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 Yarium wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:
And the only way in which dice are random is in the human brain's inability to predict the result. The result you get is determined entirely by physics, and if you can influence a result controlled by physics by introducing more variables to the calculations, then you can alter the outcome. Having multiple dice bouncing against each other probably does make the results more even. The reason casinos require you to roll in a very specific way (two of the three requirements are that the dice bounce off the table and at last one wall, literally bouncing off of other objects) is because doing so results in a more even distribution of results, for casino dice that are already required to be perfectly balanced before they can leave the factory.

The thing you're discounting as a possible explanation for a non-even distribution of results in one case, and a non-even distribution in other cases, with the exact same dice, is already the reason that casinos require you do to things with dice that would require that explanation to be true to give you a reason to do them at all.

By that extension, it is impossible for any roll to be random enough. Guess you can't play 40k then, since each and every outcome is knowable if you had perfect knowledge. Except, you don't have perfect knowledge, which is true even without bringing up quantum physics! At what point is something "random enough"? For a casino, it's what you have pointed out; it must go past a line, bounce off the table, and hit the wall (the walls of which are a special shape). At minimum this means 2 "bounces". This is done to ensure that someone can not learn to throw the dice in a specific way to achieve a specific outcome. Those wall liners are also changed regularly to change the axis at which the same roll will achieve the same result.

If two bounces is good enough for a casino, then I'm sure it's good enough for this test, and additional knocking into things will only make the results MORE accurate rather than less.

Apparently casinos think that if you just roll dice normally without having to bounce them off two different solid objects, the thing they're more likely to do than anything else is to flip once. So you could roll as casinos require you to do, and if the only part of it you try to control at all is what face of the die starts the roll facing up, unless you do the part where you bounce those dice off the floor of the table and at least one wall, casinos consider the probability of people doing what you just did in this hypothetical example, to try to win money from them in Craps games, to be so high they implemented the additional rules of bouncing the dice off two different parts of the table to prevent people from skewing their own individual results significantly enough the casino would lose money overall.

Also, yes, dice are not actually random, we only call them random because we don't normally have enough information to predict the result before it actually happens. Good, you finally got there.

Also, how many solid objects were the dice in your test bounced off of? Up to 9 other dice and maybe the table itself? How many solid objects were the dice in the article bounced off of? 1 when it bounced off the table?

While I think there are certainly some imbalances here and there, ultimately there are so many 40k rules and units and formation etc that have been progressing, its a bit of a double edged sword, there's tons of cool content but a lot to balance. Certainly there are a few units that are glaringly under-costed, but That's fine with me, as I try play for fun, I try to win but at the end of the day I want my opponent to think, That sure was a fun game, not wow that guys army sure was powerful he whooped me. Of course it is more fun to see our own forces do well, but my thought is you win some and you lose some, and it is always enjoyable to see some awesome looking warhammer models battling on a good looking board with scenery.

Despite that, however, and I didn't read the article just skimmed some of the posts, GW dice rolling 1's 23% rather than 16% does worry me a bit, as I like plasma and don't want to kill my loyal and hand crafted troopers when I play! Well, who cares about killing them, they are maniacal followers of Khorne after all, but I don't want to prevent them from blasting the enemy! Last game I played my Helbrute did 'gets hot' roll its plasma cannon three rounds in a row! (Clearly some bad luck here as ~7%, if true, won't cause this)

At minimum I would like 10,000 dice rolls to draw any conclusion for the %s. Ideally I would prefer to see %s drawn from an number like 100,000. Before anyone can condemn the accuracy of GW dice it should be supported by hard evidence.

Still, I don't want to Gets Hot my troops, nor miss those paid-for 2+ to wound rolls. Does anyone know of good dice, that don't roll more 1's? The Forge World Legion dice look really awesome, what's the chances they roll evenly?

 Pouncey wrote:
If two bounces is good enough for a casino, then I'm sure it's good enough for this test, and additional knocking into things will only make the results MORE accurate rather than less.

Apparently casinos think that if you just roll dice normally without having to bounce them off two different solid objects, the thing they're more likely to do than anything else is to flip once. So you could roll as casinos require you to do, and if the only part of it you try to control at all is what face of the die starts the roll facing up, unless you do the part where you bounce those dice off the floor of the table and at least one wall, casinos consider the probability of people doing what you just did in this hypothetical example, to try to win money from them in Craps games, to be so high they implemented the additional rules of bouncing the dice off two different parts of the table to prevent people from skewing their own individual results significantly enough the casino would lose money overall.

Also, yes, dice are not actually random, we only call them random because we don't normally have enough information to predict the result before it actually happens. Good, you finally got there.

