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2016/06/16 13:03:44
Subject: Re:I am going to blow your minds with TRUTH!
I understand why you thought it'd be a cool thread. Physics is awesome, and sometimes it's neat to take a step back and appreciate that we've been able to decode it in any meaningful way at all. There's a beauty in that, and as someone who has had such a passion as well, that was a nice sentiment.
Spoiler:
I once had the ability to flip quarters to the side I wanted. I did it by gauging how fast the coin was spinning, and when I caught it I'd either open my hand (since I was very certain I caught it on the "called" side), or I'd slap it onto the back of my other hand (as I was certain I caught it on the "not called" side). I was able to do this because a coin flip isn't random, and by catching it, I was reducing the randomness. However, if I let the coin fall to the ground, then my ability to call it went out the window. The possible ways for it to bounce along the ground increased the variables by too much.
There are people who try to do the same with dice rolling. They try to hold the dice and roll the dice the exact same way each time. This can work on a gaming table too. It is almost impossible to work at a casino though, because the casino is aware of this and designs their dice-rolling systems to add more complication, and thus more randomness, to the dice roll. They require a dice to be rolled from at least a certain height, from so far away, and the dice must hit the "back wall" of the table. These walls, you'll notice, are spiked with rubber prisms too, just to help randomize that bounce-back. Even still, these tables are changed up and moved around frequently to help stop people from learning the angles.
So yes, it's possible to call shots, but most could consider that cheating. You'll also only be able to do so by playing the same table and rolling from the same spot all the time. If you notice someone rolling in an odd way every time, in the same space (and usually rolling in a way to minimise how much the dice bounce), politely ask them to roll differently. If they say this is their "lucky" way of rolling, simply explain that it's actually dice manipulation that they're doing, by trying to remove luck from the equation.
However, most people don't care about the difference between true random and effectively random. If you only accept perfection, you'll never achieve anything. You can't achieve a perfect vacuum. There's always something that gets in there. The best you can do is get "close enough", and work with that. Dice rolls, in most cases, are random "enough". And most people know this, but accept it anyways. While it may seem mind-blowing in terms of "can you comprehend the beauty of it", it's no more mind-blowing than a Van Gogh painting. Some people will be awed by that, and others will go "so what? it's just colouring pigments on a sheet of fabric." Neither are wrong. It's about whether or not you care about it that's important.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/06/16 13:04:06
Galef wrote: If you refuse to use rock, you will never beat scissors.
2016/06/16 13:36:51
Subject: I am going to blow your minds with TRUTH!
Mind not blown. Also how is this related to 40K and not any other game?
Agies Grimm:The "Learn to play, bro" mentality is mostly just a way for someone to try to shame you by implying that their metaphorical nerd-wiener is bigger than yours. Which, ironically, I think nerds do even more vehemently than jocks.
Everything is made up and the points don't matter. 40K or Who's Line is it Anyway?
Auticus wrote: Or in summation: its ok to exploit shoddy points because those are rules and gamers exist to find rules loopholes (they are still "legal"), but if the same force can be composed without structure, it emotionally feels "wrong".
2016/06/16 15:08:26
Subject: Re:I am going to blow your minds with TRUTH!
On a side note, a group studied and learned how to roll two dice in a Vegas Crap shoot so that the probability of rolling a 7 lowered from 1 in 6 to something like 1 in 23 (there is a documentary of this) They won a ton of money and were eventually banned. The guy would lay the dice with a 1 and 6 showing, then pinch them and toss them so they landed as flat as he could, then bounced into wall. IIRC, the man in charge tested hundreds of students to find the one who could consistently throw them this way.
(Yes, I am ignoring all the we will be robots stuff...)
I have also played against opponents who would do mathhammer on paper before deciding if a charge or shooting attack was worthwhile...wasn't fun.
Keeping the hobby side alive!
I never forget the Dakka unit scale is binary: Units are either OP or Garbage.
2016/06/16 15:12:13
Subject: I am going to blow your minds with TRUTH!
I had a friend who was very good at being able to throw the number he wanted when he wanted it. He was best at it with his own dice set; they were not loaded, but he had practiced enough rolling them that it was akin to rolling a strike when bowling. I've learned to do a similar stunt with coin tossing, though I imagine that is a lot easier.
Once I had learned about his trick, we always made him use a dice cup when he would play with us.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/06/16 15:19:18
It never ends well
2016/06/16 15:40:58
Subject: I am going to blow your minds with TRUTH!
Pouncey wrote: Dice are not actually random, they obey the laws of physics and two perfectly identical dice-casts will always result in two perfectly-identical results. They are simply beyond the human mind's ability to predict. Usually. There are occasionally people like my dad who have been known to call their dice rolls at random moments and have never been wrong when they do so, regardless of how favorable or unfavorable the result was.
