there is nothing to suggest that we should deviate from the null hypothesis (that there is no link).

You are the one trying to claim there is a connection, so the only one who has to provide any kind of evidence is you. Until you do, we don't need to do anything but remind you that you have none and that you cannot really go about and claim that there is such a connection the way you do. Us doing anything at all beyond that is just a courtesy GÇö absolutely nothing is required of us until you provide something to disprove (should we even have any desire to do so).

No, it's just random, and the human mind really dislikes it. So yes, you're imagining things.

Not that you're getting those missions over and over again, but that it has any meaning or that it signifies any change. It's just the roll of the die.

Calling people trolls because they don't buy your departure from the null hypothesis with anything backing it up just makes you look like you prefer this to be a matter of faith (complete with persecution of those who don't automatically hold the same beliefs) rather than of actual knowledge.

more ranting

Personally, I'm insulted by Tippia's continuance of this "debate."

Tippia, are you implying that the rest of us are too stupid to know that DeMichael Crimson's arguments are weak-sauce?

That we need to be continually reminded about anecdotal evidence, unsupported/unverifiable/potentially-out-of-date sources,

or about such concepts as "proving a negative" or the burden of proof?