Also, how many solid objects were the dice in your test bounced off of? Up to 9 other dice and maybe the table itself? How many solid objects were the dice in the article bounced off of? 1 when it bounced off the table?

I'm afraid I don't quite understand.

First; I have not done the test. I am saying that other people here have done the test.

Second; From this test, you don't know how many bounces they have done, but if 2 is sufficient, then the only number lower than that is 1. I don't believe each and every dice they rolled was a single "flip". Aside from the situation where someone holds a die in their palm, resting the back of their hand on the table, and turns their hand over, I have never seen these dice just flip once.

Third; Are you resting this entire argument on them not getting a second bounce? Seems like a real stretch.

Fourth; No one has suggested anything other than the dice not being perfectly random, only that they're "random enough".

NightWinds5121 wrote:
While I think there are certainly some imbalances here and there, ultimately there are so many 40k rules and units and formation etc that have been progressing, its a bit of a double edged sword, there's tons of cool content but a lot to balance. Certainly there are a few units that are glaringly under-costed, but That's fine with me, as I try play for fun, I try to win but at the end of the day I want my opponent to think, That sure was a fun game, not wow that guys army sure was powerful he whooped me. Of course it is more fun to see our own forces do well, but my thought is you win some and you lose some, and it is always enjoyable to see some awesome looking warhammer models battling on a good looking board with scenery.

Despite that, however, and I didn't read the article just skimmed some of the posts, GW dice rolling 1's 23% rather than 16% does worry me a bit, as I like plasma and don't want to kill my loyal and hand crafted troopers when I play! Well, who cares about killing them, they are maniacal followers of Khorne after all, but I don't want to prevent them from blasting the enemy! Last game I played my Helbrute did 'gets hot' roll its plasma cannon three rounds in a row! (Clearly some bad luck here as ~7%, if true, won't cause this)

At minimum I would like 10,000 dice rolls to draw any conclusion for the %s. Ideally I would prefer to see %s drawn from an number like 100,000. Before anyone can condemn the accuracy of GW dice it should be supported by hard evidence.

Still, I don't want to Gets Hot my troops, nor miss those paid-for 2+ to wound rolls. Does anyone know of good dice, that don't roll more 1's? The Forge World Legion dice look really awesome, what's the chances they roll evenly?

So, uh, if I link you an article with over 100,000 dice rolls that says GW dice roll at least 23% 1s, you'll accept it? Really? You want me to find a guy so bored he rolled dice a hundred thousand times just to prove this thing that doesn't matter to anything important? That's the proof you require, and if I instead linked you something with less than 10,000 rolls you'd call it bullgak?

 Pouncey wrote:

Quantum physics, by definition, applies only to things smaller than an atom. Dice are very noticeably larger than an atom. And you can't just scale up physics calculations from the quantum scale to the macro scale and expect to get the same results. Scaling up a model rocket the size of a toy that works fine, to a rocket the size of an ICBM you're expecting to put something into space, and expecting the physics to be the same that simply making it bigger means it should work just fine, is something that's already been proven wrong. If you want to see the results of that kind of thinking being put into practice with rockets the size of ICBMs, just look up the clip reel of early rocket designs failing incredibly spectacularly in giant explosions after failing to get off the launch pad, and other ways a rocket with incorrect physics can explode when it's test-launched. You've probably already seen it.

It's not quite that simple. Quantum effects affect the very matter we are made of. While it is true that most of the time the sheer insane amount of quantum events cancel each other out and the big picture is more or less deterministic, there are situation where behaviour of couple of atoms can butterfly to cause large scale effects. Most obvious examples are conception and mutation in DNA. So in an alternate universe with same starting conditions you probably wouldn't exist, hell, there's a good chance that entire human race wouldn't exist. Of course because we can only observe this one universe, the scope of these effects is difficult to assess.

And in any case, even in a deterministic system there effectively is randomness as it is impossible to know all variables. It is even theoretically impossible, as very act of measuring will affect the state of the thing being measured thus leading to uncertainty.

 Crimson wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

Quantum physics, by definition, applies only to things smaller than an atom. Dice are very noticeably larger than an atom. And you can't just scale up physics calculations from the quantum scale to the macro scale and expect to get the same results. Scaling up a model rocket the size of a toy that works fine, to a rocket the size of an ICBM you're expecting to put something into space, and expecting the physics to be the same that simply making it bigger means it should work just fine, is something that's already been proven wrong. If you want to see the results of that kind of thinking being put into practice with rockets the size of ICBMs, just look up the clip reel of early rocket designs failing incredibly spectacularly in giant explosions after failing to get off the launch pad, and other ways a rocket with incorrect physics can explode when it's test-launched. You've probably already seen it.

