# Games Workshop dice really do roll more 1's



## ufoturtle081 (Feb 10, 2011)

According to this article by some guys as ASU, dice with pips are bad. It does make sense: how could dice with all that plastic removed, not influence how the dice roll. Conclusion: GW dice are bad! From a competitive standpoint at least.

I was convinced when I first read it, so I went on a search for Casino Dice. But it took me a long time to find casino dice that were smaller than 3/4inch wide. Now if you are often rolling 15+ dice at a time as often happens when my DE Warriors Rapid Fire, then 3/4inch dice are just way too big.

So just in case any of you out there want some casino dice that are a manageable size, I have included the contact info for the guy who sold me the 5/8inch dice. The dice are kind of pricy at $8 a pair, but I think the smaller size is way worth it. The 5/8inch dice I bought have rounded corners, which I like better since they are easier to handle.

He can be emailed directly at:
*Bob Wilson*
_*Midwest Game Supply*_
[email protected]

Or if you would feel more comfortable going through the website directly, then go to this address:
http://midwestgamesupply.com/Info.htm

_--------------------------------------------------------------------_
_It is probably not your imagination._

_I am an engineer and I teach at ASU. In the beginning of every semester there is a lot of book work that my students need to do such as circuit board design and circuit mapping. During this time I have 4 students and a giant mechanical engineering lab at my disposal. So I decided to use my students to improve my 40k game._

_In the spring semester of last year I decided to discard the dice myth "I always roll more ones". So I took a box of the red and white GW dice, a cube of 36 chessex dice, 36 square corner dice with pips, and 36 Vegas style square dice with no pips. _

_I then constructed a series of plastic barriers that would be used to keep each dice independent of the others. In the lab we have a table that is 4 inches thick solid slate built on hydraulic legs to keep balance and resist independent movement. On this table we put all of the dice in the rolling container and labeled each case, giving each individual dice its own chamber and number._

_My 4 students then shook and rolled the dice 1000 times, recording each individual result. 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%._

_Game room logic, poor source of anything, would dictate that the side with the one is heavier and would therefore be on the bottom more. Unfortunately this is just not true, take popcorn or batholiths as an example. The 6 is too light to stop the momentum of the dice, the rounded corners cannot prevent the dice from turning due to the weight. In the end 1s are by far the most common result. On a 6 sided dice any given number should appear 16.6% of the time, the Vegas dice were dead on and the square dice with pips were pretty close only displaying a 19% ratio for ones._

_I contacted Caeser's Palace in Los Vegas and accessed their research, after much duress because they wanted to make sure I was not some gambling shark, and they had results that corroborated mine. _

_I then proceeded to buy more GW dice and we filled in the corners of the very same dice that we used, carefully melting the new plastic on to the old dice and filing in the corners to the right size and leveling them to .001 for accuracy. The dice then rolled more accurately but there was still a 19% in the ones category. Over a 1000 rolls from 36 dice this 3% variance from the expected norm is just not acceptable and cannot be considered random._

_Finally we dissected all of our dice and looked for air pockets or costitutional inconsistencies. We found a few and compared those to the results of the rolls of that individual dice and there was no consistent affect generated by the dice with plastic seeds but there was one with dice that had air bubbles._

_So I advise all players to use dice with no pips and only buy clear ones, like in Vegas, so you can see if there was a problem with the making of the dice. This is not going to prevent you from having a bad dice day but it will better ensure that you have some level of consistency. _


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## Doelago (Nov 29, 2009)

Erh... What the (very) fat fuck? You think to much... They are normal dices for fucks sake, its not exactly as if they made some kind of uber special shit, its just a dice you know, a 1 in 6 chance to get a 6, a 1 in 6 chance to get 1... Ouh, and a 7 in 6 chance of getting a 3 if you play Astartes.


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## Arm1tage (Feb 10, 2011)

Interesting, thanks.

I always thought the one with the deepest pips would roll the most sixes because of the weight of the 1. Apparently I was wrong.


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## GrizBe (May 12, 2010)

Not this bull again... *sighs* GW dice are NOT biased. They do not roll more ones then other dice. This is a result of bad statistics. If you rolled any other dice the same amount of times you'd get roughly similar results. End of.


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## increaso (Jun 5, 2010)

Can you link the full article?

I wonder if the results for the other numbers support the conclusions and/or if a machine doing the rolling would alter the results. I also don't think enough tests are done.

Quite, separately the logic for doing the test in the first instance appears flawed. If two people are playing and they use the same dice then surely if 1's are more common and presumably 2-6 have a similar % chance to land as each other then how does that improve the individuals ability to win?


