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A new article titled That's How I Roll - A Scientific Analysis of Dice has been added to the dakka articles system.

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Holy cow- AWESOME article. I'll definitely be buying some casino dice.

Just dont use them for your LD tests

Good to know. I have actually seen a player do GW for leadership and casino for everything else. Interesting.

My reaction to this article was "wow, why would anyone make such a garbage product." (cheap dice, not the article!) I then proceeded to order some casino dice, but now a part of me is regretting that decision.

I began to wonder if a disadvantage shared by all is really a disadvantage. If I use Casino dice against an opponent who doesn't have them, I've given myself an advantage simply because of the equipment I'm using. I'll probably find myself offering to let my opponent use my dice.

At the end of the day it comes down to how the game was designed. If the game was designed with lots of playtesting then it probably does not matter as the developers would have it in mind, even if it was just subconsciously considered. If the developers used theory rather than playtesting then it would have an impact.

The real goal of this article is to ensure that there are not cases of players abusing the different types of dice for their own game in competitive settings. So long as everybody is using the same dice it should all be alright in my opinion.

Yeah I've run into guys that split their dice.

At tournaments, I've had GW come over and give the guy a new set of dice (on me) and insist he play with it in his next game (game 5).

Just once, and it was years ago, but I always watch now.

Sad thing is, even cheating he still lost.

Ah well, they never do prosper.

This article is garbage.

His data prove that the 36 dice that he used for the test will roll a "1" 29% of the time.

He used a high # of rolls but the sample size is still just 36 dice of each type.

In addition the tests don't simulate the way people actually roll dice during games. Individual rolling? No thanks.


Suggestions:

First, the dice you use for the test should be taken from several different production lots.

Put 1000 dice in a big-ass cork-lined tumbler, tumble them for 0.5m and dump them out on a huge felt-covered piece of plywood and count the 1's after that. Repeat it 3 times.

Next, repeat the same test with 100 dice. Do 30 replicates (so your total # of rolls remains the same as with the 1000 dice test.)

Repeat with 10 dice. Do 300 replicates.

The data from these tests would take into account the effect that the dice have on each other while being rolled and poured out onto the table.

Now who's got 1000 dice?

Wow, my local scientist weighs in (hi, Brian).

One wonders what the details were of the studies which led casinos to the conclusion.

I like the article. I am a 7th grade math teacher and when we get to the chapter on probability we do die trials. Some of the dice are rolled over 800 times. I do the trials with all of my classes then we compile the data and analyze it. I too found that the small dice rolled poorly. I tried out several different types of dice & I found that the vehicle destruction dice from GW were the most fair. The small chessex dice were the worst. I have since retired the chessex dice and started using the larger sized GW dice & I love them! I can't wait to test them out when we get to probability next year.

Cheers,
rebreather

Brian, check out the original warseer thread where the guy posted his original findings, and you will see what you have suggested has already been debated there.

The one thing that makes it very clear that there is indeed a lack of randomness is simply that casinos do not permit the usage of these types of dice in accordance with their own studies. Though a greater sample size is always desirable, there are limits to what people with no funding can achieve, and I am glad someone even went this far for our hobby.

Brian's point is valid though. You can't start making conclusions from bad science just because it's hard to properly execute and fund good science.

1,000 rolls per die is decent though, so what this study does do pretty well (assuming the math that is left out is done properly, and the method used to roll was decent) is show that a given set of store-bought dice can perform non-randomly.

That part is fine, but to then go on making assumptions about all small dice, chessex dice, or GW dice is just bad science.

Edit: I tried the warseer thread and it died after the first page, so I'm not sure what went on there.

awesome i think i am gonna get some new dice