It's not quite that simple. Quantum effects affect the very matter we are made of. While it is true that most of the time the sheer insane amount of quantum events cancel each other out and the big picture is more or less deterministic, there are situation where behaviour of couple of atoms can butterfly to cause large scale effects. Most obvious examples are conception and mutation in DNA. So in an alternate universe with same starting conditions you probably wouldn't exist, hell, there's a good chance that entire human race wouldn't exist. Of course because we can only observe this one universe, the scope of these effects is difficult to assess.

And in any case, even in a deterministic system there effectively is randomness as it is impossible to know all variables. It is even theoretically impossible, as very act of measuring will affect the state of the thing being measured thus leading to uncertainty.

You, uh, do realize why it's considered so exciting for scientists that Quantum Mechanics includes things that seem to actually happen at random, instead of us just being unable to predict the totally-predictable result because we don't have information, right?

Because Quantum Mechanics is the only place where saying something is "actually random, not just unpredictable to human minds who can't have enough information due to practicality" is actually true.

With Quantum Mechanics, doing the exact same thing with the exact same process can result in a different thing happening.

But back to the dice. It is not really the number of the rolls here that is crucial. One person can claim that they rolled million times, we can't verify This 'study' has existed for a while and it has been discussed many times. Always a number of people will come up with their own tests (smaller in scope that the claimed scale in the article, but still) which go against the results of the article. So if a large number of people claim that their test give the pretty much expected results and one person claims that their test gives extraordinary results (which are totally valid and not at all made up to sell this expensive product that will fix this real and serious issue) then it is the one person who's data is an outlier that is suspect.


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 Pouncey wrote:

With Quantum Mechanics, doing the exact same thing with the exact same process can result in a different thing happening.

Indeed. And these quantum effects can and do affect the world. This is not in question. Quantum mechanics literally affect the behaviour of every atom in your body!

 Crimson wrote:
But back to the dice. It is not really the number of the rolls here that is crucial. One person can claim that they rolled million times, we can't verify This 'study' has existed for a while and it has been discussed many times. Always a number of people will come up with their own tests (smaller in scope that the claimed scale in the article, but still) which go against the results of the article. So if a large number of people claim that their test give the pretty much expected results and one person claims that their test gives extraordinary results (which are totally valid and not at all made up to sell this expensive product that will fix this real and serious issue) then it is the one person who's data is an outlier that is suspect.

I'm wondering what the point of asking for proof is at all if the only proof you are ever going to receive is something you're going to say was made-up anyways.

Couldn't I just say, "Hey, this guy says that (thing you don't care to read about how GW dice suck)"

Then you say, "He's a liar."

Then I say, "Well, I can never convince you more than that, so I won't even try?"

Then you say, "Sounds good, thread over."

And this entire conversation could've lasted a total of 4 posts?


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 Crimson wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Pouncey wrote:

With Quantum Mechanics, doing the exact same thing with the exact same process can result in a different thing happening.

Indeed. And these quantum effects can and do affect the world. This is not in question. Quantum mechanics literally affect the behaviour of every atom in your body!

Maybe you should check into that assumption if you want to be making that argument.

Starting with finding out if everything in Quantum Mechanics is random, or just one part of it.

 Pouncey wrote:

I'm wondering what the point of asking for proof is at all if the only proof you are ever going to receive is something you're going to say was made-up anyways.

How hard it is to understand that if several people are saying that sky is blue and one is saying it is green, it is far more likely that the one person who says it is green is mistaken/lying? (Especially if he is linking you to a store to buy special headgear to protect you from deadly green-sky-rays.)

Maybe you should check into that assumption if you want to be making that argument.

I did.

 Crimson wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

I'm wondering what the point of asking for proof is at all if the only proof you are ever going to receive is something you're going to say was made-up anyways.

How hard it is to understand that if several people are saying that sky is blue and one is saying it is green, it is far more likely that the one person who says it is green is mistaken/lying? (Especially if he is linking you to a store to buy special headgear to protect you from deadly green-sky-rays.)

When that one guy saying it's green is offering more proof than everyone saying it's blue combined, and he also says that the fact it's green instead of blue will never hurt me, but if I want to feel better I can buy this one thing people were already making for other reasons that also happens to make the green sky look blue when I look at it?

Probably I'm gonna believe that the sky is whatever color I already believe it to be, since color blindness exists and the 5 people insisting it's blue could all just be colorblind, and I already believed the idea that a color can exist only in the human mind without actually being real since the human brain does not only sense things that are real. Which in turn is something I already knew because I've hallucinated before.