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## Arm1tage (Feb 10, 2011)

increaso said:


> Can you link the full article?
> 
> I wonder if the results for the other numbers support the conclusions and/or if a machine doing the rolling would alter the results. I also don't think enough tests are done.
> 
> Quite, separately the logic for doing the test in the first instance appears flawed. If two people are playing and they use the same dice then surely if 1's are more common and presumably 2-6 have a similar % chance to land as each other then how does that improve the individuals ability to win?


If they use the same dice, its irrelevant.

If you want to get an unfair edge you use casino dice for the higher rolls, and GW dice for the ones you need to score lower. Its not going to win you the game but it is a small statistical edge.

That's all there is to it.


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## Stella Cadente (Dec 25, 2006)

Doelago said:


> They are normal badly made shit cheap low quality dice for fucks sake


:biggrin:
10 blah blah


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## Doelago (Nov 29, 2009)

Stella Cadente said:


> :biggrin:
> 10 blah blah


You noticed that you quote me in like every second thread where I post? Damn, stalking me are you?


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## ufoturtle081 (Feb 10, 2011)

increaso said:


> Can you link the full article?
> 
> I wonder if the results for the other numbers support the conclusions and/or if a machine doing the rolling would alter the results. I also don't think enough tests are done.
> 
> Quite, separately the logic for doing the test in the first instance appears flawed. If two people are playing and they use the same dice then surely if 1's are more common and presumably 2-6 have a similar % chance to land as each other then how does that improve the individuals ability to win?


I saw the article on DakkaDakka and Warseer first. I am not sure where it came before that.
Your right to want more details. Being critical of other peoples claims in a good skill to have. To many people are just sheep.


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## ufoturtle081 (Feb 10, 2011)

GrizBe said:


> Not this bull again... *sighs* GW dice are NOT biased. They do not roll more ones then other dice. This is a result of bad statistics. If you rolled any other dice the same amount of times you'd get roughly similar results. End of.


I think what the article is getting at is that all dice with pips statisically do not roll all 6 numbers evenly, not neccasarily just GW dice.

It does make sense though that the weight difference between sides, due to the plastic removed, would make certain numbers more likely. Why else would Casinos not use dice with pips? They are not saving any money by doing so.


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## C'Tan Chimera (Aug 16, 2008)

All dice are evil.

End of discussion.


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## Marneus Calgar (Dec 5, 2007)

Only the uber power gamer would care about if a dice rolls 3.3523535% more ones that the norm...


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## Dagmire (Oct 9, 2008)

Doelago said:


> Erh... What the (very) fat fuck? You think to much... They are normal dices for fucks sake, its not exactly as if they made some kind of uber special shit, its just a dice you know, a 1 in 6 chance to get a 6, a 1 in 6 chance to get 1... Ouh, and a 7 in 6 chance of getting a 3 if you play Astartes.


I think you missed the point. Its not a 1 in 6 chance if the dice are weighted poorly.

Also this guy did this for his job so its not a case of thinking to much.

I used to use GW dice about a year ago. I got rid of them when i noticed i rolled more ones then average. (2 rolls of 4 dice, all 1's, in a row)
You can't argue satistics.


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## Djinn24 (Jan 12, 2008)

I call bullshit unless I see an official published paper on this. Sounds like someone got bored.


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## Dagmire (Oct 9, 2008)

dude its all official, there should be a link somewhere
TEW podcast covered it in great length


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## ohiocat110 (Sep 15, 2010)

That's a nice class project, but 1000 rolls for 36 dice is nowhere near an adequate sample size for die rolling. That's only about 28 rolls per die, which means less than less than five trials per possible outcome. 

Bump that number up to 1500 trials per die and you can make a case for bias. 

Caesar's Palace would not be using dice with a 3% bias, and they likely told him that just to get him off the phone (if they did at all). Casinos use carefully machined dice that balance out the weight of the pips, by the way. If you want unbiased dice, pick up some precision dice. They're a bit more expensive (~$1 per) and usually uglier because they haven't been polished or rounded, but are readily available.


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## mynameisgrax (Sep 25, 2009)

Even if this is true, and I'm not so sure it is, this is only relevant when rolling a single die. I don't know about you, but I rarely roll a single die by itself. I usually wind up rolling handfuls, and with that many dice bouncing off each other, I can't see the results coming up as anything besides normal randomness.


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## Quozzo (Oct 2, 2010)

If the die is evenly weighted before the pips drilled in and all corners are equally curved, then the six _should_ be more common as the 1 at the opposite end will be heavier due to the increased weight because of the lack of pips drilled into into it.

No testing of dice will ever hold true results as its possible to get any and all combinations, if you roll ten 1s in a row then thats 1 in 60.5 million (give or take) it doesn't mean thats it impossible and the die is evil, its just highly unlikely, and that its easier to win the lottery!


