Hey,

Just wanted to ask around, and get some opinions on something that led to a little argument during a Game.

The chap I was playing noticed I was being a little picky about Dice I would and wouldn't pick up, and asked why - I suppose he assumed I was in some way superstitious.

I'm not. I was picking Dice that had rolled low, because, although technically it's still a simple D6, I think it's more likely to roll high than one which just rolled a 6.

My Argument

Think of it this way; if I roll a 6, would you expect me to roll another 6? If I did, would you expect me to roll yet another consecutive 6? Of course you wouldn't. It defies what's probable.

His Argument

It's still a D6, so it has exactly the same odds of rolling a 6, no matter how many times you do so consecutively.

What side are you on?

Have at it, Dakka.

Martin

Have a read of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler's_fallacy

The dice rolls are not related.

On the other hand, some people who pick up dice with a particular facing showing do so to enable practised rolling.

Chances of rolling a six on a D6 is 1/6

No matter how many times you have rolled a 6 before the chance of you rolling another 6 is always 1/6

So I'm on his side

Everything Scott said above, with the addition of this:

If you *honestly* believe that by picking up certain dice, you will be more likely to roll a number you want, you are attempting to cheat. That is your intent, clear and simple, regardless of the fact that unless you have loaded or misbalanced die, it won't matter a bit.

However, if I were making Saves, say I had 20 Saves on a Tactical Squad, and I failed every single one, you'd say, 'That's unlucky/unusual'. Similarly, if I were to pick up a D6 and roll 1 20 times, consecutively, you'd say 'That's unlucky/unusual' because you'd expect that 'Surely I'll roll 2+ this time!'.

I'll put it another way. I pick up a D6, and I say to you, 'What am I going to roll?'. It could be anything. You say 2.

It isn't. It's a 5. I say 'What am I going to roll now?'. 5 is the last thing you'd guess, surely?

In response to Jokorey: I'm cheating because I pick up one die over another? Really?

The sequence overall would be unusual. Each specific roll is not. That's the difference.

ETA, and the sequence only exists after the roll is made. It can't reach into the future and affect the up-coming dice roll.

Also, those sequences are utterly artificial. You can roll 20 6's and say "that's unusual" but what is the die's average over every roll it's ever done and every roll it will ever do? Those 20 rolls may be utterly insignificant. By extracting the set which is anomalous you imply meaning which is not, in fact, there.

Popsicle wrote:I was picking Dice that had rolled low, because, although technically it's still a simple D6, I think it's more likely to roll high than one which just rolled a 6.

You are *attempting* to cheat because you are trying to generate a non random result.

You *aren't* cheating because the way in which you are artificially trying to alter the random result does not work.

I'm talking about it in a sequence, since, in a game, you roll sequence of D6s to determine various things. The fact that I've rolled it, and am now rolling it again, makes it a sequence of two rolls, surely?

I don't see your point.
The chance of rolling a 6 is ALWAYS 1/6 regardless of the dice (if you throw it in a decent manner of course), but as dice are somewhat erratic...funny things can happen.
Personally I don't care what dice I use, even if it's normally a pile of 10-12 while the rest is spread out as wound markers or terrain markers.

And of late I've started to care less about super-bad or super-good rolls. Sure, I react when it happens but I don't go around saying "OMFG, MY TERMIES FAILED 3/5 2+ SAVES!!!" stuff happens and that's that.

And I agree with your friend if that's not clear.

I feel the same as youabout it if the dice rooled low it has a chance to roll higher this time around just like if a dice has just rolled a 6 its more likely to roll low. its just how it seems to work.

Finally, someone in agreement with me.

The chances of rolling a 6 followed by a 6 is 1/36.

The chances of rolling a 6 followed by a 5 is 1/36

The chances of rolling a 6 followed by a 4 is 1/36.

The chances of rolling a 6 followed by a 3 is 1/36

The chances of rolling a 6 followed by a 2 is 1/36.

The chances of rolling a 6 followed by a 1 is 1/36

The chances of rolling a 5 followed by a 6 is 1/36.

The chances of rolling a 5 followed by a 5 is 1/36

The chances of rolling a 5 followed by a 4 is 1/36.

The chances of rolling a 5 followed by a 3 is 1/36

The chances of rolling a 5 followed by a 2 is 1/36.

The chances of rolling a 5 followed by a 1 is 1/36

And so on.

Any combination of one number followed by another number is 1/36.

However, once you have rolled the first dice, the odds for the second dice become 1/6 for any number.

A new six on a dice that just rolled a 6 is just as likely as a new 6 on a dice that just rolled a 5, or 2, or a 3.

A 3 followed by a 6 is equally likely as a 6 followed by a 6.

Dice have no memory. They do not even themselves out intentionally.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

templeorks wrote:I feel the same as youabout it if the dice rooled low it has a chance to roll higher this time around just like if a dice has just rolled a 6 its more likely to roll low. its just how it seems to work.

Just because you feel the same, it does not mean you are right.

You aren't. You are wrong.

There are no opinions on this topic. You are simply WRONG.

Of course, dice isn't completly random, with a "weak" (as we call it here) roll it might seem like they aren't...

But it isn't. Sure rolling a 6, and then a 6 seems unlikely, but it has the same odds at happining as rolling a 1 followed by a 6.

Edit: How did I get ninja'd by that megapost?

Popsicle wrote:I'm talking about it in a sequence, since, in a game, you roll sequence of D6s to determine various things. The fact that I've rolled it, and am now rolling it again, makes it a sequence of two rolls, surely?

Yes, but is there anything about those two rolls that is more or less significant than any other rolls the die will make or has made? No, absolutely nothing.

The thing is, all the results are equally likely.

Rolling 20 6's and then a 1 is just as likely as rolling 20 6's and then another 6.

The problem is you are trying to apply what you consider logic to a probability. You always have a 1 in 6 chance for any number, regardless of what rolled before. The odds of rolling 6 6's in a roll are the same as rolling a 6,5,5,3,3,1. Your brain is trying to make sense and find a pattern. Picking up a low number does not give you any benefit at all.

Fifty wrote:There are no opinions on this topic. You are simply WRONG.

Unless, of course, you believe in either karma or destiny.

But then talk of probability is utterly redundant.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Oscarius wrote: Sure rolling a 6, and then a 6 seems unlikely, but it has the same odds at happining as rolling a 1 followed by a 6.

Melchiour wrote:The problem is you are trying to apply what you consider logic to a probability. You always have a 1 in 6 chance for any number, regardless of what rolled before. The odds of rolling 6 6's in a roll are the same as rolling a 6,5,5,3,3,1. Your brain is trying to make sense and find a pattern. Picking up a low number does not give you any benefit at all.

Absolutely.

6,6,6,6,6,6 is exactly as likely a sequence as 1,2,3,4,5,6 or 1,1,1,1,1,1

By focusing on the 6 as being more significant than the other results you are skewing your perception of the result.

Scott-S6 wrote:

Fifty wrote:There are no opinions on this topic. You are simply WRONG.

Unless, of course, you believe in either karma or destiny.

But then talk of probability is utterly redundant.

Well, if it is his destiny to roll a 6 on his second dice, it won't matter what he rolled on his first dice either, will it?

Unless his destiny is actually to NOT roll the same number twice in a row on the same dice. As destinies or fates go, however, that seems like an oddly quirky one. I can't see anyone making a movie about a guy who is fated to NOT roll the same number on a dice twice in a row...

Gee, that got quite serious, quite quickly.

I didn't intend it to become such a serious debate. I simply wanted to gauge the response.

I think I get the general gist of people's opinions on this.

Popsicle wrote:Gee, that got quite serious, quite quickly.

I didn't intend it to become such a serious debate. I simply wanted to gauge the response.

I think I get the general gist of people's opinions on this.

(I am a Physics and Maths teacher. I take this stuff seriously )

They aren't opinions, its statistical fact. Take this from someone who has had to take more Stats classes than i would like to admit.

Fifty wrote:

Scott-S6 wrote:

Fifty wrote:There are no opinions on this topic. You are simply WRONG.

Unless, of course, you believe in either karma or destiny.

But then talk of probability is utterly redundant.

Well, if it is his destiny to roll a 6 on his second dice, it won't matter what he rolled on his first dice either, will it?

Unless his destiny is actually to NOT roll the same number twice in a row on the same dice. As destinies or fates go, however, that seems like an oddly quirky one. I can't see anyone making a movie about a guy who is fated to NOT roll the same number on a dice twice in a row...

(had to edit the comic as it had a naughty word)

templeorks wrote:I feel the same as youabout it if the dice rooled low it has a chance to roll higher this time around just like if a dice has just rolled a 6 its more likely to roll low. its just how it seems to work.

funny thing, you are right, if you look only to this dice, you have 1/6 possibility of another 6 and 5/6 to roll under.

The thing is, the odds are always 1/6 to any result. you may pick the dice that rolled a 1 and get another one.

Where the problem comes in figuring this out is that some people in the thread are failing to look at the issue from two sides.
Yes. He has a 1/36 probability of rolling 6,6. This is the same as his probability of rolling 6,1.
The thing is, he doesn't want to roll a 6,1.

So, he has a 1/36 chance to roll 6,6 and a 35/36 chance NOT TO.
The odds of rolling 6,6 are FAR worse than rolling something that is not 6,6 (in general, not any specific combination).

When you continue to play it out, the odds become increasingly worse.

Therefore, though it's possible, probability dictates that he will NOT roll 6 twenty times in a row without a skewed die.

Eric

SCYTHE9 wrote:

templeorks wrote:I feel the same as youabout it if the dice rooled low it has a chance to roll higher this time around just like if a dice has just rolled a 6 its more likely to roll low. its just how it seems to work.

funny thing, you are right, if you look only to this dice, you have 1/6 possibility of another 6 and 5/6 to roll under.

The thing is, the odds are always 1/6 to any result. you may pick the dice that rolled a 1 and get another one.

And if it just rolled a 1 then there's a 1/6 of getting a 6 and 5/6 of getting under.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

MagickalMemories wrote:Where the problem comes in figuring this out is that some people in the thread are failing to look at the issue from two sides.
Yes. He has a 1/36 probability of rolling 6,6. This is the same as his probability of rolling 6,1.
The thing is, he doesn't want to roll a 6,1.

So, he has a 1/36 chance to roll 6,6 and a 35/36 chance NOT TO.
The odds of rolling 6,6 are FAR worse than rolling something that is not 6,6 (in general, not any specific combination).

When you continue to play it out, the odds become increasingly worse.

Therefore, though it's possible, probability dictates that he will NOT roll 6 twenty times in a row without a skewed die.

Eric

Yes, but that sequence only exists after the dice have been rolled. What's the probability of getting another 6 on the 21st die?

In statistics, this is known as an independant event, a simple model is a coin toss, each toss is independant of the others, so N number of heads flips in no way influence the next flip. This is opposed to a non independant event like say a hand of cards, once you have gotten 5 cards from a deck, the probability the next card will be a specific card is not the same as it was at each point the first 5 were dealt because they are all coming from a fixed size deck and each draw changes the ods.

Dice are like coin flips they are independant events.

If we make the assumption the dice are fair (including the rolling mechanism as well as geometry) then it doesn't matter what was previously rolled.

Also the probability of rolling continuous N sixes in sequence is 1/(6^N).

For example rolling one 6 is:

1/(6^1) = 1/6 or 1:6

Two sixes is:

1/ (6^2) = 1/36

Three sixes:

1/(6^3) = 1/216

Actually, given that the dice we're all using are less than perfect, you could make the argument that it would be best to use those that already came up with a 6...

Aaaaaaaand here's the assumption that quite a lot of people are making:

Augustus wrote:
If we make the assumption the dice are fair (including the rolling mechanism as well as geometry) then it doesn't matter what was previously rolled.

If you already KNOW that the dice (and rolling method) are fair and truly random, then the next die roll is just as likely to be a 6 as anything else.

On the other hand, short of rigorous physical analysis of the die, rolling surface, and rolling technique, how does one justify the assumption that the die is random?

Well, you might eyeball it and see that it isn't obviously misshapen. You might buy them from some well-regarded manufacturer.

Or, you just might roll the die and see if it "seems random" to you. If that die rolls a wide variety of numbers, and doesn't noticeably favor one or two numbers, you might treat your assumption of randomness as reasonably justified. If that die proceeds to roll seventeen '1's in a row, you might be reasonably justified in assuming that it is NOT random. If you roll it seven million times, and it always rolls a '1', you would seem to be more than a bit obtuse in insisting it was random.

While it is possible for a truly random die to roll seventeen '1's in a row, or even seven million '1's in a row, you have to know that the die is truly random through some other means. Otherwise, that huge series of '1's is your testing to verify the assumption of randomness.

Now, my two questions:

For all of the people who keep telling someone "The chance of rolling any number on the die is the same", how are you arriving at your knowledge of the genuine randomness of the die? If you don't know that the die is random, then you don't know that the chance of each side being rolled is the same, right?