Maybe you should check into that assumption if you want to be making that argument.

I did.

This is what Wikipedia's article "Randomness" says about Quantum Mechanics' effect on randomness, in its entirely

According to several standard interpretations of quantum mechanics, microscopic phenomena are objectively random.[6] That is, in an experiment that controls all causally relevant parameters, some aspects of the outcome still vary randomly. For example, if you place a single unstable atom in a controlled environment, you cannot predict how long it will take for the atom to decay—only the probability of decay in a given time.[7] Thus, quantum mechanics does not specify the outcome of individual experiments but only the probabilities. Hidden variable theories reject the view that nature contains irreducible randomness: such theories posit that in the processes that appear random, properties with a certain statistical distribution are at work behind the scenes, determining the outcome in each case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness#In_the_physical_sciences

Can you tell me what they said? I don't understand Wikipedia's more technical stuff, so I often don't understand sciency articles.

DakkaDakka; come for the swap shop, stay for the 6-page threads where people deploy quantum mechanics to support their misinterpretation of probability.

 BBAP wrote:
DakkaDakka; come for the swap shop, stay for the 6-page threads where people deploy quantum mechanics to support their misinterpretation of probability.

Hold up.

This is the first post in the thread to mention quantum mechanics at all.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/120/708883.page#9038329

It was not made by me.

And a conversation takes at least two people to have. I sure as hell have not been blathering on this whole time without at least one other person who is fully willing to be having the exact same conversation from the other side.

Don't put this thread on me. Anything I say is something anyone who replies to it could've chosen to ignore entirely and write off as some loon being a wacko on the Internet. They didn't. They chose to have this discussion with me.

Settle down, Beavis - I'm just sayin'. All this stuff about "quantum" and "random" seems a bit tangential to me if what we're discussing is the fairness of specific dice. I don't suppose anyone's considered dice pools? That way, if the diuce suck, they suck for everyone.

Also you said scale modelling doesn't work. Scale modelling works. It's how engineers test their designs before they build prototypes. Going from quantum to classical is not "scale modelling", though.

 Pouncey wrote:

When that one guy saying it's green is offering more proof than everyone saying it's blue combined,

Let's stop here. No he isn't. He says he has more proof, but anyone can say such things. I can say "I rolled a die million times and it always came up as six." If I did that would you believe dice always roll six?

Can you tell me what they said? I don't understand Wikipedia's more technical stuff, so I often don't understand sciency articles.

That certain quantum phenomena seem to be truly random, unless there are some completely unknown processes that we cannot perceive that govern them (this seems unlikely, but it is quantum mechanics, so who knows.)
Nothing in this implies that this base level randomness would somehow not affect the larger scale systems that are built upon that randomness.


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 BBAP wrote:
All this stuff about "quantum" and "random" seems a bit tangential to me if what we're discussing is the fairness of specific dice.

Certainly.

 BBAP wrote:
Settle down, Beavis - I'm just sayin'. All this stuff about "quantum" and "random" seems a bit tangential to me if what we're discussing is the fairness of specific dice. I don't suppose anyone's considered dice pools? That way, if the diuce suck, they suck for everyone.

Well, the study that actually calls itself an analysis suggested that people should respond to this by just using the same dice, of any sort, for everything, regardless of what kind of dice they wanted to use.

The fact you roll more 1s than usual is actually beneficial in some pretty important and common things like all Leadership tests ever.

So the actual game is complicated enough that it's not a matter of simply determining how many of your attacks miss more often, you also have to include Leadership tests succeeding more often.

And probably when it comes to most people's gameplay, where nothing's even at stake, the difference to your gameplay between using Chessex dice for everything, and casino dice for everything, probably isn't worth the cost of getting different dice.

Also you said scale modelling doesn't work. Scale modelling works. It's how engineers test their designs before they build prototypes. Going from quantum to classical is not "scale modelling", though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13qeX98tAS8

What other misunderstanding of physics led to this clip reel being a thing then?


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 Crimson wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

When that one guy saying it's green is offering more proof than everyone saying it's blue combined,

Let's stop here. No he isn't. He says he has more proof, but anyone can say such things. I can say "I rolled a die million times and it always came up as six." If I did that would you believe dice always roll six?

And the people who tell me they rolled 10 dice a total of 2,000 times and came up with 16.9% 1s or so are offering... what proof exactly that would stop me from calling them a liar because they can't prove it?