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## GrizBe (May 12, 2010)

Quozzo said:


> If the die is evenly weighted before the pips drilled in and all corners are equally curved, then the six _should_ be more common as the 1 at the opposite end will be heavier due to the increased weight because of the lack of pips drilled into into it.!


This... Seriously, does no-one know how weighting dice to cheat works? You weight the side opposite to the one you want. Soo if the 6 is the lightest side as it more weight removed for the pips, they should roll more 6's. 

Hence why all of this is complete and utter bull.


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## Flayed 0ne (Aug 29, 2010)

...round edged dice are -crap-...from -anywhere-...the key to rolling random is not weight, but edges and facing...look at casino dice...

...you ALL need to watch -this- demonstration....(both parts)

http://www.gamescience.com/

...i have rolled -consistantly- better with these dice than i ever did with GW dice or Chessex dice...no bullshit...edges matter...

:victory:


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## Snake40000 (Jan 11, 2010)

I can make up random stuff to! Did you know that GW is releaseing a new race called gofukursef it will be a all mek army and every mek will have 14av on all SIDES. OMG i know so op. But its ok because all on them will have s 1 weapons. 

It just makes no sence; why can people understand that if you are going to say dump shit like this having proof might be helpful? As in a unbaised paper on how GW is trying to take over the world? Or am i mixing them up with the Free Masons?

Now can someone delete this retarded thread. No proof no dice; go spew your non sence alcwere.

*Edit*



Flayed 0ne said:


> ...round edged dice are -crap-...from -anywhere-...the key to rolling random is not weight, but edges and facing...look at casino dice...
> 
> ...you ALL need to watch -this- demonstration....(both parts)
> 
> ...


Now if only you had posted that before i started typing my little rant. See this is proof not great proof but conpelling.


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## ufoturtle081 (Feb 10, 2011)

Flayed 0ne said:


> ...round edged dice are -crap-...from -anywhere-...the key to rolling random is not weight, but edges and facing...look at casino dice...
> 
> ...you ALL need to watch -this- demonstration....(both parts)
> 
> ...


It is not that a lack of sharp edges that make dice biased, it is the difference in weight of each side due to the pips. If a each side of a die weighs exactly the same, then a sharp or rounded corners would make no difference. But you are partly right: if a dice does have pips then sharp edges are better becasue the edges catch the gaming surface better as the dice rolls and this helps minimize the effect the difference of weight per side has. If you are going to have pips, then sharp edges are better. But if you can get casino/precision dice with the pips filled in, then the edges are irrelevent.


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## ufoturtle081 (Feb 10, 2011)

ohiocat110 said:


> That's a nice class project, but 1000 rolls for 36 dice is nowhere near an adequate sample size for die rolling. That's only about 28 rolls per die, which means less than less than five trials per possible outcome.
> 
> Bump that number up to 1500 trials per die and you can make a case for bias.
> 
> Caesar's Palace would not be using dice with a 3% bias, and they likely told him that just to get him off the phone (if they did at all). Casinos use carefully machined dice that balance out the weight of the pips, by the way. If you want unbiased dice, pick up some precision dice. They're a bit more expensive (~$1 per) and usually uglier because they haven't been polished or rounded, but are readily available.


Check out the original thread by the guy who ran the experiment.
http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65531

He did not roll each die 28 times. He stated "each dice was indivisually rolled a 1000 times, so 4 sets of 36 dice (144 dice) rolled a 100o times equals 144,000 rolls."

The experiement seems pretty legit. Why else would casinos not use dice with pips. I think 144,000 rolls is reliable enough. As to those guys who have issues with rounded corners; some casinos do use rounded cornered dice, but they have no pips and are perfectly balanced like the ones I bought from Midwest Game Supply.


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## GrizBe (May 12, 2010)

Basically the guys saying 'Use square dice with no pips', which everyone already knew. The rest of that is total bollocks. Casino's always tell you that a dice will always land on its heaviest side more often. Hence, 6's will be more common with pipped dice.


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## Imperial Valor (Sep 1, 2010)

Few things:
1. It's a dice for Pete's sake.
2. Yes, all dice are biased technically, there is no such thing as a perfectly "fair" dice.
3. If you so badly want "fair" ish dice, go take some perfectly square rock that has been formed in the ground for millions of years and write 1-6 on each face.

I think we at least owe it to the creator of this thread some respect, and a little less foul language, he has gone to the trouble to draw to his conclusions, and has obviously put effort into the experiment.
To the majority of you moaners on this thread; you're probably looking as using this biased dice idea as a way of passing blame on your crap armies and playing skills.

Someone PLEASE shut this thread ASAP.


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## Snake40000 (Jan 11, 2010)

Imperial Valor

you sir are no fun at all.


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## Imperial Valor (Sep 1, 2010)

Snake40000 said:


> Imperial Valor
> 
> you sir are no fun at all.


I am Captain Bland.
Bring on the Trumpets!!