For anyone (especially math geeks), statistically, how many rolls of a single die would you need to track in order to establish that die was random? Feel free to provide an answer with a degree of accuracy, if you would like ("With x number of rolls, I can say with 99% certainty that this die is random).


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Now to be fair, none of this directly solves the OPs question. If his rolling is of a die whose randomness is not already conclusively established, then he might expect very slightly fewer ones in the series of rolls that he is making given the initial roll of a '1'. After all, in a series of say, 3600 test rolls, he would expect roughly 600 of each side, '1' through '6'. Since his initial roll is a '1', he might expect roughly 599 more '1's, and ONE more of ANY other number. Note that in a sample size of so few rolls, the actual statistical variation would swamp this effect (a genuinely random die might roll 590 '1's, 580 '2's, 605 '3's, 595 '4's , 620 '5's, and 610 '6's in a sample of 3600 rolls.

There's no real reason for the OP to expect a 6 after rolling a one, any more than he should expect a 2 or a 5.

Da Butcha wrote:Aaaaaaaand here's the assumption that quite a lot of people are making:

Augustus wrote:
If we make the assumption the dice are fair (including the rolling mechanism as well as geometry) then it doesn't matter what was previously rolled.

...
Now, my two questions:

For all of the people who keep telling someone "The chance of rolling any number on the die is the same", how are you arriving at your knowledge of the genuine randomness of the die? If you don't know that the die is random, then you don't know that the chance of each side being rolled is the same, right?

For anyone (especially math geeks), statistically, how many rolls of a single die would you need to track in order to establish that die was random? Feel free to provide an answer with a degree of accuracy, if you would like ("With x number of rolls, I can say with 99% certainty that this die is random).

Oh my, how do you arrive at your knowledge that a die is fair? In all honesty you just guess or leave it to fate, right? No one really knows. If that's your point I concede it, but I don't think its beyond the pale to generally use game store bought dice and make these assumptions, do you?

On a more technical note, I would say I only use clear, square ended, numbered (not pip) dice when I play because one can verify no internal tampering or imperfections and the mass loss per side is better for numeric indicatiors than pips and square ended dice roll truer than tumbled curved dice.

To the other point, how many die rolls do you need to 'verify' a claim of a true dice, to determine that you need a sample size and to perform an experiment and test it with a degree of certainty in a p distribution, where you essentially calculate the ods that a die is rolling true based on set size versus a predicted pattern.

Here's the page for this method:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_binomial_distribution

There's no way I am actually going to do that, but I would say generally a larger set size makes for a higher degree of confidence, as is intuitive. I've never even heard of a dice manufacturer for gaming even publishing this kind of an analysis for any of their dice though.

Interesting reading for the math nerds. I know there exists a game manufacturer of dice called game science, maybe they have...?

Game on!

EDIT: Scott-S6, that was a hilarious comic, I loved it, thx!

Sorry, but there's no way around it, it doesn't matter in what order or what group you roll it, a d6 will always have a 1/6 theoretical chance to roll any value.
Any differing from the 1/6 probability is not due to other dice, but to the particular d6 being faulty, or you rolling it in a non-random way (such as dropping it directly onto the value you want)

Also please don't try to "what you would expect" math. It really doesn't work that way. You should take a statistics class.

The other guy, when it comes to rolling the dice individually.

It's only when you batch roll, looking for a specific result that probability changes.

Popsicle wrote:Hey,

Just wanted to ask around, and get some opinions on something that led to a little argument during a Game.

The chap I was playing noticed I was being a little picky about Dice I would and wouldn't pick up, and asked why - I suppose he assumed I was in some way superstitious.

I'm not. I was picking Dice that had rolled low, because, although technically it's still a simple D6, I think it's more likely to roll high than one which just rolled a 6.

My Argument

Think of it this way; if I roll a 6, would you expect me to roll another 6? If I did, would you expect me to roll yet another consecutive 6? Of course you wouldn't. It defies what's probable.

His Argument

It's still a D6, so it has exactly the same odds of rolling a 6, no matter how many times you do so consecutively.

What side are you on?

Have at it, Dakka.

Martin

One roll is independent of another. That fact that you have rolled one six makes no difference to the fact that next time you roll the dice you still have a 1 in 6 chance of rolling a six.

However, when asking what the odds of rolling two sixes overall then it's 1/6 x 1/6 or 1/36.

But importantly the first result does not affect the second, once you roll a six and get that out the way, the odds of rolling another six are simply 1 in 6. The universe doesn't say "well you just got a six so now to balance things out there's a reduced probability of getting a six on the second roll". The dice and laws of physics remain the same, you always have a 1 in 6 chance or rolling a six regardless of what has occurred before.

For instance, if you win the lottery one week at odds of 50 million to one then you buy a ticket again the following week, you have odds of winning that week at 50 million to one, it doesn't get harder for you to win the lottery just because you've already one once. Your friend is right and if you still don't believe it you'll have to get a book on probability and statistics.


The only exception to all of this is if you roll twenty 6s in a roll. The odds on that occurring with a fair die are astronomical. I would put odds on the twenty-first roll being a 6, simply because I would guess the dice was loaded.

What might be adding to the difficulty is when you compare another thing we generally think of as vaguely random, namely playing cards.

If you shuffle a deck of cards and turn each one over one at a time, the more cards you turn without drawing (say) a heart, the greater the odds that your next card will be a heart.

When you roll a "6", however, that number isn't removed from the list of possible next rolls.

I hope that helps!

Jokorey wrote:

Popsicle wrote:I was picking Dice that had rolled low, because, although technically it's still a simple D6, I think it's more likely to roll high than one which just rolled a 6.

You are *attempting* to cheat because you are trying to generate a non random result.

You *aren't* cheating because the way in which you are artificially trying to alter the random result does not work.

Wanting to pass my armour save is attempting to cheat?

Nerbil wrote:Wanting to pass my armour save is attempting to cheat?

If you have an armor save of 4+, and you do something that you feel gives you better than 50/50 odds of passing it, then yes, your intent is to cheat. You are actively attempting to artificially alter the outcome of a result that is intended to be random.

Jokorey wrote:

Nerbil wrote:Wanting to pass my armour save is attempting to cheat?

If you have an armor save of 4+, and you do something that you feel gives you better than 50/50 odds of passing it, then yes, your intent is to cheat. You are actively attempting to artificially alter the outcome of a result that is intended to be random.

So by this you mean instead of rolling a dice and getting a 4 to pass your armour save, you'll put two blue balls and two red balls in a bag, pick one at random, and if it's blue you pass your save. It's the same chance, but because you think the ball method is more likely for you to pass, you are intending to cheat?

if we want to be incredibly literal about it then yes, this would constitute cheating if it actually worked. Let's walk through this one:

Let's say I tell you I have this pair of dice that always ALWAYS roll 6s, no matter what, and I want to use them for every roll in a given game. Is it safe for me to assume you'll say no because that's cheating? What if the dice only *usually* roll 6s, but every once in a while a 4 or 5 comes up. Still no, right? What about if I only suspect the dice roll too many 6s, but haven't confirmed it? That's basically where we're at with your example. Ultimately, you're trying to manipulate the outcomes of a system that's supposed to be random.

Having a half-hearted superstition you don't take seriously about dice rolling is one thing, but the facts of independent probabilities are all but irrefutable. Fun fact; superstitions arise in all animals, not just humans, due to what's known as variable ratio reinforcement. It explains why in baseball there are so many superstitious pitchers, but almost no superstitious outfielders.

templeorks wrote:I feel the same as youabout it if the dice rooled low it has a chance to roll higher this time around just like if a dice has just rolled a 6 its more likely to roll low. its just how it seems to work.

Never took probability or statistics?)

Go roll some dice, one after another, see if it still 'seems to work'.

ph34r wrote:Sorry, but there's no way around it, it doesn't matter in what order or what group you roll it, a d6 will always have a 1/6 theoretical chance to roll any value.
Any differing from the 1/6 probability is not due to other dice, but to the particular d6 being faulty, or you rolling it in a non-random way (such as dropping it directly onto the value you want)

Also please don't try to "what you would expect" math. It really doesn't work that way. You should take a statistics class.

This is correct, but the chance of rolling ANY NUMBER on a d6 twenty times in a row (or at the same time) is not 1/6.
That is the only point I'm trying to make.


Eric

Yes it is.

Each chuck of the die has precisely the same chance of coming up a speciffic number.

It's only when you roll all the dice together that it changes.

This thread is awesome.
Especially this:

Jokorey wrote:You are *attempting* to cheat because you are trying to generate a non random result.

You *aren't* cheating because the way in which you are artificially trying to alter the random result does not work.

Just thought I would share

Thank you and carry on.

Wow, I worked at a casino for about 7 years, and I see this all the time. Seems people believe in luck more than odds. As stated before, every time you roll dice, they are independent of all other rolls. Dice do not have memory, every roll it is a 1 in six chance, and the likely hood of rolling 2 numbers consecutively is 1/36. The dice still has a 1 in 6 chance of any number. You want to see this in action watch a craps game, or roulette is a good one to watch people betting red/black.

Look at a bell curve of consecutive dice rolls, better yet, get about 10 plus people together, each with a quarter. Everyone flips their coin at the same time, showing their neighbor the outcome. Every time tails comes up their quarter goes in the pot, and they are out. The last person standing who ends up with heads at the end wins the pot, no winner (buncha tails come up), money stays in the pot, wash rinse repeat. Each coin flip is 50/50, however some lucky person will get the pot. 3 heads in a row do not automatically equal a tails is all I am saying.

Scott-S6 wrote:The sequence overall would be unusual. Each specific roll is not. That's the difference.

Like Button

Eldar Own wrote:So by this you mean instead of rolling a dice and getting a 4 to pass your armour save, you'll put two blue balls and two red balls in a bag, pick one at random, and if it's blue you pass your save. It's the same chance, but because you think the ball method is more likely for you to pass, you are intending to cheat?

Exactly. The odds don't change, but if you perform method X because you *think* it improves your odds, your *intent* is artificially alter the result by using your method, aka, cheating.

Put another way, exactly as the OP feels/felt it to be:

You have a magic die that never rolls the same number twice in a row. It doesn't do anything else crazy, but you know that if you roll a one, it is impossible for you to roll a one on your next throw. This is the power the OP attributes to his die turned up a few notches - he feels/felt it was less likely to roll the same number twice than any other number on the die. This magical die does the exact same thing the OP thinks/thought his die did, only to a greater degree.

Now say you use this die, and roll a one. And immediately after, you use the die to pass your armor save test on your terminators, because you know you will not roll a one again. That terminator now has a 100% chance to pass its armor save, as opposed to the 83% chance it should have had. You have clearly cheated in this scenario.

This is exactly what the OP is saying, only instead of a Magic Die, the OP thinks/thought all dice were Lesser Magic Dice. Just because it turns out they're *not* Magic Dice does not change his intent.

J-Roc77 wrote:Seems people believe in luck more than odds.

This really arises because many people (as have been demonstrated by this thread) really have no understanding of how probability and statistics work, as well as viewing luck as something that unlike probability, they can control through various arcane methods.

LOL

Jokorey wrote:The odds don't change, but if you perform method X because you *think* it improves your odds, your *intent* is artificially alter the result by using your method, aka, cheating.

On the contrary, if this is what the OP understands the behaviour of dice to be (regardless of the fact that he's wrong), he's simply trying to maximise his chances, which is absolutely not cheating.

Jokorey wrote:Everything Scott said above, with the addition of this:

If you *honestly* believe that by picking up certain dice, you will be more likely to roll a number you want, you are attempting to cheat. That is your intent, clear and simple, regardless of the fact that unless you have loaded or misbalanced die, it won't matter a bit.

That's not attempting to cheat, that's being superstitious.

If I poured water into a really large cup, and went around telling everyone I'm going to extinguish the Sun with it, is my intent to actually destroy a star?

I would argue that if there is no possibility of the event, you can't attempt it.

Thing is, you either accept that dice have no memory and each roll is independant of the last, or you believe in magic.

For the record, the odds of rolling a 6 20 times in a row is 0.000000000000027%, or 1 in 3,656,158,440,062,980. It's not very likely.

J-Roc77 wrote:Dice do not have memory, every roll it is a 1 in six chance, and the likely hood of rolling 2 numbers consecutively is 1/36.

The odds of rolling a specific numbers twice in a row is 1/36, the odds of rolling any number then rolling that number again is 1/6.

Defiler wrote:That's not attempting to cheat, that's being superstitious.

If I poured water into a really large cup, and went around telling everyone I'm going to extinguish the Sun with it, is my intent to actually destroy a star?

Yes, that would be your intent. I doubt government agents would be getting issued any shoot on sight orders to protect the human race, though, but there's no doubting it is your intent.

Similarly, it is by a very literal definition your intent to cheat when you try and change the odds of the dice to anything other than what they should be. It's just that we despite it being your intent, no-one cares because it doesn't work.

Defiler wrote:
If I poured water into a really large cup, and went around telling everyone I'm going to extinguish the Sun with it, is my intent to actually destroy a star?

I would argue that if there is no possibility of the event, you can't attempt it.