Also, a million dice rolls all coming up 6s is so much more unlikely than 144,000 rolls coming up with an average of 26% 1s for GW and Chessex dice, 16.7% 1st for casino dice, and 19% 1s for straight edge board game dice (which are what GW dice would be if you didn't round off their corners, so they unrounded them by filling in the corners and checking it for near-perfect accuracy, and apparently if you just don't round off the corners of GW/Chessex dice, they roll 19% 1s, not 26%, because they also tested the 36 GW dice they unrounded 1,000 times each and yup, 19% 1s). I'm not even sure why you bothered making that comparison, the difference there in just the factors required, much less the actual probability, is beyond reasonable to offer as a comparison.

Can you tell me what they said? I don't understand Wikipedia's more technical stuff, so I often don't understand sciency articles.

That certain quantum phenomena seem to be truly random, unless there are some completely unknown processes that we cannot perceive that govern them (this seems unlikely, but it is quantum mechanics, so who knows.)
Nothing in this implies that this base level randomness would somehow not affect the larger scale systems that are built upon that randomness.

What part of your life is so random that you can do the exact same thing twice and get a different result each time and science's response to why that is is "Because it's random" instead of explaining the differences in what you did each time that make it so you get different results? No, rolling dice isn't one of them, because if you did the same roll the exact same way, you would get the same results. The human body just can't replicate its own motions accurately enough to do that. A machine probably could though.

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 BBAP wrote:
All this stuff about "quantum" and "random" seems a bit tangential to me if what we're discussing is the fairness of specific dice.

Certainly.

Yeah, I didn't want to talk about the dice thing at all. Other people keep bringing it up.

 Pouncey wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13qeX98tAS8

What other misunderstanding of physics led to this clip reel being a thing then?

The rockets were going up, which suggests the physics were correct. The fact some span around themselves, collapsed under their own thrust, or deflagrated into a ball of flame, suggests problems with the design and construction of the machines.

The engineers were at fault, as engineers so often are.

Is there any way to buy dice that roll 6s more often so I can use the Axe of Khorne to defeat players?

 BBAP wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13qeX98tAS8

What other misunderstanding of physics led to this clip reel being a thing then?

The rockets were going up, which suggests the physics were correct. The fact some span around themselves, collapsed under their own thrust, or deflagrated into a ball of flame, suggests problems with the design and construction of the machines.

The engineers were at fault, as engineers so often are.

Cool.

Like most of what I thought I knew, that assumption that I just expressed also turned out not to be true!

It's weird that I learn more about what I thought I knew actually being complete crap on Dakka than anywhere else, isn't it?

I'm learning a lot about real science by being embarrassingly wrong about real science on Dakka.

NightWinds5121 wrote:
Is there any way to buy dice that roll 6s more often so I can use the Axe of Khorne to defeat players?

You can make your own. Just get an angle grinder, a lump of plastic, and some of the finest Citadel Layer paints. Grind the lump into a cube and paint six dots on all faces. Then the Axe will be unstoppable.

NightWinds5121 wrote:
Is there any way to buy dice that roll 6s more often so I can use the Axe of Khorne to defeat players?

Uhh, you could have GW dice where the side with 1 pip is instead a 6, and the side with 6 pips is instead a 1.

But that's sorta like like solving a Rubiks' Cube by just removing all the stickers and putting all the ones with the same color on the same side. Almost exactly like that, in fact.

Actually, if the common representation for 1 on a die involved 6 pips and the common representation for 6 on a die involved 1 pip, GW dice would be rolling more 6s than 1s without changing anything about the dice at all.


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 BBAP wrote:

NightWinds5121 wrote:
Is there any way to buy dice that roll 6s more often so I can use the Axe of Khorne to defeat players?

You can make your own. Just get an angle grinder, a lump of plastic, and some of the finest Citadel Layer paints. Grind the lump into a cube and paint six dots on all faces. Then the Axe will be unstoppable.

Or take a paint brush and some white and black paint to your white GW dice. White out the black pips with white paint. Add in black dots that look like the pips from the other side. See how long it takes anyone to notice.

 Pouncey wrote:

And the people who tell me they rolled 10 dice a total of 2,000 times and came up with 16.9% 1s or so are offering... what proof exactly that would stop me from calling them a liar because they can't prove it?

I have said this many times, you just refuse to listen. There are many people that have independently made the observation that the dice produce the expected 16 to 17 % of ones. It is unlikely that many people would lie this about this, especially in absence of clear motivation to do so. Or do you believe that there is some elaborate conspiracy to cover up the inferios quality of GW/Chessex dice?

Also, a million dice rolls all coming up 6s is so much more unlikely than 144,000 rolls coming up with an average of 26% 1s for GW and Chessex dice

No it is not if we assume that the result is due imbalance in the dice as is the case here.

Furthermore, you keep misquoting the articel, they say 29% not 26%. Not that it matters much, either result is implausible.

