[HN Gopher] How True Are Your d20s? (2013)
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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.
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