If I think a toy gun is a real, loaded gun, point it at someone, and pull the trigger, my intent is not to take a life?

Make no mistake, in this particular situation, I wouldn't care a bit (unless it actually seemed like it was working, at any rate).

One of the largest detriments to the health of 40k, and hobby games in general, is that too many people eschew parity and fairness in their quests to win, and I am speaking as a person who has had reasonable success in competitive gaming and am generally immersed in gaming in both life and work. This doesn't happen because people like those in this thread who don't see this as cheating are horrible people, but rather because there has been a general lack of effort to create empathy with their fellow players. And this is why it is important to understand that if you honestly believe doing X can artificially alter a random result, then your intent is to create an uneven playing field unless your opponent, too, has a similar way to artificially alter their random results. And that is not a path that can be safely navigated.

i do the same thing as the op say i roll to hit and i three hit then i take the three that roled lowest to roll for wound and even though it is impossible it does seem to work for me
idk why it just does

Sounds like Karl Pilkington plays warhammer.

I'm not going to lie: I use your method.

Yes, I know that the results of a random trial have no bearing on any future or previous random trial, but I have a harder time believing that the same die will work as well the second time as the first time.

Of course, I also wear white shirts when I play because my little toy soldiers do.

I guess when you spend so much of the day looking at the world rationally, there has to be some way to vent your intuitive primeval and superstitious part of your brain. Better than stooping to politics or religion, I suppose...

Having been a "serious wargamer" in the past, I play 40K for the fluff and the fact that there's never any shortage of people to play with.

Probably because I don't take 40K seriously as a simulation, I'm not bothered about being competitive, or who wins.

I absolutely am bothered about painted armies and playing within what I consider to be the spirit of the rules, but I can't in any way see the OP's thinking as cheating in any way, no more than if he blew on the dice before rolling them...

i have noticed (probably just coincidence) that my set of blue dice tend to roll lower (1-3) than my grey dice, and on another note, my scatter die has never once rolled an arrow for me, but everytime my opponent borrows (it for some reason or another) it rolls an arrow, every time...can someone explain that one to me?
EDIT: spelling

Yeah, you're seeing patterns in random events.

or you are the chosen one, destined to lead the true believers to the promised land.

Re the comment about dice not having memory;

If I pick up a gun, and shoot someone, and, the next day, shoot another person, and get caught and taken to court, would my lawyer say 'There's no case for them to charge you with both murders because the gun has no memory?'...

BloodQuest wrote:I absolutely am bothered about painted armies and playing within what I consider to be the spirit of the rules, but I can't in any way see the OP's thinking as cheating in any way, no more than if he blew on the dice before rolling them...

No-one is saying he's actually cheating, because no-one believes what he's doing actually works. That's the thing, if it really did work it would be cheating. That no-one cares is basically evidence that no-one really believes it does anything.

jordanis wrote:i have noticed (probably just coincidence) that my set of blue dice tend to roll lower (1-3) than my grey dice, and on another note, my scatter die has never once rolled an arrow for me, but everytime my opponent borrows (it for some reason or another) it rolls an arrow, every time...can someone explain that one to me?
EDIT: spelling

Your blue dice or your grey dice might not be properly weighted, plenty of dice are nowhere near as random as we'd like to assume. People testing GW's own dice have found they roll 1s around 20% of the time.

Your scatter dice could be one of two things - it might just be a trick of your perception - you roll it a lot, and only take note when the unusual happens. If you were to objectively track it you'd find it rolled normally. Alternatively, it could be magic. It's up to you to pick which one you believe.

Popsicle wrote:Re the comment about dice not having memory;

If I pick up a gun, and shoot someone, and, the next day, shoot another person, and get caught and taken to court, would my lawyer say 'There's no case for them to charge you with both murders because the gun has no memory?'...

No, that's nonsense. When people talk about dice having no memory, they mean that rolling a die is a completely random event that no person influences. The die is released from the hand and it bounces off the table always spinning until it comes up with one side or another. If you pick the dice up and roll it again it will spin and bounce around on the table and it will come to rest with whatever number – completely independent of the previous roll.

To believe otherwise is to believe that dice have some form of consciousness where they know somehow that they rolled high last time, or rolled low last time, and have some means of making themselves produce a higher or lower number this time. So the options are to believe in independence, or to believe in magic.

All of which has nothing to do with the object a person used to murder someone. If a gun was to have a memory in the way people assume die do, if you fired and missed at the target, you’d use the same gun again the next day because it was more inclined to hit.

jordanis wrote:i have noticed (probably just coincidence) that my set of blue dice tend to roll lower (1-3) than my grey dice, and on another note, my scatter die has never once rolled an arrow for me, but everytime my opponent borrows (it for some reason or another) it rolls an arrow, every time...can someone explain that one to me?
EDIT: spelling

Luck, karma, metaphysical redirection/telekenetic influence, weight distribution, perception... take your pick.

I'm like you in that I'm picky about which dice I pick up to reroll, only its because I'm superstitious about my dice, not because of probability though I do see what you're saying in that regard. Though I tend to reroll the high ones as opposed to the low ones. Mine tend to get into a rut and reroll around the same for a couple of rolls before going up again.
A lot of the superstitions with the dice arent with the dice themselves, but the weapon they are representing. My friends meltas ALWAYS get a 2 on their 'to hit' (of which I am often thankful). My plasma cannons have scattered a total of twice in the past 25 games... etc.

Luco wrote:A lot of the superstitions with the dice arent with the dice themselves, but the weapon they are representing. My friends meltas ALWAYS get a 2 on their 'to hit' (of which I am often thankful). My plasma cannons have scattered a total of twice in the past 25 games... etc.

Thing is, think about the sheer number of dice rolled by the average gamer for all kinds of different rolls. You will get weird streaks. Back in 4th ed I rolled five rending dice for a ravener, and scored five 6s for five kills. That’s a 1/7776 roll… but then I think about how many batches of dice I’ve rolled over my nerdy life and it probably wouldn’t be far off of 7,776.

We will witness weird bits of probability from time to time, it’s to be expected given how many dice we roll.

The important thing to remember is that just because you’ve freakishly rolled five 6s in a row, it doesn’t mean the next roll is any more or any less likely to be a six.

Popsicle wrote:Re the comment about dice not having memory;

If I pick up a gun, and shoot someone, and, the next day, shoot another person, and get caught and taken to court, would my lawyer say 'There's no case for them to charge you with both murders because the gun has no memory?'...

Are you just trolling everyone?

Dice rolls arnt at all dependant on eachother.

Rolling a 6 after a 1 IS THE SAME probability as rolling a 6 After a 6.

Popsicle wrote:Re the comment about dice not having memory;

If I pick up a gun, and shoot someone, and, the next day, shoot another person, and get caught and taken to court, would my lawyer say 'There's no case for them to charge you with both murders because the gun has no memory?'...

Here's a better one - you aim a rifle into the sky, blindfolded, and fire. Completely random chance of hitting someone (and very unlikely.)

If you do this 100 times and miss every time are you more likely to hit on the 101st?


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Luco wrote:I'm like you in that I'm picky about which dice I pick up to reroll, only its because I'm superstitious about my dice, not because of probability though I do see what you're saying in that regard.

I do not believe that is cheating. However, it can look like practised rolling which definitely is cheating. (those guys tend to pick up dice that are showing particular faces so that they are all sitting consistently in their hands)

J-Roc77 wrote:Look at a bell curve of consecutive dice rolls, better yet, get about 10 plus people together, each with a quarter. Everyone flips their coin at the same time, showing their neighbor the outcome. Every time tails comes up their quarter goes in the pot, and they are out. The last person standing who ends up with heads at the end wins the pot, no winner (buncha tails come up), money stays in the pot, wash rinse repeat. Each coin flip is 50/50, however some lucky person will get the pot. 3 heads in a row do not automatically equal a tails is all I am saying.

Bad example.
I can actually flip a quarter so that heads comes up about 95% of the time. When it *doesn't* come up, it's because I've done something wrong.
The weight distribution of a quarter isn't even.

You've got the right idea, though.

Eric

I had a similar issue with this concerning Tervigons - I felt like rolling dice that showed different facings would help the probability of rolling doubles decrease. In effect i was subconsciously trying to do 'practiced rolling' as mentioned in this thread, and thus cheating under the guise of superstition. After some thought on the issue I decided that the best way to roll dice and avoid all conflict or cheating is to just grab them without any attention to the facing. Nobody likes being called a cheater, whether you're doing it intentionally or not.

This is getting far too serious, far too heated, for my liking. I didn't intend the topic to end up this way.

I'll resign from the debate and accept that I'm wrong. If you want to continue to throw formulae and odds and likelihoods and technical terms at me, do so, but I won't be checking the topic from now on. Make of it what you will.

BloodQuest wrote:...I don't take 40K seriously as a simulation, I'm not bothered about being competitive, or who wins.

I absolutely am bothered about painted armies and playing within what I consider to be the spirit of the rules, but I can't in any way see the OP's thinking as cheating in any way, no more than if he blew on the dice before rolling them...

Agreed!

Scott-S6 wrote:I do not believe that is cheating. However, it can look like practised rolling which definitely is cheating. (those guys tend to pick up dice that are showing particular faces so that they are all sitting consistently in their hands)

As people have pointed out a few times, it isn't cheating because it doesn't work. If it did work, it would be, because it would be tipping the odds in one's favour through a means that is not part of the game.


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Popsicle wrote:I'll resign from the debate and accept that I'm wrong.

Credit to you for conceding the point. I think dakka would be a much cooler and smarter place if more people could do the same.

Popsicle wrote:This is getting far too serious, far too heated, for my liking. I didn't intend the topic to end up this way.

I'll resign from the debate and accept that I'm wrong. If you want to continue to throw formulae and odds and likelihoods and technical terms at me, do so, but I won't be checking the topic from now on. Make of it what you will.

LOL

With nearly 800 posts, I'd think you'd have realized by now that this is how MANY (if not most) discussions on Dakka (also: online) end up.


Eric

Jokorey wrote:
Exactly. The odds don't change, but if you perform method X because you *think* it improves your odds, your *intent* is artificially alter the result by using your method, aka, cheating.
Just because it turns out they're *not* Magic Dice does not change his intent.

While I understand the argument here, it's so nestled in irrelevance and abstraction that it is virtually meaningless for practical gaming purposes.

First is the question of definition: Cheating is something that actually alters an outcome. Superstition is not cheating, because superstition doesn't have the power to alter statistical odds.

If your opponent counting rosaries between his rolls, or blowing on his dice, or submitting chants to Umpapamaumau, or saying "COME ON BABY, BIG MONEY" before he rolls is cheating, then don't you think casinos would have put a stop to it?

Since those behaviors don't alter the game, or even have the potential to alter the game, it's not cheating. It's certainly nothing I'd get on the cross about during a game.

IMO, you only require intent. You'd call someone a cheater for bringing loaded dice to a tourney, even if you caught them before they used it, wouldn't you?

If you believe you are gaining an unfair advantage by using magic, then you have that intent and are cheating.

If you're doing something just because it's a ritual or tradition for you, or because it's fun, but are aware you aren't actually getting an advantage, it's not cheating.

Grakmar wrote:IMO, you only require intent. You'd call someone a cheater for bringing loaded dice to a tourney, even if you caught them before they used it, wouldn't you?

loaded dice have the power to alter the randomness of the player's rolls. saying ABRACADABRA does not have that power.

if someone wants to write silly incantations to recite during a game because they think it makes them better, lol, give'r beef, brah! once they get the table wiped with them enough times hopefully they'll crash into the hard wall of reality.

The law usually requires intention and action.

Just bringing loaded dice is not cheating until you use them, although it's definitely suspicious.

As for superstitions and magic, the point of cheating is to get an unfair advantage. Anyone can spit on their hands or blow on their dice, so one person doing so is not cheating however much he believes it will work, as his opponent can do exactly the same.

Some people actually only use 'flat' faced dice, as actually, the holes in your average dice make the '1' side minimalistically more likely to have landed down than that of the '6' side. The amount is so trite that only the most mathematically inclined and annoying even bother, but all faces of all dice are extremely reemotely different. There is no such thing as a perfectly fair dice roll, but when the odds are a fluctuation of 1 in 100000 (or whatever huge arbitrary number) different it is hardly worth worrying about. Some dice are heavier and others have rounded corners and whatever.. which makes it slightly skewed depending if you are a 'shake and toss' or a 'drop it on the table' or whatever when you roll.

sebster wrote:
...When people talk about dice having no memory, they mean that rolling a die is a completely random event that no person influences. The die is released from the hand and it bounces off the table always spinning until it comes up with one side or another. If you pick the dice up and roll it again it will spin and bounce around on the table and it will come to rest with whatever number – completely independent of the previous roll.

To believe otherwise is to believe that dice have some form of consciousness where they know somehow that they rolled high last time, or rolled low last time, and have some means of making themselves produce a higher or lower number this time. So the options are to believe in independence, or to believe in magic.
...