What part of your life is so random that you can do the exact same thing twice and get a different result each time and science's response to why that is is "Because it's random" instead of explaining the differences in what you did each time that make it so you get different results? No, rolling dice isn't one of them, because if you did the same roll the exact same way, you would get the same results. The human body just can't replicate its own motions accurately enough to do that. A machine probably could though.

I already told you, the effects of quantum randomness are most severe when we are dealing with a situation where a behaviour of small number of particles can over time create a large butterfly effect. In humans at least conception and early embryo development are such things. So are mutations in DNA which are key to the evolution as well as mutations which cause cancer.

 Crimson wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

And the people who tell me they rolled 10 dice a total of 2,000 times and came up with 16.9% 1s or so are offering... what proof exactly that would stop me from calling them a liar because they can't prove it?

I have said this many times, you just refuse to listen. There are many people that have independently made the observation that the dice produce the expected 16 to 17 % of ones. It is unlikely that many people would lie this about this, especially in absence of clear motivation to do so. Or do you believe that there is some elaborate conspiracy to cover up the inferios quality of GW/Chessex dice?

No. I just think that if you add up the total number of dice rolls that many independent people made that I can't confirm ever happened, it doesn't add up to the 180,000 rolls made by one guy that I can't confirm ever happened.

The second guy is offering me the information given to him by casinos, dice manufacturers, and physicists to provide a plausible reason why his results even happened since he initially wanted to disprove the myth for all time, not confirm it.

The other people are basically just offering the explanation for their results that dice offered by the company that created Finecast couldn't possibly be manufactured badly enough to be biased in favor of any particular results and that anyone who claims to have proved otherwise is suggesting a conspiracy instead of the poor manufacturing in order to save money the previous guy is saying is the reason he was given from Chessex when he phoned them to ask why their dice rolled so poorly.

I think the people being unreasonable here, if we're objective about this, are actually the ones denying the article's validity.

Also, a million dice rolls all coming up 6s is so much more unlikely than 144,000 rolls coming up with an average of 26% 1s for GW and Chessex dice

No it is not if we assume that the result is due imbalance in the dice as is the case here.

Furthermore, you keep misquoting the articel, they say 29% not 26%. Not that it matters much, either result is implausible.

The article ACTUALLY says:

"Afterwards we calculated the results and the Chessex and GW dice averaged 29% ones. Mind you that this is an average and our high was 33 and our low was 23. We removed any statistical anomalies and came up with 29%."

Maybe you should read it.

What part of your life is so random that you can do the exact same thing twice and get a different result each time and science's response to why that is is "Because it's random" instead of explaining the differences in what you did each time that make it so you get different results? No, rolling dice isn't one of them, because if you did the same roll the exact same way, you would get the same results. The human body just can't replicate its own motions accurately enough to do that. A machine probably could though.

I already told you, the effects of quantum randomness are most severe when we are dealing with a situation where a behaviour of small number of particles can over time create a large butterfly effect. In humans at least conception and early embryo development are such things. So are mutations in DNA which are key to the evolution as well as mutations which cause cancer.

Yeah, we already knew evolution relied on random mutations before Quantum Mechanics was a thing at all. And we knew that human conception was pretty much a crapshoot anyways.

 Pouncey wrote:

No. I just think that if you add up the total number of dice rolls that many independent people made that I can't confirm ever happened, it doesn't add up to the 180,000 rolls made by one guy that I can't confirm ever happened.

But if that one person is lying none of those rolls happened!

And you really don't need that many rolls in the first place. If such a huge imbalance as claimed by this stydy really existed, it would be blindingly apparent with thousand rolls easily. But it isn't because it doesn't exist.

The second guy is offering me the information given to him by casinos, dice manufacturers, and physicists to provide a plausible reason why his results even happened since he initially wanted to disprove the myth for all time, not confirm it.

He says he is. I doubt casinos would really reveal data about their dice balance or that a dice manufacturer would freely admit that their product is flawed and unsuitable for the purpose it is created.

The other people are basically just offering the explanation for their results that dice offered by the company that created Finecast couldn't possibly be manufactured badly enough to be biased in favor of any particular results and that anyone who claims to have proved otherwise is suggesting a conspiracy instead of the poor manufacturing in order to save money the previous guy is saying is the reason he was given from Chessex when he phoned them to ask why their dice rolled so poorly.

Chessex would not admit making a gakky product in order to save money even if it were true. It is also obvious that the claim about saving plastic is not true. Plastic saved in corners and pips of one die does not come even close making a third die. And people are not saying that the dice are not flawed (at least not that much) to defend GW, they have observed this by themselves.

