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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.

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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.