And again, the people with whom I largely (almost wholeheartedly agree) keep making this mistake (or keep deliberately overlooking a known possibility).

There are not two options. You can believe in independence, you can believe in magic, or you can believe in dice and/or dice rolling procedures that aren't perfectly random.

Given the generally low production value of most dice, and the completely irregular and haphazard polishing that they receive during their production (assuming, as with most dice, that they are painted and then polished), it is in NO WAY irrational to regard some dice as more likely to roll certain numbers over others. People have documented particular dice with randomness problems, and have even performed experiments that suggest (I won't say prove) that GW white dice are generally produced in a way which skews their randomness.

I totally agree that perfectly random dice are going to produce independent, random results when thrown in a manner which doesn't bias their results. However, it is hard for people in the real world to come up with a priori knowledge that their dice have been produced perfectly random.

Much more likely is a die which is imperfectly random to some extent or another. While it is possible to come up with an erroneous conclusion about your dice based on a limited sample size, it is also possible to discover that certain dice do actually produce skewed results. If you have imperfect dice, it is totally possible that certain dice produce independent but non-random results. A die that is polished and shaped to produce 6's more often still has an independent result each time, in that the previous result doesn't in any way influence the current roll, but it is still imperfectly random.

To go further, suppose that Player A carefully keeps track of all of his rolls with a particular red die over a long period of time, and notes that it is MUCH more likely to roll a 1 than any other number. He then uses that die deliberately whenever he needs to roll low. He would appear to be attempting to cheat, even though on a particular roll, it is POSSIBLE for his die to roll some other number.

Now suppose that player B has not kept careful record of all of his die rolls over a long period of time with a particular blue die, but he believes that it is much more likely to roll a 1 than any other number. If he uses that die whenever he needs to roll low, is he attempting to cheat? Does his ineptitude with statistical methodology protect him from this accusation?

Does it matter if his belief is correct (and the die turns out to be misshappen to produce more 1s), even though his belief wasn't established scientifically?

Does it matter if he is incorrect, and either hasn't observed enough rolls to make this assumption, or has just remembered the memorable ones?

Does it matter if he believes that the blue die rolls low because it is mis-shaped, or if he believes that it is "lucky"?

What if Player B just says that he believes his blue die is "lucky" but actually believes it's a cocked die that rolls low?

What if Player A says he believes his red die is "lucky", even though he has established that it is a cocked die that rolls low?


That's why I'm suspicious of any "lucky die" or "lucky roll" procedures. There's no good way for me to distinguish a genuine belief in something nonexistent (like "magic dice") from a false, professed belief in the same, used to conceal an actual cocked die or rigged method of rolling.

I try to use a set of dice that are all relatively identical (like a pack of dice, all of the same color), and I try to keep them all together in a jumble, so that it is clear that I am not picking particular dice to roll. If I do roll the same dice twice (like a to-hit, followed by a to-wound), and those numbers are noticeably "good" for me, such as rolling 2 sixes to hit, followed by 2 sixes to wound, I will consciously put those dice back in the group if I need to roll another high number, as I don't want it to seem like I have particular good dice that I roll. If so many people weren't so superstitious (or germophobic), I would prefer that both sides used the same dice for the whole game, honestly.

So (to bring religion into this) you could put someone in a horrible position if they ask their respective deity for help with a dice roll. Either they admit their deity doesn't exist (or is apathetic to their cause), or they admit they were cheating.

hemingway wrote:loaded dice have the power to alter the randomness of the player's rolls. saying ABRACADABRA does not have that power.

Yes, which is what people have kept saying, when they were saying the intent is to cheat, but no-one cares because no-one really thinks it does anything.


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Kilkrazy wrote:The law usually requires intention and action.

Yes, which is why they're not guilty of cheating, which is why no-one has said they're actually cheating.

What has been said is that they intend to cheat, but no-one cares because we're all operating on the assumption that it doesn't actually do anything.


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Da Butcha wrote:And again, the people with whom I largely (almost wholeheartedly agree) keep making this mistake (or keep deliberately overlooking a known possibility).

There are not two options. You can believe in independence, you can believe in magic, or you can believe in dice and/or dice rolling procedures that aren't perfectly random.

You make a good point. I was thinking purely in terms of people choosing some dice over others based on the single previous roll, which is hardly enough to establish a die's likelihood at rolling high or low on future rolls.

It was an interesting point you raised; exactly where general observation and a belief in luck ends, and deliberate study and the establishment of lucky dice begins is ultimately pretty subjective.

The various forces that act on a die from you throwing it out of your hands, and from the table itself when it bounces, are going to massively overpower whatever torque might be exerted on the die from one side being infinitesmally heavier than another side, or from one side being slightly more 'sticky' due to increased friction from a bad polish job, or random air pockets that make up a small fraction of the object's weight, etc. etc.

sebster wrote:
Yes, which is why they're not guilty of cheating, which is why no-one has said they're actually cheating.

I suggest you re-read the thread.

Scott-S6 wrote:

Luco wrote:I'm like you in that I'm picky about which dice I pick up to reroll, only its because I'm superstitious about my dice, not because of probability though I do see what you're saying in that regard.

I do not believe that is cheating. However, it can look like practised rolling which definitely is cheating. (those guys tend to pick up dice that are showing particular faces so that they are all sitting consistently in their hands)

Thanks for the heads up with that. It would be a hard argument as I tend to toss the dice vertically with lots of spin when I only have a few so I think I'm mostly safe there

I completely understand the maths an logic of the probabilities of rolling subsequent sixes however this doesn't stop me from taking new dice if I have a reroll and the first set have failed me.

I also understand that this is just my own personal superstition.

At the same point you wouldn't believe how often if I fail to follow this simple superstition that the dice let me down.

At the same point I have never considered myself a cheat for doing so. Superstitious? Yes. Cheat? No.

Neither has anyone I have ever played.

We all have our own little habits that we try to keep to.

Brother Bartius wrote:We all have our own little habits that we try to keep to.

My set of 36 tiny dice never rolled well for me (consistently rolling seven ones on saving throws and double sixes on leadership). I rolled each of them in turn, putting aside the ones that came up with one pip. Then rolled those etc until I had the one troublemaker dice. I've since isolated it from the others. The remainder have rolled well for me since.

I'm still considering whether to reintroduce the rebel dice, or leave it out forever.

It's superstition, plain and simple.

Me and my regular opponents do the same thing though. I maintain that a die that rolls a one is cursed for a round and therefore can't be used again that round. For wounding, I roll the dice that hit, as these are clearly the lucky dice.

Mathematically, if a die rolls a six it's enitely likely to roll a six again. The odds you're confusing are:

a D6 has a 1/6 chance of rolling a 6.
The chance of rolling another six on the same die is 1/6.
However
The odds of rolling two consecutive sixes on the same die is 1/36. The same can be said for a 6 and a 4 for instance (or any other particular number for that matter).

So you're using a wierd set of probability to quantify this, when it's not particularly useful.

I actually subscribe to a train of thought which I call "idiot odds", which is a way I calculate odds quickly.
If a roll has a 50% chance of coming off (4+), but is twin-linked, the actual odds become 75%, but my "idiot odds" say it's a guarantee.

Continue using it if it makes you happy, as I do with mine. Bit it's not techinically accurate.

This thread is a bunch of people with bizarre dice rituals that are probably annoying to watch at the table, a bunch of people that know how numbers work saying the rituals are absurd, and the first group of people saying "Yeah probably, but I'll still do it because in some corner of my mind I think my magical ritual works anyway, despite all reasonable arguments to the contrary"

Foxtale wrote:So (to bring religion into this) you could put someone in a horrible position if they ask their respective deity for help with a dice roll. Either they admit their deity doesn't exist (or is apathetic to their cause), or they admit they were cheating.

It is not cheating... Every one is welcome to try being lucky, or superstitious, or try praying. It in fact adds an element of hopeful fun or sillyness to the game that science denies. No one is welcome to use loaded dice, thus, to do so is cheating. Kilkrazy said as much before in this thread and I'm going to quote him for truth again:

Kilkrazy wrote:As for superstitions and magic, the point of cheating is to get an unfair advantage. Anyone can spit on their hands or blow on their dice, so one person doing so is not cheating however much he believes it will work, as his opponent can do exactly the same.

So your opponent is welcome to pray to Jehovah, or Buddha, or Ganesh... And you are welcome to pray to "science" to try and help you if you want... Oh wait! Science is already apathetic to your cause, hmmm...

hemingway wrote:I suggest you re-read the thread.

Show me the person who claimed attempting to influence the dice through 'lucky' mechanisms was actually cheating? As opposed to being the intent to cheat, made harmless by the fact that such methods don't actually do anything.


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Brother Bartius wrote:I completely understand the maths an logic of the probabilities of rolling subsequent sixes however this doesn't stop me from taking new dice if I have a reroll and the first set have failed me.

I also understand that this is just my own personal superstition.

At the same point you wouldn't believe how often if I fail to follow this simple superstition that the dice let me down.

At the same point I have never considered myself a cheat for doing so. Superstitious? Yes. Cheat? No.

Neither has anyone I have ever played.

We all have our own little habits that we try to keep to.

Yes, because swapping dice doesn't actually do anything, so no-one really minds. This has been pointed out a lot of times now.


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Psyker_9er wrote:It is not cheating... Every one is welcome to try being lucky, or superstitious, or try praying. It in fact adds an element of hopeful fun or sillyness to the game that science denies. No one is welcome to use loaded dice, thus, to do so is cheating. Kilkrazy said as much before in this thread and I'm going to quote him for truth again:

So your opponent is welcome to pray to Jehovah, or Buddha, or Ganesh... And you are welcome to pray to "science" to try and help you if you want... Oh wait! Science is already apathetic to your cause, hmmm...

It's a huge assumption that any God or ritual would work as well for each player. It's an assumption one is able to make because we all accept that those rituals all affect the dice the same - not one bit.

But here's a thought experiment - what if there were rituals that were known to make any dice 90% likely to come up with the number desired by the player? You better believe those rituals would be banned, using them would be an attempt to swing probabilities away from what they ought to be, and towards the player.

We don't ban the rituals people do go through, because we accept the rituals don't actually do anything.

This topic has been all the buzz lately... and that is AWESOME!

I've got my own thread for the topic of being lucky, started by lucky people, for lucky people:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/327046.page

If luck (or what ever you may want to call it) can be identified as a force of will, then the game is no longer a game of odds. It becomes a battle of minds. And therefore, still not cheating...

MikeMcSomething wrote:This thread is a bunch of people with bizarre dice rituals that are probably annoying to watch at the table, a bunch of people that know how numbers work saying the rituals are absurd, and the first group of people saying "Yeah probably, but I'll still do it because in some corner of my mind I think my magical ritual works anyway, despite all reasonable arguments to the contrary"

True, there are plenty of reasonable arguments AGAINST the concept of luck or using rituals and yadda yadda...
The difference between those of us who still listen to the voices from the corners of our minds, and those who listen to the voices of long dead scientists:

We still have hope, and have plenty of room to grow. Those who stick to the laws of others have already given up, and bound by those laws they shall go no further.

Putting dice in a special cup, jiggling it in little circles or whatever, or forcing your opponent to wait while he watches you sift through your dice for ones that you think have special powers isn't the wargaming equivalent of enlightenment. It's just slowed.

Psyker_9er wrote:
The difference between those of us who still listen to the voices from the corners of our minds, and those who listen to the voices of long dead scientists:
We still have hope, and have plenty of room to grow. Those who stick to the laws of others have already given up, and bound by those laws they shall go no further.

Nice! I'm stealing this... erm... borrowing it.

Psyker_9er wrote:The difference between those of us who still listen to the voices from the corners of our minds, and those who listen to the voices of long dead scientists:

We still have hope, and have plenty of room to grow. Those who stick to the laws of others have already given up, and bound by those laws they shall go no further.

Sweet. Time to ignore logic, reason, and fact, just because the truth is constricting! Fight da powa! Down with those evil scientists!

Psyker_9er, that has got to be the dumbest post I've read all month. Congrats, I'm pretty sure there is an award for that somewhere.

Bring a micrometer screw gauge to the table, and test everyone's dice for regularity. Discard any that exceed acceptable limits.

MikeMcSomething wrote:Putting dice in a special cup, jiggling it in little circles or whatever, or forcing your opponent to wait while he watches you sift through your dice for ones that you think have special powers isn't the wargaming equivalent of enlightenment. It's just slowed.

Some would argue that pointless superstitions add flavour to the game.

Foxtale wrote:

MikeMcSomething wrote:Putting dice in a special cup, jiggling it in little circles or whatever, or forcing your opponent to wait while he watches you sift through your dice for ones that you think have special powers isn't the wargaming equivalent of enlightenment. It's just slowed.

Some would argue that pointless superstitions add flavour to the game.

Those people are very silly!

Psyker_9er wrote:True, there are plenty of reasonable arguments AGAINST the concept of luck or using rituals and yadda yadda...
The difference between those of us who still listen to the voices from the corners of our minds, and those who listen to the voices of long dead scientists:

We still have hope, and have plenty of room to grow. Those who stick to the laws of others have already given up, and bound by those laws they shall go no further.