I think the people being unreasonable here, if we're objective about this, are actually the ones denying the article's validity.

No. You are enamoured by one internet article as it uses language that sounds sciency to you.

The article ACTUALLY says:

"Afterwards we calculated the results and the Chessex and GW dice averaged 29% ones. Mind you that this is an average and our high was 33 and our low was 23. We removed any statistical anomalies and came up with 29%."

Maybe you should read it.

I did, several times. Article says 29%, just like I said. Not 26%, like you said.

 Crimson wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

No. I just think that if you add up the total number of dice rolls that many independent people made that I can't confirm ever happened, it doesn't add up to the 180,000 rolls made by one guy that I can't confirm ever happened.

But if that one person is lying none of those rolls happened!

And if, what, a high-end estimate of 100 other people are lying, none of the opposing rolls to that one guy ever happened?

I don't think it's impossible that 100 people all saying the same thing are wrong, much less lying.

And you really don't need that many rolls in the first place. If such a huge imbalance as claimed by this stydy really existed, it would be blindingly apparent with thousand rolls easily. But it isn't because it doesn't exist.

Why do you think this one guy decided to do 180,000 rolls about this in the first place?

He didn't invent the thing about GW dice rolling 1s more often than they should. He decided to disprove it, empirically, for all time, and ended up proving it instead. And he felt the need to disprove it strongly enough to have his students record the results of 180,000 dice rolls, for no other reason than because so many people believed it yet it had never been proven one way or another.

You don't remember that, because this article was posted on Dakka 10 years ago.

The second guy is offering me the information given to him by casinos, dice manufacturers, and physicists to provide a plausible reason why his results even happened since he initially wanted to disprove the myth for all time, not confirm it.

He says he is. I doubt casinos would really reveal data about their dice balance or that a dice manufacturer would freely admit that their product is flawed and unsuitable for the purpose it is created.

He said he had to prove to the casino he wasn't just some gambler looking for a way to cheat. He went through the effort needed to do so.

And he actually asked Chessex why they round the corners of their dice. They told him they save enough material to make it worth it. He probably didn't say that the reason he was asking was because he seemed to have proved that rounding the corners off Chessex dice unbalanced them incredibly badly.

The other people are basically just offering the explanation for their results that dice offered by the company that created Finecast couldn't possibly be manufactured badly enough to be biased in favor of any particular results and that anyone who claims to have proved otherwise is suggesting a conspiracy instead of the poor manufacturing in order to save money the previous guy is saying is the reason he was given from Chessex when he phoned them to ask why their dice rolled so poorly.

Chessex would not admit making a gakky product in order to save money even if it were true. It is also obvious that the claim about saving plastic is not true. Plastic saved in corners and pips of one die does not come even close making a third die. And people are not saying that the dice are not flawed (at least not that much) to defend GW, they have observed this by themselves.

He didn't ask them, "Why did you make a gakky product?" he probably instead asked them, "Why do you round the corners off your dice in the manufacturing process at all?" with the unspoken follow on, "Isn't it easier, cheaper and faster to make them more cubical and not need machines to round off the corners at all?"

Personally, I have observed some of my GW dice rolling a crapload of 1s when rolled one a time, but rolling more evenly when rolled with a handful of other dice.

I think the people being unreasonable here, if we're objective about this, are actually the ones denying the article's validity.

No. You are enamoured by one internet article as it uses language that sounds sciency to you.

Personally, I think you're in denial because you prefer your personal experience to trump things you don't believe can happen if you can't see them happening right in front of you.

The article ACTUALLY says:

"Afterwards we calculated the results and the Chessex and GW dice averaged 29% ones. Mind you that this is an average and our high was 33 and our low was 23. We removed any statistical anomalies and came up with 29%."

Maybe you should read it.

I did, several times. Article says 29%, just like I said. Not 26%, like you said.

It also says that's an average of the 36 GW and 36 Chessex dice. Each die rolled a number of 1s as low as 23% over 1,000 rolls, to as high as 33% over 1,000 rolls.

 Pouncey wrote:

And if, what, a high-end estimate of 100 other people are lying, none of the opposing rolls to that one guy ever happened?

I don't think it's impossible that 100 people all saying the same thing are wrong, much less lying.

It is not impossible, it is just very very improbable. It is way more probable that the one person who comes up with an outlandish result is lying.

Why do you think this one guy decided to do 180,000 rolls about this in the first place?

I don't think he did.

He didn't invent the thing about GW dice rolling 1s more often than they should.

People say their dice roll more ones. Some might even believe it, most are just joking. But it is confirmation bias, people just remember the unusual results.