I'm really sorry but you'll actually find that BECAUSE dice rolls, as all physical actions, follow the laws of physics two identical dice-casts will NOT always result in two perfectly identical results.
Rolling a dice for all intents and purposes, as a measurement of probability, is an expression of the physical representation of the probability of a result which can be expressed as a wave function.
What I mean is that if you roll a dice in exactly the same way, in exactly the same conditions from exactly the same starting point you can draw a wave function which will look like an inverted U and the peak of that wave will be the probability of getting the same result as the first attempt. However, as it is a wave, the tailed off portions of the graph will be an expression of the probability of getting a different result ie. one of the other 5 results on the die.
No matter how small, the probability is still there and chaos theory tells us that no matter how unlikely, even if the roll can be completely replicated, you MUST get a different result at some point.
I won't even bore you with the concept of the wave function continuing past the defined boundaries of 1 to 6 and creating a probability for getting a result that is not even on any of the faces... and I'm not talking about a cocked result.
2016/06/16 15:50:23
Subject: I am going to blow your minds with TRUTH!
You claim physics, then talk about "getting a feeling." Because almost everything you're saying here amounts to "I felt lucky" while you try to explain it through physics, even though you don't claim to be rolling the dice the same way every time or in the same spot. Are you trying to instead say humans can be psychic at times pertaining to acts of chance? That seems to be the actual argument you're defending. Or did you feel the pips in the palm of your hand and knew how you were holding the dice, and therefore the likeliest outcome, or maybe you looked at the dice in your hand and arranged them in a certain way to try to get a certain result based on how you always throw them?
I call my dice rolls all the time. Sometimes I'm right. Bow to my mastery of physics.
2016/06/17 01:05:52
Subject: I am going to blow your minds with TRUTH!
I'm actually of the opinion that some people are good enough at rolling a single dice that they can skew the results away from every number rolling 1/6th of the time. Specifically, rolling 1s noticeably less than 1/6 of the time.
I noticed a strong enough correlation between rolling 1 dice and statistically significant reduced 1s rolled that I now politely ask opponents not to do single rolls without an in game reason.
Pouncey wrote: Dice are not actually random, they obey the laws of physics and two perfectly identical dice-casts will always result in two perfectly-identical results.
Given you can never ever achieve to exactly identical dice rolls, this isn't really a point that's relevant to much. Even still: I think that, eventually, the dice rolls will produce different results (even if you could somehow make them identical).
Pouncey wrote: They are simply beyond the human mind's ability to predict. Usually.
Not usually, more than usually. In almost all cases, it's impossible to predict. If there was a reasonable chance of accurately predicting any given pseudo-random dice roll, then dice-based games would probably not exist (this is not the only consequence of accurate predictions, but the most relevant). The fact that it is nearly impossible to predict is also the reason why we consider a properly rolled dice to give a pseudo-random result.
Pouncey wrote: There are occasionally people like my dad who have been known to call their dice rolls at random moments and have never been wrong when they do so, regardless of how favorable or unfavorable the result was.
I find this hard to believe. It also doesn't prove that dice are not pseudo-random.
Note that I've said the dice is pseudo-random rather than random since nothing is ever truly random.
2016/06/17 01:14:50
Subject: I am going to blow your minds with TRUTH!
materpillar wrote: I'm actually of the opinion that some people are good enough at rolling a single dice that they can skew the results away from every number rolling 1/6th of the time. Specifically, rolling 1s noticeably less than 1/6 of the time.
I noticed a strong enough correlation between rolling 1 dice and statistically significant reduced 1s rolled that I now politely ask opponents not to do single rolls without an in game reason.
The probability of rolling a particular result on a D6 (1 in 6) or getting a particular result when tossing a coin (1 in 2) is based on repetition. It's the idea that if you could roll a D6 infinitely many times, any given result would appear roughly one sixth of the time, meaning that the probability of seeing any given result is 1 in 6.
2016/06/17 01:24:17
Subject: I am going to blow your minds with TRUTH!
materpillar wrote: I'm actually of the opinion that some people are good enough at rolling a single dice that they can skew the results away from every number rolling 1/6th of the time. Specifically, rolling 1s noticeably less than 1/6 of the time.
I noticed a strong enough correlation between rolling 1 dice and statistically significant reduced 1s rolled that I now politely ask opponents not to do single rolls without an in game reason.
The probability of rolling a particular result on a D6 (1 in 6) or getting a particular result when tossing a coin (1 in 2) is based on repetition. It's the idea that if you could roll a D6 infinitely many times, any given result would appear roughly one sixth of the time, meaning that the probability of seeing any given result is 1 in 6.