There's plenty of excitement and wonder in the world without dreaming of magic dice.

Kilkrazy wrote:
Bring a micrometer screw gauge to the table, and test everyone's dice for regularity. Steal any that exceed acceptable limits.

Fix'd that for you.

At any rate, this is getting silly. Everyone knows that dice have the same probablility of coming up with any number on a face. If this wasn't the case, no-one would use them.

We also know that if any of these bizzare rituals actually influenced the outcome of the dice roll, you can bet your life casinos would ban them within 5 seconds.

I suppose all that's left is for someone to build a spreadsheet proving it...

ph34r wrote:

Psyker_9er wrote:The difference between those of us who still listen to the voices from the corners of our minds, and those who listen to the voices of long dead scientists:

We still have hope, and have plenty of room to grow. Those who stick to the laws of others have already given up, and bound by those laws they shall go no further.

Sweet. Time to ignore logic, reason, and fact, just because the truth is constricting! Fight da powa! Down with those evil scientists!

Psyker_9er, that has got to be the dumbest post I've read all month. Congrats, I'm pretty sure there is an award for that somewhere.

Thanks, glad I can entertain you. will there be a ceremony when I am given my award? Should I write a speech?

Science is not always correct by the way. It has been wrong before, and what might have been called logical at one point in the past, has been wrong as well. Any time any one dared to push those boundaries before, they too where laughed at with scorn... If they stopped dreaming, rolled over and obeyed the laws set down by others we would never have flown off the ground, the world would still be considered flat, we never would have personal computers, or many of the medical cures we have today...

I am not "ignoring" science, I am simply doing the experiments for myself. Instead of drowning in the flood of information society has deemed "truth", I am searching for it myself.

You have a very skewed idea of what science involves.

Dastardly Dave wrote:
At any rate, this is getting silly. Everyone knows that dice have the same probablility of coming up with any number on a face. If this wasn't the case, no-one would use them.

They don't, though. There's been a lot of research that shows that most 'gaming dice' are not square by an amount such that certain faces will come up more often after the thousands of rolls. Theoretically perfect dice should be even, or close to it, after thousands of rolls.

Some dice are better, but there's almost always limits to manufacturing.

Personally, I don't sweat it, but that's just me.

Dastardly Dave wrote:
We also know that if any of these bizzare rituals actually influenced the outcome of the dice roll, you can bet your life casinos would ban them within 5 seconds.

Or if they do, perhaps casinos have rooms of 'dice hexers' that work tirelessly to adjust the luck of dice before they go out on the tables?

Dastardly Dave wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:
Bring a micrometer screw gauge to the table, and test everyone's dice for regularity. Steal any that exceed acceptable limits.

Fix'd that for you.

At any rate, this is getting silly. Everyone knows that dice have the same probablility of coming up with any number on a face. If this wasn't the case, no-one would use them.

We also know that if any of these bizzare rituals actually influenced the outcome of the dice roll, you can bet your life casinos would ban them within 5 seconds.

I suppose all that's left is for someone to build a spreadsheet proving it...

What I am saying is that there is good theoretical and research basis to believe that dice do not roll randomly if their construction is asymmetrical in certain respects.

If you care about it enough to worry, then precision engineering tools are available to sort the bad dice.

Personally I feel that most people in 40K are rolling handfuls of completely un-individualistic dice, so worrying about slight imperfections of individual examples is pointless, until you see someone carefully choosing their special dice for particular throws.

I have two cubes. One of them went to Platinum Devil, and a cube came back, damn me if I know whether all the dice in it were the ones I took with me... As far as I remember, everyone I played was using GW dice cubes.

Foxtale wrote:

MikeMcSomething wrote:Putting dice in a special cup, jiggling it in little circles or whatever, or forcing your opponent to wait while he watches you sift through your dice for ones that you think have special powers isn't the wargaming equivalent of enlightenment. It's just slowed.

Some would argue that pointless superstitions add flavour to the game.

Rolls like "OH SNAP TIME FOR THIS IMPORTANT LEADERSHIP ROLL! GET EVERYONE IN THE STORE HERE TO CHECK THIS OUT...WHAT AM I GONNA ROLL? THIS WILL BE GREAT" etc etc add flavor and (exaggerated) dramatic tension to the game.

Being forced to watch some genius sift through his dice like he has the magical formula to make leadership rolls? It's obnoxious, and makes the player look slowed. These are usually the same people that whine about junk like "Well YOUR plasma guns never self-wound but MINE always do!" etc etc. You might as well be throwing salt over your shoulder.

Psyker_9er wrote:Thanks, glad I can entertain you. will there be a ceremony when I am given my award? Should I write a speech?

Science is not always correct by the way. It has been wrong before, and what might have been called logical at one point in the past, has been wrong as well. Any time any one dared to push those boundaries before, they too where laughed at with scorn... If they stopped dreaming, rolled over and obeyed the laws set down by others we would never have flown off the ground, the world would still be considered flat, we never would have personal computers, or many of the medical cures we have today...

I am not "ignoring" science, I am simply doing the experiments for myself. Instead of drowning in the flood of information society has deemed "truth", I am searching for it myself.

I'm not sure about a ceremony, but a speech is always good. You could use it to expand on your irrational hatred of science that has been proven time and time again. Perhaps you could also announce any findings you have on the effects of whispering magic words to your dice on the roll outcomes.

Your fear of established science is not normal.

asmith wrote:You have a very skewed idea of what science involves.

ph34r wrote:Your fear of established science is not normal.

Thank you both, I generally get a very similar response from people I meet... Maybe not about science, but in general...

ph34r wrote:I'm not sure about a ceremony, but a speech is always good. You could use it to expand on your irrational hatred of science that has been proven time and time again. Perhaps you could also announce any findings you have on the effects of whispering magic words to your dice on the roll outcomes.

I actually am currently conducting a study about the effects of what might be called "luck". You are all cordially invited; all are welcome. It is a group project and right now we are in the gathering info phase to help categorize different types of luck. I included the link in my signature incase you missed me posting the link earlier.

I personally don't think the words "fear" and "hatred" describe my feelings of "established" science. More like distrust or discontent. But that is how I feel about "established" anything really. Even established religion. I am not poking fun at people with faith, just as long as they don't try to force their beliefs on to others. Have faith in something because it is what feels right to you, not because some one else told you to or else.

Same can be said for science. Have faith in facts because those are the ones you obtained for yourself. Take this scenario for example:
5th Grade science teacher says plants need light to live. Instead of insisting the kids take his word for it, he takes out two plants and puts one of them in a dark closet. One month later, WAAAGH LA! The plant in the dark room dies. Now the kids know for sure that plants need light to live. Does it stop there? Do ALL plants need light to live? These kids can go on believing that plants need light until some one else tells them that there are some plants that actually thrive in darkness. Or they can find out for themselves through their own research and experiments.

That is just a generalized summary of an example, but it conveys the basic thought I am trying to relay. Find out for yourself.

To move more towards the topic at hand, I will end with a joke:

Orks believe vehemently that red ones go faster, therefore they do... What if we painted all our dice red?

Psyker_9er wrote:Orks believe vehemently that red ones go faster, therefore they do... What if we painted all our dice red?

the dice would roll faster?

Psyker_9er wrote:Thank you both, I generally get a very similar response from people I meet... Maybe not about science, but in general...

Have you considered the crazy conspiracy that instead of everyone else being wrong, perhaps you are just wrong?

Psyker_9er wrote:Same can be said for science. Have faith in facts because those are the ones you obtained for yourself. Take this scenario for example:
5th Grade science teacher says plants need light to live. Instead of insisting the kids take his word for it, he takes out two plants and puts one of them in a dark closet. One month later, WAAAGH LA! The plant in the dark room dies. Now the kids know for sure that plants need light to live. Does it stop there? Do ALL plants need light to live? These kids can go on believing that plants need light until some one else tells them that there are some plants that actually thrive in darkness. Or they can find out for themselves through their own research and experiments.

You can't reasonably refuse to believe everything you haven't seen for yourself. You would disbelieve all historical events if that were the case. You could chose to dismiss all sorts of science because you don't have the capability to reproduce experiments in your garden shed. The only 'faith' you should have in science is that scientists reporting something are reporting truthfully and not attempting to deceive, and even then you are expected to query things and examine methods and other work. And the vast majority of genuine scientists are honest, they aren't attempting to deceive or distort results due to some agenda. Furthermore, all fundamental ideas are independently corroborated by other scientists.

What's you suggestion to these hypothetical children then? That they test every plant in existence before accepting that plants need light to live?

ph34r wrote:

Psyker_9er wrote:Thank you both, I generally get a very similar response from people I meet... Maybe not about science, but in general...

Have you considered the crazy conspiracy that instead of everyone else being wrong, perhaps you are just wrong?

Yes, I have thought about it. The same can be said to you, the same could be said to any one... But I would rather go to my grave trying to find out for myself.

Howard A Treesong wrote:You can't reasonably refuse to believe everything you haven't seen for yourself. You would disbelieve all historical events if that were the case. You could chose to dismiss all sorts of science because you don't have the capability to reproduce experiments in your garden shed. The only 'faith' you should have in science is that scientists reporting something are reporting truthfully and not attempting to deceive, and even then you are expected to query things and examine methods and other work. And the vast majority of genuine scientists are honest, they aren't attempting to deceive or distort results due to some agenda. Furthermore, all fundamental ideas are independently corroborated by other scientists.

What's you suggestion to these hypothetical children then? That they test every plant in existence before accepting that plants need light to live?

Well, as I said:

Psyker_9er wrote:That is just a generalized summary of an example, but it conveys the basic thought I am trying to relay. Find out for yourself.

So it was not the very best example I could give with 10 minutes to go before I clock out from work. But the basic idea still stands: Find out for yourself!

Since you mentioned it, yes, I do have an issue with established history lessons too. For this simple fact: History is written by the victorious. So you wont get the full story just from sitting in a class room. Government funded schooling is a good source of propaganda too, since obviously the government giving the lessons where the victorious ones. Like the lessons taught about any of the world wars will have differences depending on which continent your school is built on. Same basic timelines, but different key points. Since I am an American, I could choose to believe everything I am told about America being the good guy in school, or I can dig deeper on my own and find out why the other world powers did the things the way they did.

I know science is only trying to find the truth and only report the truth. I get that. I know I don't even have 1/100 of the equipment in my garden shed that they do in their labs. But the one thing I have that they don't is my brain. Perhaps they might be looking at the data with the wrong frame of mind, perhaps they might not have thought of all the possible variables to thoroughly conduct an experiment. Most of the stuff they do with all that fancy equipment I will go ahead and say, "Sure, I think that might be it after all" or even "Sounds good, keep up the good work guys" Stuff like atomic weight, nuclear bombs, electricity, indoor plumping, blah bah blah... Some things just don't sit right with me though, so I set out to try and find the answers for myself.

Dogmatic laws from the math of probabilities, like what we are discussing on this topic, don't quite feel right in my mind. Therefore I am looking to find the answer for myself. Many studies have been done, many fancy machines have been utilized, and every scientist has sworn an oath to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth... But I feel there is more to it than what I have been told, so I will keep digging.

Psyker_9er wrote:

ph34r wrote:

Psyker_9er wrote:Thank you both, I generally get a very similar response from people I meet... Maybe not about science, but in general...

Have you considered the crazy conspiracy that instead of everyone else being wrong, perhaps you are just wrong?

Yes, I have thought about it. The same can be said to you, the same could be said to any one... But I would rather go to my grave trying to find out for myself.

Howard A Treesong wrote:You can't reasonably refuse to believe everything you haven't seen for yourself. You would disbelieve all historical events if that were the case. You could chose to dismiss all sorts of science because you don't have the capability to reproduce experiments in your garden shed. The only 'faith' you should have in science is that scientists reporting something are reporting truthfully and not attempting to deceive, and even then you are expected to query things and examine methods and other work. And the vast majority of genuine scientists are honest, they aren't attempting to deceive or distort results due to some agenda. Furthermore, all fundamental ideas are independently corroborated by other scientists.

What's you suggestion to these hypothetical children then? That they test every plant in existence before accepting that plants need light to live?

Well, as I said:

Psyker_9er wrote:That is just a generalized summary of an example, but it conveys the basic thought I am trying to relay. Find out for yourself.

So it was not the very best example I could give with 10 minutes to go before I clock out from work. But the basic idea still stands: Find out for yourself!

Since you mentioned it, yes, I do have an issue with established history lessons too. For this simple fact: History is written by the victorious. So you wont get the full story just from sitting in a class room. Government funded schooling is a good source of propaganda too, since obviously the government giving the lessons where the victorious ones. Like the lessons taught about any of the world wars will have differences depending on which continent your school is built on. Same basic timelines, but different key points. Since I am an American, I could choose to believe everything I am told about America being the good guy in school, or I can dig deeper on my own and find out why the other world powers did the things the way they did.