Personally, I have observed some of my GW dice rolling a crapload of 1s when rolled one a time, but rolling more evenly when rolled with a handful of other dice.

Unless you actually test that it means nothing, it is most likely just confirmation bias.
(As you remember, I did test it, the number of dice rolled did not affect the probability.)

 Crimson wrote:
Unless you actually test that it means nothing, it is most likely just confirmation bias.
(As you remember, I did test it, the number of dice rolled did not affect the probability.)

At some point during an actual 40k game a few years ago, the following actually happened between me and my regular opponent for the past 10-11 years:

Me: "Ugghh, this is gonna suck..."

Opponent: "What do you mean?"

Me: "I'm about to have to roll 5 single melta weapons from different squads all in a row."

Opponent: "So?"

Me: "So whenever I have to roll a lot of melta weapons in a row, I seem to always end up missing with almost all of them. I think some of my white dice roll 1s way more often than they should for some reason, and I always use white dice for melta weapons so I can tell which die is the melta one at any point and it helps to have a consistent system so it's easy to remember."

Opponent: "That's silly. Your dice are fine."

Me: "Let's find out."

Me rolling my next 5 melta attacks consecutively with the following results: 1, 1, 1, 2, 1.

Opponent: "Wow. Uh... Maybe you should just stop using white dice entirely and use one of the other 6 colors of identical dice you have."

Me: "Yeah, probably."

Indeed. That can happen and that's exactly how confirmation bias works. You remember that forever. You don't remember the thousands of times when your dice rolled perfectly average and boring results.

 Crimson wrote:
Indeed. That can happen and that's exactly how confirmation bias works. You remember that forever. You don't remember the thousands of times when your dice rolled perfectly average and boring results.

To go back to an earlier argument, I'm going to show you just how much you misunderstand probability. I'm going to calculate the likelihood of 1,000,000 d6 rolls all coming up 6 on my computer's calculator by putting 6 to the power of 1 million. Also I'm probably going to have to ask Wolfram Alpha instead because I don't think my computer's calculator is that powerful.

Yup. 6^1000000 ends up with Invalid Input.

Okay, so asking Wolfram Alpha instead.

This is the page you get when you put 6 to the power of 1 million into Wolfram Alpha

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=6%5E1000000

That number has 778,152 digits. That is the number of numbers the unlikelihood of that has.

However, I don't know how to calculate the unlikelihood of rolling 29% 1s instead of 16% 1s over the 72,000 rolls of GW and Chessex dice that averaged out to 29% 1s. I don't even know what to type into Wolfram Alpha. You claim to, since you said you know it's the same as 1 million dice all coming up 6, i.e. 6^1000000.

Link me the Wolfram Alpha page with your results. Understand now that every 1 off from 778,152 digits your number has, means you were off by a full order of magnitude.

Honestly, if you're putting this much thought and stress into 40k, I feel like this is something you should quit. Tabletop games are supposed to be about being laid back and having something to do while you chill with your friends. It's not supposed to be something you lose sleep and get stressed over.

 NInjatactiks wrote:
Honestly, if you're putting this much thought and stress into 40k, I feel like this is something you should quit. Tabletop games are supposed to be about being laid back and having something to do while you chill with your friends. It's not supposed to be something you lose sleep and get stressed over.

No, I get this stressed out by dealing with people who don't understand the things they're claiming to understand better than I do and are willing to argue with me over it. WH40k is unrelated to that. Playing WH40k is something I only get stressed out about when my dog snaps at me because he's blocking my path around the table to where I need to be standing to do stuff with the models.

Now please. Tell me whether those two line up in terms of unlikelihood.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Other things I could've pointed out to prove why it was a blatantly invalid comparison without even typing anything into a calculator:

Point out that the 72,000 rolls done on GW and Chessex dice with an average of 29% 1s is way, way less rolls than 1,000,000 rolls required to get 1,000,000 results of a 6.

Point out that getting 100% 6s is way, way more unlikely than getting 29% 1s, regardless of the total number of dice rolled, unless your sample size of rolls is 1, at which point you shouldn't be expressing your results as 29% anything.

Point out that rolling one die 1,000,000 times and getting 100% 6s would basically prove beyond a reasonable doubt that something in the rolling result is making that die unable to roll anything but 6s, and is most likely loaded to such an absurd degree it's nearly impossible to get any other result. Also you wasted a lot of time proving it because you would've proven it anyways long before reaching 1,000,000 results. I think you could even prove psychic powers were real if that were the only explanation for what was happening.And you only stopped at 1,000,000 because you wanted to say you did it a million times.

The fact anyone even proposed they were similar was a blatantly obvious indicator the person who said that didn't know anything about probability at all.