Personally, I feel like I roll a lot of 1s when I fire meltaguns one at a time. Had quite a few chains where I fire multiple units' melta weapons at tanks and roll more than half of the to-hit rolls as 1s. It's gotten to the point where I sometimes ask my opponent if I can roll extra, differently-colored dice that have no actual gameplay meaning along with the one meltagun die to improve my odds.
I do primarily use GW dice though, which according to one professor's study involving thousands of rolls with 4 different companies' dice, are skewed toward rolling 1s. And I always roll white dice for melta weapons, so it's possible one of my white dice is very defective and I just happen to have chosen that particular one during those streaks. Or maybe I just get unlucky.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/06/17 01:32:30
2016/06/17 01:51:58
Subject: I am going to blow your minds with TRUTH!
materpillar wrote: I'm actually of the opinion that some people are good enough at rolling a single dice that they can skew the results away from every number rolling 1/6th of the time. Specifically, rolling 1s noticeably less than 1/6 of the time.
I noticed a strong enough correlation between rolling 1 dice and statistically significant reduced 1s rolled that I now politely ask opponents not to do single rolls without an in game reason.
The probability of rolling a particular result on a D6 (1 in 6) or getting a particular result when tossing a coin (1 in 2) is based on repetition. It's the idea that if you could roll a D6 infinitely many times, any given result would appear roughly one sixth of the time, meaning that the probability of seeing any given result is 1 in 6.
Personally, I feel like I roll a lot of 1s when I fire meltaguns one at a time. Had quite a few chains where I fire multiple units' melta weapons at tanks and roll more than half of the to-hit rolls as 1s. It's gotten to the point where I sometimes ask my opponent if I can roll extra, differently-colored dice that have no actual gameplay meaning along with the one meltagun die to improve my odds.
I do primarily use GW dice though, which according to one professor's study involving thousands of rolls with 4 different companies' dice, are skewed toward rolling 1s. And I always roll white dice for melta weapons, so it's possible one of my white dice is very defective and I just happen to have chosen that particular one during those streaks. Or maybe I just get unlucky.
I'm not necessarily saying that each result has an exact probability of 1 in 6 of showing up on a fair D6, I'm just saying there's a reason that the probability of 1 in 6 has its background in solid probability theory.
Also, in your example of the GW dice here, the results are still technically pseudo-random, but at biased/skewed.
2016/06/17 04:09:04
Subject: I am going to blow your minds with TRUTH!
"-Nonsense, the Inquisitor and his retinue are our hounoured guests, of course we should invite them to celebrate Four-armed Emperor-day with us..." Thought for the Day - Never use the powerfist hand to wipe.
2016/06/17 04:54:00
Subject: I am going to blow your minds with TRUTH!
I am well aware that dice rolls aren't actually random. HOWEVER, if I was playing a game against someone who did this in practice, I would pack up my stuff and go home.
Why? Because while I don't necessarily consider it to be cheating, it goes against the spirit of the game and would take FOREVER.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/06/17 05:16:04
'No plan survives contact with the enemy. Who are we?'
'THE ENEMY!!!'
Pouncey wrote: Dice are not actually random, they obey the laws of physics and two perfectly identical dice-casts will always result in two perfectly-identical results. They are simply beyond the human mind's ability to predict.
Throwing dice depends on other factors, too.
A basic question is how to throw two dice identically?
2016/06/19 13:36:40
Subject: I am going to blow your minds with TRUTH!
There is no such thing as 2 perfectly identical die casts. Microfactors such as tiny variation in wrist positions will alter it. Even smaller factors all add up (let's call them nanofactors) to alter the results. Even if you throw it perfectly identical twice, the position of the Earth, Moon, Sun will lead to minor gravity changes, micro air currents and Brownian motion of the air, damage to the die or the table on the previous through. If you believe in it, you could also consider the "belief" thing, where the human mind's total belief in a thing can minorly alter the physical world (ie, "There's NO way in hell, he can get ANOTHER 6 after 52 in a row") although personally say that's bs. But the tiniest variations like gravity, air, heat, etc, will all affect it.
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2016/06/19 18:33:41
Subject: I am going to blow your minds with TRUTH!
They're 'predictable' in the same sense that the course of events of in the universe is 'predictable' if you were able to calculate all the particle interactions and how they would resolve.
It's technically true, but not something that can actually be done.
I am reminded of a Star Trek: TNG episode where Data ended up playing craps and was able to get the rolls he needed, because the calculations for controling the throw of the dice, bouncing them off one surface, and having them show the face needed is a fairly simple calculation - just not one that the human brain can do on the fly.
"-Nonsense, the Inquisitor and his retinue are our hounoured guests, of course we should invite them to celebrate Four-armed Emperor-day with us..." Thought for the Day - Never use the powerfist hand to wipe.
2016/06/19 20:02:24
Subject: I am going to blow your minds with TRUTH!
~1.5k