I know science is only trying to find the truth and only report the truth. I get that. I know I don't even have 1/100 of the equipment in my garden shed that they do in their labs. But the one thing I have that they don't is my brain. Perhaps they might be looking at the data with the wrong frame of mind, perhaps they might not have thought of all the possible variables to thoroughly conduct an experiment. Most of the stuff they do with all that fancy equipment I will go ahead and say, "Sure, I think that might be it after all" or even "Sounds good, keep up the good work guys" Stuff like atomic weight, nuclear bombs, electricity, indoor plumping, blah bah blah... Some things just don't sit right with me though, so I set out to try and find the answers for myself.

Dogmatic laws from the math of probabilities, like what we are discussing on this topic, don't quite feel right in my mind. Therefore I am looking to find the answer for myself. Many studies have been done, many fancy machines have been utilized, and every scientist has sworn an oath to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth... But I feel there is more to it than what I have been told, so I will keep digging.

But dig deeper into what, your experiences with your time machine? At some point you have to realize 1) There is not enough time in your lifetime to "prove" everything with your own eyes, even stuff you might actually be capable of reproducing. 2) Some stuff is impossible, and I mean IMPOSSIBLE for you to experience first hand. Do you simply dismiss that as being untrue? Do you simply not care about stuff you cannot experience first hand? I support the sentiment to not take everything at face value, your argument as to why you should do this is fundamentally ridiculous. Instead of saying you need to observe stuff yourself, you should probably be more concerned with understanding fundamental logic and reason, so that you can immediately discern what is likely to be accurate, and what is not. Your "Feelings" on something are honestly irrelevant when you can't come up with a logical reason, observable proof supporting the idea or even a good freaking story about why a die is more likely to roll a 6 after you roll 5 1's in a row.

MikeMcSomething wrote:

Foxtale wrote:

MikeMcSomething wrote:Putting dice in a special cup, jiggling it in little circles or whatever, or forcing your opponent to wait while he watches you sift through your dice for ones that you think have special powers isn't the wargaming equivalent of enlightenment. It's just slowed.

Some would argue that pointless superstitions add flavour to the game.

Rolls like "OH SNAP TIME FOR THIS IMPORTANT LEADERSHIP ROLL! GET EVERYONE IN THE STORE HERE TO CHECK THIS OUT...WHAT AM I GONNA ROLL? THIS WILL BE GREAT" etc etc add flavor and (exaggerated) dramatic tension to the game.

Being forced to watch some genius sift through his dice like he has the magical formula to make leadership rolls? It's obnoxious, and makes the player look slowed. These are usually the same people that whine about junk like "Well YOUR plasma guns never self-wound but MINE always do!" etc etc. You might as well be throwing salt over your shoulder.

Oh yeah, but if we didn't have superstition, those people would find some other way to be annoying.

Magister187 wrote:But dig deeper into what, your experiences with your time machine? At some point you have to realize 1) There is not enough time in your lifetime to "prove" everything with your own eyes, even stuff you might actually be capable of reproducing. 2) Some stuff is impossible, and I mean IMPOSSIBLE for you to experience first hand. Do you simply dismiss that as being untrue? Do you simply not care about stuff you cannot experience first hand? I support the sentiment to not take everything at face value, your argument as to why you should do this is fundamentally ridiculous. Instead of saying you need to observe stuff yourself, you should probably be more concerned with understanding fundamental logic and reason, so that you can immediately discern what is likely to be accurate, and what is not. Your "Feelings" on something are honestly irrelevant when you can't come up with a logical reason, observable proof supporting the idea or even a good freaking story about why a die is more likely to roll a 6 after you roll 5 1's in a row.

You guys are a hoot... You really are

1) Sure, there may not be enough time in MY lifetime and I may never find the answers I am looking for, but I'm not going to just give up and stop trying because people on the Internet think I am foolish for doing so.

2) Lots of things might be impossible, but who says so? Let me be the judge of what I can or can not do. I will decided how to spend my life trying to discover what is fact or fiction. If I can't experience something first hand, true or untrue, what impact does it really have on my life in the first place? Lots of things I will just take at face value because I do actually understand the fundamentals of logic and reason, and quite well... But instead of stopping there I am trudging forward. I am in no way ignorant of the challenges, ridicule, or hardships I may face simply because of my chosen life style.

3) As I mentioned twice before, you are all welcome to take part in my experiment, so I am trying to provide, as you say: "logical reason, observable proof supporting the idea or even a good freaking story about why a die is more likely to roll a 6 after you roll 5 1's in a row." The link is in my signature. You can accept the challenge to a game of luck, or you can continue with your chosen path of life... As I will continue on mine.

Foxtale wrote:

MikeMcSomething wrote:

Foxtale wrote:

MikeMcSomething wrote:Putting dice in a special cup, jiggling it in little circles or whatever, or forcing your opponent to wait while he watches you sift through your dice for ones that you think have special powers isn't the wargaming equivalent of enlightenment. It's just slowed.

Some would argue that pointless superstitions add flavour to the game.

Rolls like "OH SNAP TIME FOR THIS IMPORTANT LEADERSHIP ROLL! GET EVERYONE IN THE STORE HERE TO CHECK THIS OUT...WHAT AM I GONNA ROLL? THIS WILL BE GREAT" etc etc add flavor and (exaggerated) dramatic tension to the game.

Being forced to watch some genius sift through his dice like he has the magical formula to make leadership rolls? It's obnoxious, and makes the player look slowed. These are usually the same people that whine about junk like "Well YOUR plasma guns never self-wound but MINE always do!" etc etc. You might as well be throwing salt over your shoulder.

Oh yeah, but if we didn't have superstition, those people would find some other way to be annoying.

That's very possible, but I would prefer they had one less tool at their disposal!

And anyone engaging with that Psyker guy is just feeding the trolls.

MikeMcSomething wrote:That's very possible, but I would prefer they had one less tool at their disposal!
And anyone engaging with that Psyker guy is just feeding the trolls.

derr dee derr i'm a troll la la la i comunicate with 3rd grade name calling school yard shenanigans blah blah troll troll dooo deee dooo

My opinion happens to be different from yours, get over it. Life would be very boring if every one just walked around agreeing with everyone else. If you don't want to read my comments then don't. It is a free cyber country, go read some other thread if you want... I'm still trudging through your stuff. The same recycled holier than thou dribble that most people like to spit out on to the topic of probabilities... But because I have something different to say I'm a troll...

I'm not afraid to express myself and stand up for what I believe in, so therefore I must be a troll... My opinion is not the same as yours and this makes me a troll too... Many of you have asked for proof of being able to change dice rolls, so I created a topic to try and provide some proof, but I'm a troll so I understand if you don't want to take place in that experiment... Through slander, scoffs, name calling, and abuse I still stand firm with my side of the debate because I'm a troll and that is what trolls do.... GRRR I'm a troll... Grrr

Psyker_9er wrote:3) As I mentioned twice before, you are all welcome to take part in my experiment, so I am trying to provide, as you say: "logical reason, observable proof supporting the idea or even a good freaking story about why a die is more likely to roll a 6 after you roll 5 1's in a row." The link is in my signature. You can accept the challenge to a game of luck, or you can continue with your chosen path of life... As I will continue on mine.

If a die throws five 1s in a row then it's not more likely to throw a six next time. I don't know what you are trying to question, the laws of reality or physics. If anything is starting to being indicated by throwing five 1s, it's that the die has a bias making it it throw ones. If the die has a bias then it's definitely not 'more likely' to roll a six next time. And if it's a fair die, well by definition it's not more likely to roll any number any more than any other. To claim otherwise in either case is just bizarre.

Some things you can discover for yourself, sure, but many simple things you can read in a book. A basic grasp of statistics and probability would help. You say that you understand the fundamentals of logic and reason, well why the gross failure here?

Because he doesn't understand the fundamentals of logic and reason, obviously.

Of course, the easy way to do it would be to get a job in a casino, but just going by his posting tone it's going to be a good few years before that would be legal.

Speaking from that perspective though, you see some amazing runs of luck (since we're talking about dice, I'll use craps) where someone's dice seem to be really on fire, that every time they need a number, they roll it. While watching it happen you can't stop yourself from think, 'wow, that guy's got good luck.' It's not until you take a step back and consider all the players for day that you see that that one's guys spike was expected.

Because if luck was truly an applicable power, the casinos
are where you'd see it manifest. If it's an application of will, of need or desire, given the incentives to get the dice to come up in your favor, that is where you'd see it happen, not over a wargame.

It is possible actually to study mathematics and see how the probability equations are derived by proofs given in the text books.

If you disbelieve that, there is the option of discarding all mathematical knowledge developed in the past 5,000 years, and building your own system of mathematics from first principles.

Bookwrack wrote:Speaking from that perspective though, you see some amazing runs of luck (since we're talking about dice, I'll use craps) where someone's dice seem to be really on fire, that every time they need a number, they roll it. While watching it happen you can't stop yourself from think, 'wow, that guy's got good luck.' It's not until you take a step back and consider all the players for day that you see that that one's guys spike was expected.

A lot of superstitions of the kind suggested in this thread come about through Confirmation Bias. People remember what they did when they got lucky and believe they have identified a pattern, further successes are remembered, failures forgotten and the incorrectly identified pattern is reinforced.

It's why water dowsers and the like convince themselves they can actually find sources of water, when testing has shown they can only identify water sources at an average equal to guessing. When I've seen them tested and they get it right, they are thrilled by their abilities, but when they fail it's all excuses, "I must be having an off day", "I wasn't able to stand directly over the buckets", "It doesn't work if there's metal around"...

Howard A Treesong wrote:
One roll is independent of another. That fact that you have rolled one six makes no difference to the fact that next time you roll the dice you still have a 1 in 6 chance of rolling a six.

Interestingly, there is no mathematical proof for this.
This is assumed to be true, accepted to be true, and in a great deal of studies, shown to be true in the context of those studies.
The assumption of causation is an argument of philosophy, backed up with a great deal of observation.

If the dice are random (which they aren't), the Statisticians belief in this philosophy will tell you it doesn't matter which die you roll, and your chances are the same for the 21st 6th as it is for the 20th 6th.

Whole branches of mathematics have been created by looking at what is assumed to be true, and making another assumption. In basic geometry, if you have a line, and a point, you can draw exactly one line through that point that parallels the first line. In two other branches of geometry, you can draw zero lines, or an infinite number of lines.

So for everyone who says, go take a statistics class; I agree. Go take one if you haven't. Then go take another few math classes, and some philosophy. If you can find a philosophy of mathematics class, I would highly recommend that as well.


On a side note, anyone notice that GW's little red and white dice roll hot (meaning high)? A physicist buddy of mine noticed it and we tracked out a few thousand rolls; (on a rainy day, with a few growlers of beer). At least rolling on felt that covered our steel table top (it kept magnetized models from sliding during a game), those dice rolled a statically significant higher number of 5's and 6's than you should expect. We had a very large pool of those dice, something like 300 or 400 hundred of them, that really sped up turning out the large number of total rolls. We quickly made a house rule, that if you used those dice, it was all or nothing. If you used those dice, you had to use them for everything (rolls that you want low results, as well as roll that you want high).
It is good to note rolling surface. I read a study on rolling where an artificial machine rolling on one surface produced a different outcome than another surface. Dice rolled individually instead of in groups also produced different results.

Whenever I see a player with two sets of dice (these are to hit, wound and save; these are characteristic tests and break tests), I tend to believe they are cheating. While it might just be their belief, it is very possible that they have found high dice and low dice.

On the other side, if you use GW's red measuring stick that is exactly 25mm per inch, instead of 25.4, the higher dice might become insignificant compared to the quarter of an inch that you lose out in shooting and movement.


-Matt

HawaiiMatt wrote:On a side note, anyone notice that GW's little red and white dice roll hot (meaning high)?

The most amusing thing about this post is that a year or so back we had someone with too much time and too many GW dice on his hands, posting about how his studies showed that GW dice were much more likely to roll a 1.

Bookwrack wrote:The most amusing thing about this post is that a year or so back we had someone with too much time and too many GW dice on his hands, posting about how his studies showed that GW dice were much more likely to roll a 1.

I don't recall, but all dice will have a bias because they are not perfect, so that is believable. They aren't exactly cube shaped, they can contain air bubbles, the corners are squiffy, the dots effectively mean the weight it unequally distributed. But the die will always have that bias whether we know it or not. The hypothesis on this thread is that the specific result of one die throw will influence the result of a second cast of the die, which doesn't make any sense...at all.

As I said earlier, it's like someone winning the lottery one week, and then asking if they are more or less likely to win it again the next week if you buy one ticket just as they always do. Anyone saying that the person stands a smaller chance of winning than anyone else buying a single ticket is just wrong.

