[HN Gopher] How True Are Your d20s? (2013) ___________________________________________________________________ How True Are Your d20s? (2013) Author : YeGoblynQueenne Score : 45 points Date : 2022-03-16 09:40 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.1000d4.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.1000d4.com) | mLuby wrote: | Don't forget to scout, train, and exorcise your dice! | | Part 1: Scouting your die's personality (4min) | https://youtu.be/87F-Ind9BaQ | | Part 2: Training your dice (4min) https://youtu.be/gNGa-ydu7z4 | | Part 3: Polterdice (4min) https://youtu.be/XXy2awzR-mM | slaymaker1907 wrote: | We really need a giant machine that can automatically roll dice | and record the results to a file. That way we can then take that | data and run a bunch of statistical analyses on them to try and | figure out if they are fair enough. | [deleted] | hackcasual wrote: | I've got a set of Game Science dice, and while they measure very | consistently, the very sharp edges, even with flashing removed do | seem to cause them bias. If you leave the flashing on, then it | gets even worse. | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | Chi-squared test. When I was in 7th grade, I wrote a science | paper on the chi-squared test and applied it to a bunch of D&D | dice. I think it is a much better way to assess dice accuracy | than stacking dice in this manner. | slaymaker1907 wrote: | The issue with statistical testing is that you need to have the | patience to roll die many times for useful results, at least | for d20s (which are the dice where bias is both most likely and | often most impactful). | charlieb wrote: | Wouldn't a better experiment be to roll one 10K times and see if | the sides have equal probability? Who cares if the dimensions are | a little off if the effect on the roll is minimal, or conversely | are even the best toleranced dice still biased? | jedimastert wrote: | Fun fact: Die don't have to be the same all sides to be | provably fair. | | Check out the "skew die" | https://www.mathartfun.com/DiceLabDice.html | | And a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAnCL3vhVIs | bikamonki wrote: | https://hackaday.com/2019/06/20/automated-dice-tester-uses-m... | mwcremer wrote: | And if you read that report, you see: | | "Gamescience dice are more consistent than the X-Wing dice", | with some analysis regarding the flashing from the mold | suggesting that sanding it smooth will increase the | consistency. | pmarreck wrote: | His speech on dice quality is apparently hidden on youtube now :/ | stolenmerch wrote: | I just prefer the sharp edges of GameScience dice, regardless of | their trueness. The Zocchi Ruby Gem dice are the closest to the | pleasure of rolling casino dice, but I'd still prefer they be | about 20% larger and heavier with ink that doesn't lift off from | too much handling. I'll take a slight bias in the rolls if it | means a superior aesthetic experience. | wolverine876 wrote: | Random number generation is a tool not just for crypto, but for | human psychology. There are applications for _random_ , _psuedo- | random_ , _unpredictable_ , and ' _uncontrolled_ ' number | generation. (These are my terminology and concepts. Did I leave | out some other property? Has someone actually studied this | question?) | | Imagine it's dinner time and you want to randomly choose a | restaurant, so you roll a die. Let's say you know the die isn't | truly random; I guess you probably don't care. Let's say you know | it's not really even psuedo-random (by whatever standard that's | defined); do you care? Let's say it's just unpredictable - | significantly biased, but you don't know the bias - do you care? | Let's say I told you what the bias is before you roll, but you | are yielding control of the outcome to the dice (which I'm | calling 'uncontrolled'). Does that differ from yielding control | to another free will, another person? What matters to you here? | | Imagine that instead you are deciding whether to buy a house. You | can't decide, it's 50-50, let's roll for it! How do the above | questions apply? | | Dinner is a low-stakes, no-lose situation. The house is a high- | stakes, no lose (assuming it legitiately is 50-50) situation. | | Imagine a low-stakes, win/lose situation, like a low-stakes game | of craps. As long as it's unpredictable, is that fine? What about | uncontrolled? | | Imagine about a high-stakes game of craps: Honestly, I might | still be satisfied with unpredictable (ignoring the risk that | someone might cheat and figure out the pattern), or even | uncontrolled, if everyone knew the bias. | | I might be satisfied with merely uncontrolled for all of those | situations, though at a certain level of bias, why roll a die? | function_seven wrote: | I like these divisions! | | To boil down the 50/50 one: Imagine your torn between those 2 | houses, and your realtor--who also does magic as a hobby-- | offers you a coin to flip. You ask, "wait, is this a trick | coin?" | | "Yup!" he replies, "Always lands one way." | | "How is _that_ going to help me then!? " | | " _I_ got no idea if this is an always-heads coin or an always- | tails coin. You see, when they 're being minted, each coin | randomly plops onto the conveyor before it enters the CBU--" | | "--The 'CBU'? What's that?" | | "--oh, the Coin Biasing Unit. It's the machine that takes a | normal coin and does the proprietary thing that biases it. The | coin's orientation as it enters the CBU is the way it'll be | biased from then on. As I was saying, the coins enter the CBU | randomly, and I've never used this particular one before, so I | don't know if it's a Heads coin or a Tails coin." | | "... Ok then! Heads I offer on 284 Bayes St, Tails I go with | 938 Bernoulli Blvd." | wolverine876 wrote: | That's great! Come to think of it, drinking games can be | 'uncontrolled': 'Watch this CNBC show - every time they use a | word starting with 'crypto', we drink!' | uncletaco wrote: | One thing I like about the psychology of random is you can tell | what numbers are true random vs what numbers are human | generated if you know what to look for. For instance humans | will avoid closeness (1 next to 2) and runs (1 next to 1 | again). They will also usually avoid starting with the lowest | and highest number in the range (asking for random numbers | between 0 and 10 will almost never result in the first number | being 0 or 10). | | If they are aware of this and try to compensate they'll start | creating patterns that give them away. | Morizero wrote: | Here's a topical example that The Economist showed a few | months back https://www.economist.com/graphic- | detail/2021/10/11/russian-... | wolverine876 wrote: | I remember a securities market-fixing scam was discovered | years ago because the numbers were not random but (in | hindsight) obviously human-created. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-17 23:00 UTC)