In any given TL how often will gunpowder be invented?

In our timeline, gunpowder was invented by the Chinese. Mythbusters demonstrates that even with precision equipment it takes practice to make your own gunpowder and have it work and it took decades if not a few centuries to go from invention of gunpowder to producing a high-quality product. In any given timeline, how likely is it that someone will be able to create a workable formula considering we have sketchy evidence for anyone but the Chinese inventing it independently?

I guess what I mean is, for every 100 timelines, how often do you think gunpowder will simply not be discovered in the period between 500-1500 AD?
 
Assuming continual civilizational development for centuries, pretty much in every one at some point; the bigh thing with Gunpowder IOTL with the Chinese was that they never really put a huge amount of effort into weaponizing it since they never had a need, however as soon as the Europeans (who fought wars every other decade) got it they weaponized it pretty quickly.
 

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In our timeline, gunpowder was invented by the Chinese. Mythbusters demonstrates that even with precision equipment it takes practice to make your own gunpowder and have it work and it took decades if not a few centuries to go from invention of gunpowder to producing a high-quality product. In any given timeline, how likely is it that someone will be able to create a workable formula considering we have sketchy evidence for anyone but the Chinese inventing it independently?

I guess what I mean is, for every 100 timelines, how often do you think gunpowder will simply not be discovered in the period between 500-1500 AD?
In the same way that people will eventually discover basic elements and compounds so too will people learn to create things like gunpowder. Its an early enough invention that most timelines will already have it in one form or another. The bigger question is how and when it will be weaponized. There are alternatives to gunpowder, but if any of them see significant use and replace gunpowder then history and invention will become radically different things in the centuries to come.
 
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