To turn this idea on its head, rather than a situation where people want to create a linking factor where there is none, people also can't spot a linking factor where there is one. There was a famous case where a woman was locked up for killing two of her children on two separate occasions. She claimed cot death for both but the "expert witness" said that the odds of dying from cot death were 8500:1. Not tiny then, cot deaths certainly do occur and you wouldn't think it suspicious, just unusual. But this pig ignorant "expert witness" then claimed that two cot deaths were unlikely because the odds of it happening twice were 1:8500 x 1:8500 or 73 million to one. Which is fantastically small, so she probably murdered them. And the entire court heard this and the judge and defence and jury didn't see the obvious flaw and convicted her.

Across the whole population, there's a 1 in 8500 chance of cot death, sure. But the whole population includes people susceptible to cot death and people who are not, but the broad average is 1 in 8500, it doesn't account for specific individuals. Once one child dies of cot death you have effectively identified a family which are susceptible, they were at greater risk to begin with not the average for the whole population. And the fact that it occurs again is not 1 in 8500, as two children are so closely related the odds of them suffering the same affliction is quite high. Probably still a rare event and very unfortunate, but nowhere near the 73 million to 1 claimed. Of course she was innocent but she was locked up for three years. Furthermore, Roy Meadow and his abysmal application of statistics helped secure prosecutions against other women too.

Psyker_9er wrote:

ph34r wrote:

Psyker_9er wrote:Thank you both, I generally get a very similar response from people I meet... Maybe not about science, but in general...

Have you considered the crazy conspiracy that instead of everyone else being wrong, perhaps you are just wrong?

Yes, I have thought about it. The same can be said to you, the same could be said to any one... But I would rather go to my grave trying to find out for myself.

Oh, okay. How many degrees do you have, or are you in the process of getting, in that case? Or do you figure you can just "I feel this way" bs your way through advanced science?

from what i've seen in this thread, not too many folks know exactly what 'science' entails. what is accepted science evidence often varies wildly from lab to lab or experiment to experiment.

from what i've seen here, people act like experimentation, from hypothesis to conclusion, regardless of lab, agenda, funding, or method, results in consistently incontrovertible proofs that lay down immovable truths about the nature of the universe, but that's simply not so.

there may be labs being paid, for example, by pharmaceutical companies to establish that a certain chemical reacts with the brain past the blood barrier in a certain way, by binding with certain proteins that have C effect on, say, depression. across the street, lab B might be trying to prove that chemical binds with proteins, but not with results that lab A has claimed will happen. both labs will be able to write conclusions that support their agenda, because yes, money happens to pay for labs and lab workers, and yes, people like to have a paycheck at the end of the month. there are labs that can prove that cigarettes have numerous health benefits.

so skepticism of scientific conclusions is neither stupid nor should it be ridiculed, because skepticism is precisely what the method is based on. make a claim, prove it, and bob is your uncle. however, when lab B says drug Y doesn't work in spite of what lab A says, and both have lab reports and conclusions supporting the theory, the Pfizer is going to go with lab A's report and publish their results in their ads in People magazine because IT WILL SELL DRUGS.

that said, as far as things like statistics go, there is a huge body of both numerical and mathematical evidence to support that statistical analysis and laws of averages is correct. also, it's important to note that scientists (such a broad, ugly, and inaccurate word) are professionally vain and if they have a chance to prove something incorrect, they usually will. chalk one up in the Pro column for human folly.

OP really makes me wonder what they teach people in schools in the US and the UK...

Im gona invoke the holy law. Merphys law.

That is, if something can go wrong, it most likey will. especilly if you state it.

example. 'Im goning to fail this Ld roll.' and behold as he rolls dubble six.

And then theirs jinxing. If some else says that you will role badly, and they have some phykic power, they might indead role badly. That haw orcs work too, but on a far bigger scale.

Maths tells us the chance of something happening is 1/6 give or take some unnaturaly small number for the chance of it landing on it edge or something. in this way we can say that if we roled an ifinate number of times, then 1/6 roles would be 1,2,3,4,5 or 6.

in real life, there is no way you can roll a dice ininate number of times and in truth, you never roll anything but 6 on a fair dice.

Ledabot wrote:Maths tells us the chance of something happening is 1/6 give or take some unnaturaly small number for the chance of it landing on it edge or something. in this way we can say that if we roled an ifinate number of times, then 1/6 roles would be 1,2,3,4,5 or 6.

No, it doesn't. Probability will show that over time the expected standard distribution of the rolls will shrink relative to the total number of dice rolled. This is due to vagaries of improbable outcomes such as high streaks and low streaks offsetting each other the more dice you roll, the actual numbers rolled on each dice roll are not impacted by the total number of dice rolled.

in real life, there is no way you can roll a dice ininate number of times and in truth, you never roll anything but 6 on a fair dice.

It doesn't matter how many dice you've rolled or what those dice managed to roll. It doesn't matter how many dice you will roll in the future. What matters is that on the next roll the odds of rolling each number is 1/6.

Now, you can get streaks of high and low rolling. You will roll three 6s in a row every so often, in fact, you'll see it once every 216 rolls. Thinking about the number of times you roll three dice for attacks or armour saves or anything like that, you can expect to see it reasonably often if you play enough. All of this is true regardless of the number of dice rolled.

I have no idea why you said you'd never roll anything but 6 on fair dice. What do you mean by that?

Psyker_9er wrote:
If luck (or what ever you may want to call it) can be identified as a force of will, then the game is no longer a game of odds. It becomes a battle of minds. And therefore, still not cheating...

It would also be measurable which, as I recall, is something that you don't want luck to be.

Psyker_9er wrote:
We still have hope, and have plenty of room to grow. Those who stick to the laws of others have already given up, and bound by those laws they shall go no further.

Still sticking to the laws of the Beat Generation I see.

sebster wrote:

Ledabot wrote:Maths tells us the chance of something happening is 1/6 give or take some unnaturaly small number for the chance of it landing on it edge or something. in this way we can say that if we roled an ifinate number of times, then 1/6 roles would be 1,2,3,4,5 or 6.

No, it doesn't. Probability will show that over time the expected standard distribution of the rolls will shrink relative to the total number of dice rolled. This is due to vagaries of improbable outcomes such as high streaks and low streaks offsetting each other the more dice you roll, the actual numbers rolled on each dice roll are not impacted by the total number of dice rolled.

in real life, there is no way you can roll a dice ininate number of times and in truth, you never roll anything but 6 on a fair dice.

It doesn't matter how many dice you've rolled or what those dice managed to roll. It doesn't matter how many dice you will roll in the future. What matters is that on the next roll the odds of rolling each number is 1/6.

Now, you can get streaks of high and low rolling. You will roll three 6s in a row every so often, in fact, you'll see it once every 216 rolls. Thinking about the number of times you roll three dice for attacks or armour saves or anything like that, you can expect to see it reasonably often if you play enough. All of this is true regardless of the number of dice rolled.

I have no idea why you said you'd never roll anything but 6 on fair dice. What do you mean by that?

i think my fingers worked slower than my brain. I ment that you could find that you could never roll a dice ininate number of times and so might roll a dice every day of your life and you might mot roll anything but 6s.

Da Butcha wrote:
I totally agree that perfectly random dice are going to produce independent, random results when thrown in a manner which doesn't bias their results. However, it is hard for people in the real world to come up with a priori knowledge that their dice have been produced perfectly random.

Randomness is the absence of intent, but not the absence of causality, at least in the context of this conversation. The sort of randomness that constitutes the absence of causality is probably impossible.

You are correct that attempting to influence the dice by throwing them in a way that made them land on 6 more often would deny randomness.

However, the parallel point that dice are not all unbiased does not indicate that they are not random. Something can be random and have weighted probabilities. The alternative is that nothing that has any probability can be random, as probability represent a determination, or signal, that can be perceived.

I know in my graduate physics days we had a rule of thumb that while nothing is strictly impossible we called things impossible and discounted them if they were likely not to happen once in the age of the universe (14 billion years). Throwing a fair dice every day of your life and having it always come up 6 I think falls into this category.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
so doing some quick math the age of the universe in days is 5.1 x 10 ^12. Even rolling a 6 for 30 day in a row is 1 in 4.5 x 10 ^24 chance of happening. So if 10 billion people rolled dice every day for as long as the universe has existed you would have a 1 in 100 chance for one of those people to have rolled 30 6's in a row. In other words it isn't going to happen.

Maybe the OP has a point... If you pick up a dice that has just rolled a 1 then you can be about 83% sure it won't roll a 1 a second time. :p

You're making this way to complicated. It's a 50/50 chance every time. You either roll a 1 or you don't.

asmith wrote:I know in my graduate physics days we had a rule of thumb that while nothing is strictly impossible we called things impossible and discounted them if they were likely not to happen once in the age of the universe (14 billion years). Throwing a fair dice every day of your life and having it always come up 6 I think falls into this category.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
so doing some quick math the age of the universe in days is 5.1 x 10 ^12. Even rolling a 6 for 30 day in a row is 1 in 4.5 x 10 ^24 chance of happening. So if 10 billion people rolled dice every day for as long as the universe has existed you would have a 1 in 100 chance for one of those people to have rolled 30 6's in a row. In other words it isn't going to happen.

What im saying is that the porbility never reaches 0. only a realy little number. There is always chance that it will happen, but dont count on it.

Ledabot wrote:

asmith wrote:I know in my graduate physics days we had a rule of thumb that while nothing is strictly impossible we called things impossible and discounted them if they were likely not to happen once in the age of the universe (14 billion years). Throwing a fair dice every day of your life and having it always come up 6 I think falls into this category.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
so doing some quick math the age of the universe in days is 5.1 x 10 ^12. Even rolling a 6 for 30 day in a row is 1 in 4.5 x 10 ^24 chance of happening. So if 10 billion people rolled dice every day for as long as the universe has existed you would have a 1 in 100 chance for one of those people to have rolled 30 6's in a row. In other words it isn't going to happen.

What im saying is that the porbility never reaches 0. only a realy little number. There is always chance that it will happen, but dont count on it.

There is a chance that you will turn into an-appropriatly sized pink unicorn. There is a chance that your models could begin to duke it out in your living room, firing cannons and bolters. The odds of this are such that if you began writing .000... at the beginning of the universe you still wouldn't have hit any other numbers.

I'm not sure where this is all going, however the chance of rolling 6,6,6,6,6,6 is exactly the same as the chance of rolling any other pre-defined series of numbers, for example 4,1,3,5,5,6, or 1,3,4,2,6.4, or 1,2,3,4,5,6.

I think this is terning into an argument about probility vs (what the frazzle are you guys on?)

Ledabot wrote:i think my fingers worked slower than my brain. I ment that you could find that you could never roll a dice ininate number of times and so might roll a dice every day of your life and you might mot roll anything but 6s.

Sure, it's possible. But the point is that having just rolled 12 6s in a row, the odds of the next die coming up a 6 is 1/6. This remains true no matter how many dice you have rolled, or how many you will roll.

You know what would be awesome? If the people that had these crazy failed ideas about how they will win if they pick up all the dice that rolled 3's and 5's and reroll them or whatever just spent that time and effort making army lists that didn't fail so bad that they required said voodoo magic to actually win a match.

sebster wrote:

Ledabot wrote:i think my fingers worked slower than my brain. I ment that you could find that you could never roll a dice ininate number of times and so might roll a dice every day of your life and you might mot roll anything but 6s.

Sure, it's possible. But the point is that having just rolled 12 6s in a row, the odds of the next die coming up a 6 is 1/6. This remains true no matter how many dice you have rolled, or how many you will roll.

but the probability of rolling 12 6's in a row is FAR less than 1/6, actually i think its around 1/2176782336... (my maths might be off, but that seems about right to me)... thats where the notion of "luck" comes from, beating the odds so profoundly that it seems impossible
edit: poor english :rollseyes:

jordanis wrote:

sebster wrote:

Ledabot wrote:i think my fingers worked slower than my brain. I ment that you could find that you could never roll a dice ininate number of times and so might roll a dice every day of your life and you might mot roll anything but 6s.

Sure, it's possible. But the point is that having just rolled 12 6s in a row, the odds of the next die coming up a 6 is 1/6. This remains true no matter how many dice you have rolled, or how many you will roll.

but the probability of rolling 12 6's in a row is FAR less than 1/6, actually i think its around 1/2176782336... (my maths might be off, but that seems about right to me)... thats where the notion of "luck" comes from, beating the odds so profoundly that it seems impossible
edit: poor english :rollseyes:

Thats my point. you could say that i believe in it. stuff works fo me sometimes like red cars do for orks, but not quite on the same scale. It can come in handy like correctly reading the side a coin landed by reading the thorghts of the person that looks at it 20 times in a row.

jordanis wrote:but the probability of rolling 12 6's in a row is FAR less than 1/6, actually i think its around 1/2176782336... (my maths might be off, but that seems about right to me)... thats where the notion of "luck" comes from, beating the odds so profoundly that it seems impossible

Well, yeah, when you have unlikely events happen in your favour a lot you'd lucky. No-one is arguing that luck doesn't happen, improbable events occur, I've rolled plenty of improbable things in my time. But I've rolled a crapload of dice, so you will expect to see unlikely results from time to time.

