Topic

11-sided die

Just been goofing off with Don Draper, repeatedly rolling our 12-sided dice and looking for trouble.

Between us we threw over 50 rolls and never once hit 'Rook'

I'm wondering if the dice have been tweaked for the launch to remove the rooks, or have we bought faulty goods?

Posted 15 months ago by Snazzlefrazz Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • I'm 99% sure that they have not been tweaked and you just got "lucky" ;)
    Posted 15 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I rolled it like 8 times before I hit 'Rook'.

    My statistics / chance calculation is very very rusted, but I know the possibility of never rolling Rook exists, no matter how much you roll. The chance doesn't increase if you roll more, for every roll it's still a 1-12 chance.

    The chances that this happens 50 times in a row might be small, but not unimaginable.
    Posted 15 months ago by Miriamele Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks guys. Yeah - probability of not hitting rook in 50 rolls is (11/12)^50 or roughly 1 in 100 so seemed worth checking.

    Don't bet on my lottery numbers this week.
    Posted 15 months ago by Snazzlefrazz Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Disclaimer: Not that your thinking is flawed at all, that's not how I mean what I'm about to say. :D

    There is a flaw in human reasoning that goes like this. Essentially, if you expect a behavior, and you observe that expected behavior multiple times in repeated tries of a process that's totally random (like a throw of dice for example), then obviously the more you see low numbers, the more likely it is that you will roll high numbers in the future. Makes sense right? Except that's not how nature works.

    Nature and the universe don't "keep score" so to speak. They don't care that you've rolled everything but the Rook 100 times before this moment right now. To the universe, every roll of the dice is a new, independent event. And the probability of tossing a Rook instead of any of the 11 Giants is always and forever 1 out of 12.

    (this blew my mind when I first learned about it. It's called the Gambler's fallacy. Check it out of you're interested. It probably helps that my girlfriend is a psychology major. :D)
    Posted 15 months ago by That Kid Tyler Subscriber! | Permalink
  • If you die has only 11 sides, you do not have a Rook and thus it is highly unlikely that you will ever roll one.  ; -)
    Posted 15 months ago by Brib Annie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I got a die today, and the rook was the first thing I rolled. Freaked me out a little.
    Posted 15 months ago by Knives Subscriber! | Permalink
  • It'd have to be something. But personally, I still freak out on occasion with the above reasoning no matter what the outcome. ;s

    FIRST ROLL LEM???? OH MY GOD WHAT IS THE CHANCE BLUUUUUH
    Posted 15 months ago by Negata Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Me too Negata! We all do at some point. That's part of the magic of being human!
    Posted 15 months ago by That Kid Tyler Subscriber! | Permalink
  • S'okay Tyler, no offence taken. My degree is engineering, my passion is logic and my profession is programming, so stats is right up my street.

    Incidentally, a more human-oriented & less number-oriented spin-off of the Gambler's Fallacy is the Sunk Cost Fallacy - http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/03/25/the-sunk-cost-fallacy/ <-- a long but really interesting read. Whilst I'm smart enough to spot Gambler's Fallacy and avoid it, I (and I suspect many others) fall for the Sunk Cost Fallacy every day. Sunk Cost Fallacy also has a Glitch-related aspect to it.

    The maths said the probability of rolling 50 non-rooks in a row was 0.013 - which I felt was statistically significant. The fun thing about posting here was I instantly increased my sample size... suddenly I'm including everybody else's rolls in my data set.

    Oh... and what do you know... my second roll this morning was rook :-D
    Posted 15 months ago by Snazzlefrazz Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Great point! That was a really interesting read. We're all slaves to experience and our own personal attachments to things.

    hoo boy mah brane itches.
    Posted 15 months ago by That Kid Tyler Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Even if you roll a rook, there's only a small chance that the roll will cause an actual rook attack, but it will cause a -50 mood drop every time... so you were lucky!
    Posted 15 months ago by glum pudding Subscriber! | Permalink