The big point is that each roll is independant from every other roll. The odds of rolling 12 6s in a row is one about 2 billion, as you noted, and if you failed and rolled again the odds would still be 1 in 2 billion. If you actually managed it, then picked up the dice to roll again the odds would still be 1 in 2 billion. If you then handed the dice to someone else to roll them, the odds would still be 1 in 2 billion.

The only way you can think that it matters who rolls the dice, or that hot streaks and cold streaks influence the rolls on future dice, is if you believe in magic.

I have a loosely related thought problem for you math guys.
It's related to probability, independant events, and luck.

Assume there is a betting game that you can only play once ever. You bet $1 at the beginning, if you roll a 1 on a d6 you lose your money, anything else and you double your money. You have to let your money ride or stop playing. When should you stop playing?

asmith wrote:Assume there is a betting game that you can only play once ever. You bet $1 at the beginning, if you roll a 1 on a d6 you lose your money, anything else and you double your money. You have to let your money ride or stop playing. When should you stop playing?

Interesting problem.

You need to have a plan from the start. If you just calculate your odds after each roll, there's always a positive expected value, so rolling again always makes sense. Obviously, that's not a good strategy, as you'll keep going until you roll a 1 and end up with nothing.

So, what's your expected value if you decide to do N rolls? Well, it's the chance that you wont roll a 1 in those N rolls multiplied by your value if you do make those rolls (plus the chance that you do roll a 1 multiplied by your winnings if you roll a 1, but that's zero, so can be ignored)

Value = (5/6)^N * 2^N

But, even this doesn't have a maximum for N. Making a billion rolls will have a higher expected return that a billion minus 1, or any other number less than a billion. So, mathmatically, I'd say keep rolling forever.

This is really an economics question, dealing with risk and investments and all that. If it were me, I'd keep rolling up to 32 times. That way, I'd have a 0.3% chance of walking away with $4.3 billion (that's American billion, with 9 zeros). That's more money than I can imagine ever needing, so rolling again doesn't actually get me a benefit.

asmith wrote:I have a loosely related thought problem for you math guys.
It's related to probability, independant events, and luck.

Assume there is a betting game that you can only play once ever. You bet $1 at the beginning, if you roll a 1 on a d6 you lose your money, anything else and you double your money. You have to let your money ride or stop playing. When should you stop playing?

Interesting question. Each time you roll you have 5/6 chance of winning, for which you double your money. That's a pretty good bet.

You winnings would increase -2-4-8-16-32-64...

Your rough (because I've been rounding up decimals) accumulated odds of achieving this would be 83% - 69% - 47% - 23% - 5% - >0%

I think that's about right, because at 3 rolls you are at about 50%, which would be the odds of rolling a 1 with three dice. Once you get to 6 rolls you've in 1:1 odds.

Obviously you have only a 1 in 6 chance of failing each time, and as we've said on this thread previous throws do not affect future throws. However, you can't keep throwing forever, I would say it's best to plan beforehand to throw only three dice and stop there, because that's where you hit even odds of getting away with it, probability is on your side, but you only have £8 to show for it. hardly worth the effort. Beyond that is a real gamble, but the payoff could be very good if you are fortunate. I suppose if it's a one off chance you should keep going until you get an amount of money you are happy with.

@ grakmar: I'd have a hard time rolling the dice once it got to $500,000, and I'm pretty sure I would definately stop at $1mil. You are a braver man than me that's for sure.
@ howard treesong: You'd really walk away from a game like this with only $8?

Howard A Treesong wrote:
Your rough (because I've been rounding up decimals) accumulated odds of achieving this would be 83% - 69% - 47% - 23% - 5% - >0%

Your odds are way off. It's more like 83.3% - 69.4% - 57.9% - 48.2% - 40.2% - 33.5%

Your early calculations were correct, but they fell apart when you did (5/6)^3 and it just snowballed from there.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

asmith wrote:@ grakmar: I'd have a hard time rolling the dice once it got to $500,000, and I'm pretty sure I would definately stop at $1mil. You are a braver man than me that's for sure.

A million would be nice, but your chances of getting that (20 rolls) are 2.61%. Getting a billion (1.7 billion with 24 rolls) is 1.26%. So, it basically equivalent to: "Flip a coin, if heads, get 1000 times your money, if tails, loose". That's the most awesome bet ever!

It's one thing to know the odds, and it's another to roll the dice with a million dollars sitting on the table. If I was already a millionaire I'm sure I would go higher.

Guess I'm not a good gambler.

Edit: Wait a minute 24 rolls is only $17 million not $1.7 billion! Your argument to go farther seemed a little to good to be true

asmith wrote:It's one thing to know the odds, and it's another to roll the dice with a million dollars sitting on the table. If I was already a millionaire I'm sure I would go higher.

Guess I'm not a good gambler.

Like I said, this can't be a purely mathematical problem. As the math answer is to keep rolling indefinitely.

There is no right or wrong answer in that sense. It all comes down to how risk averse each individual is. You need to add some "value" to each dollar beyond what you've already won. If you're saying "a million would make me really happy, but I don't really need more than that. So any additional money isn't as valuable to me as that first million", then you're totally making the logical decision.

I guess, I'm just a little greedy

Grakmar wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:
Your rough (because I've been rounding up decimals) accumulated odds of achieving this would be 83% - 69% - 47% - 23% - 5% - >0%

Your odds are way off. It's more like 83.3% - 69.4% - 57.9% - 48.2% - 40.2% - 33.5%

Your early calculations were correct, but they fell apart when you did (5/6)^3 and it just snowballed from there.

Oh yes I've ballsed that up. You're quite right of course, I fouled up the powers on the calculator. :p

@ grakmar: I ninja'd your post: it takes 10 more rolls to hit $1B not 4 that changes my outlook considerably.

asmith wrote:@ grakmar: I ninja'd your post: it takes 10 more rolls to hit $1B not 4 that changes my outlook considerably.

Damn! You're right. I fail at counting decimal places.

Howard A Treesong wrote:Interesting question. Each time you roll you have 5/6 chance of winning, for which you double your money. That's a pretty good bet.

You winnings would increase -2-4-8-16-32-64...

Your rough (because I've been rounding up decimals) accumulated odds of achieving this would be 83% - 69% - 47% - 23% - 5% - >0%

What a great question. I'm sure I must have heard a question like this before, not because it's familiar, it's just such a good way of illustrating some really important economic principles.

As people have pointed out, it isn't a purely mathematical question because the maths answer is to just keep going, as the expected return grows with every roll. But economics recognises that every dollar you get isn't equal to the one before it, because the first dollar is spent on the thing you most need, the second dollar on the thing you second most need, and so on, until dollar $314,524 is spent on some novelty hat you saw on e-bay that's kind of funny. It's called marginal utility.

So the question becomes 'at what point doubling your money not worth the risk of losing all the dollars that came before'. In my case, I look at what half a million dollars could do to set me up, and I really don't think another half a million after that would be worth the 1/6 risk of losing it all.

But it'd be different for everyone, because of how our needs and wants all differ. Excellent question.

dogma wrote:

Psyker_9er wrote:
We still have hope, and have plenty of room to grow. Those who stick to the laws of others have already given up, and bound by those laws they shall go no further.

Still sticking to the laws of the Beat Generation I see.

Gen-whY?, Beat Generation, Elvis Generation, James Dean, transcendentalism, or what ever you want to call it. The concept of thinking for yourself has been around for a very long time.

Bookwrack wrote:Because if luck was truly an applicable power, the casinos are where you'd see it manifest. If it's an application of will, of need or desire, given the incentives to get the dice to come up in your favor, that is where you'd see it happen, not over a wargame.

This is a good point, and it gave me a funny idea:
What if there has already been some one who studied his luck at casino dice? What if he wanted to publish a book, but the Mafia found out? Or any casino owning organized crime boss for that matter. I might want to be more careful with what I say

hemingway wrote:
so skepticism of scientific conclusions is neither stupid nor should it be ridiculed, because skepticism is precisely what the method is based on. make a claim, prove it, and bob is your uncle. however, when lab B says drug Y doesn't work in spite of what lab A says, and both have lab reports and conclusions supporting the theory, the Pfizer is going to go with lab A's report and publish their results in their ads in People magazine because IT WILL SELL DRUGS.

QFT

We got ourselves a Lab-A and a Lab-B situation here. So for the purpose of this thread, and the topic of this thread only, I will conclude with:
The Realistic Probability of Rolling 6s Continuously is a very low probability. Having said that, I can see and understand how the OP came up with the perceived conclusions that he did.

Psyker_9er wrote:
What if there has already been some one who studied his luck at casino dice? What if he wanted to publish a book, but the Mafia found out? Or any casino owning organized crime boss for that matter. I might want to be more careful with what I say

They would probably pay you an immense amount of money to promote your book, put you on TV to push it, and make sure everyone knew that you had discovered a way to beat the odds... and then rake in the dough as the suckers lapped it up and started throwing fistfulls of money onto the tables, convinced that they had mastered your technique for mindmushing dice or cards into favoring them.

Actually if gambling didn't work out statistically casinos would be out of business.

What do you mean by, "if gambling didn't work out statistically?"

Do you mean if it didn't work out in favor of the casino or the gambler?

Eric

MagickalMemories wrote:What do you mean by, "if gambling didn't work out statistically?"

Do you mean if it didn't work out in favor of the casino or the gambler?

Eric

He is saying that if casino games didn't, over the long term, work out to accurately favor the casino, they wouldn't be in that business anymore.
There is not a single game in a casino that does not statistically favor the casino, not even any 50/50 chances. They essentially have a business modeled after probability, that in a near infinite number of attempts at a game of chance, they will eventually come out ahead and make profits on those people playing them.

Yep.
I know, re: gambling being in favor of the house.

The way he worded his statement, I was not sure if *he* did, though.
I could see it easily being meant as "work[ing] out statistically" in favor of the gambler.

Eric

Psyker_9er wrote:We got ourselves a Lab-A and a Lab-B situation here. So for the purpose of this thread, and the topic of this thread only, I will conclude with:
The Realistic Probability of Rolling 6s Continuously is a very low probability. Having said that, I can see and understand how the OP came up with the perceived conclusions that he did.

The probability of rolling 6s continuously with perfect dice is exactly as dictated by math and statistics. The odds with imperfect dice can be observed by running extensive tests, as one Dakka user did to confirm the bias of small GW and chessex dice towards rolling 1s slightly more than average.
The most likely conclusion in this thread is that you, Psyker_9er, do not have a strong grasp on the concept of science or math, and are irrationally paranoid that there is a conspiracy out to suppress the knowledge of the existence of magic powers.

In the same game, I rolled 4d6 and they were all ones. On the following roll, I rolled 3d6 and they were all ones.

What were the odds? 1/1296 followed by 1/216 or 1/279,936?

(Oh, and I threw those dice away)

You threw the dice away?
Ah come on you're kidding right?

TedintheShed wrote:In the same game, I rolled 4d6 and they were all ones. On the following roll, I rolled 3d6 and they were all ones.

What were the odds? 1/1296 followed by 1/216 or 1/279,936?

(Oh, and I threw those dice away)

Once you had rolled the first set, the odds of the second set were 1/(6^3). The odds of you rolling 4d6 all ones and then 3d6 all ones is 1/(6^7).

Psyker_9er wrote:Gen-whY?, Beat Generation, Elvis Generation, James Dean, transcendentalism, or what ever you want to call it. The concept of thinking for yourself has been around for a very long time.

My point is that you aren't thinking for yourself at all, but aping thoughts created by others.

Either way, thinking for yourself does not entail stating that only your thoughts are correct. Doing so would involve being enslaved to a certain sort of idea regarding freedom of will.

Notably if, after your posting, I chose to reject all forms of logic I would be doing so because you told me so, and because I thought you were correct, not simply because I came to the epiphany that logic was too rigid.

We all think for ourselves, or none of us do. There really isn't any sort of middle ground that does not exchange intent for manipulable nature.

Psyker_9er wrote:

hemingway wrote:
so skepticism of scientific conclusions is neither stupid nor should it be ridiculed, because skepticism is precisely what the method is based on. make a claim, prove it, and bob is your uncle. however, when lab B says drug Y doesn't work in spite of what lab A says, and both have lab reports and conclusions supporting the theory, the Pfizer is going to go with lab A's report and publish their results in their ads in People magazine because IT WILL SELL DRUGS.

QFT

We got ourselves a Lab-A and a Lab-B situation here. So for the purpose of this thread, and the topic of this thread only, I will conclude with:
The Realistic Probability of Rolling 6s Continuously is a very low probability. Having said that, I can see and understand how the OP came up with the perceived conclusions that he did.

That's not an indictment of science at all. Its an indictment of people that are less intelligent, or knowledgeable with respect to a given thing, than other people.

Perception does not negate probability.

You are either confused or ignorant.

dogma wrote:You are either confused or ignorant.

Why not both?

if he is confused, doesnt that by definition make him ignorant?

You could know various bits of relevant information, thus being not ignorant, and be confused by them.

i guess my statement makes more sense backwards, bein ignorant makes you confused...i dont know...maybbe it doesnt make sense at all...