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## Stella Cadente (Dec 25, 2006)

Imperial Valor said:


> 3. If you so badly want "fair" ish dice, go take some perfectly square rock that has been formed in the ground for millions of years and write 1-6 on each face.


but the side I write 6 on will have more lead/ink on it, meaning it will have more weight.

perhaps somebody will suggest we use dice made by the swiss, while on swiss tables, with models made by the swiss.


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## ufoturtle081 (Feb 10, 2011)

Imperial Valor said:


> Few things:
> 1. It's a dice for Pete's sake.
> 2. Yes, all dice are biased technically, there is no such thing as a perfectly "fair" dice.
> 3. If you so badly want "fair" ish dice, go take some perfectly square rock that has been formed in the ground for millions of years and write 1-6 on each face.
> ...


Your right that no dice is perfect, but the precision dice that casino's use are pretty darn close. 

---------------------------------------------------------------
To the rest of they guys on this thread:
The guy who ran the experiment and deserves mad props is Yade, and his thread is at http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65531

To those out there who have issues: just hold your tongue for a moment and read Yade's comments throughout his orginal thread. His experiment seems very legit after reading the rest of his comments.

My thread was never meant to be a place for angry rants that disrespect the hard work that Yade put in. I just want to share this awesome data just in case anyone in the Hersey community had not yet seen it. Stop being douches and just appriciate the Yade's hard work.

It's cool to discuss insight you may have into the experiment, but don't desrespect eachother, it ruins the atmosphere here at Heresy.


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## Quozzo (Oct 2, 2010)

Quozzo said:


> If the die is evenly weighted before the pips drilled in





GrizBe said:


> This... Seriously, does no-one know how weighting dice to cheat works? You weight the side opposite to the one you want. Soo if the 6 is the lightest side as it more weight removed for the pips, they should roll more 6's.
> 
> Hence why all of this is complete and utter bull.


You should learn to read, and not jump to conclusions.i specifically said "drilled in" as it will reduce the weight of the 6 and by stark contrast, the 1 will be heaviest.


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## Luisjoey (Dec 3, 2010)

if you think that a dice is tricked (up or down) both players should play with the same dice pool! that should finish your misticism about charged or underpowered dices... Both get the same probability!


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## Eleven (Nov 6, 2008)

Flayed 0ne said:


> ...round edged dice are -crap-...from -anywhere-...the key to rolling random is not weight, but edges and facing...look at casino dice...
> 
> ...you ALL need to watch -this- demonstration....(both parts)
> 
> ...


ok, I stacked two stacks of 20 sided dice like this experiment showed, one stack on 1 to 20 and one stack on 10 to 11 so that they would be on different sides.

Both stacks were perfectly the same height (as close as the human eye can tell). However, one stack was leaning very slightly to the right, so if I doubled the height of the stacks, there probably would have been a difference by the height of 20, but it would be very slight.


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## TheReverend (Dec 2, 2007)

my favourite bit was:
_I am an engineer and I teach at ASU. In the beginning of every semester there is a lot of book work that my students need to do such as circuit board design and circuit mapping. During this time I have 4 students and a giant mechanical engineering lab at my disposal. *So I decided to use my students to improve my 40k game*._

Good use of a)university funds and b)lecturing time... hope his superiors didn't read this...


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## Haekmo (Mar 1, 2009)

i found your post very interesting ufoturtle .. as usual u get a lot of people puting their 2cents in for no reason at all except for trying to look like a big man, and dont think (or read properly ) before they speak...
Im sure your research wasnt warrented on being a powergamer and is based more on queries and interest.... pitty it went from a interesting subject to petty remarks...

nice work 
Haek


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

Utter rubbish- there is no way on earth that a fair dice rolls 29% 1s regardless of how its marked.
I would be pretty amased if the 'weight' of the removed pips made more then 1% difference, let alone 13%... if I'm ever incredibly bored while I have my dice on me I might bother to roll them 10000 times or so and add up all the ones rolled... anything short of that isn't going to convince me there is that much variability.


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## GrizBe (May 12, 2010)

Hence my previous comments about it being complete bollocks.

A completely fair and perfect dice would roll each number 16.68% of the time. A percentage of 1's almost double that perfect ammount is a complete impossibility. 

As pointed out, a dice with pips would be weighted more on the 1 side dude to the ammount of plastic removed from the others. Hence, the 1 side is heviest. To bias a dice, you weight the side opposite to the one you want to come up. If the 1 is the weighted side, 6 would come up more often, and the one would occur far less then the 17% of a perfect die. 

Soo.. in theres several conclusions. One, the dice used it the test were mickeyed with, make the results invalid. The test wasn't conducted properly, making the results invalid. Somehow, every single dice GW sells has been made incorrectly, and polished/moulded in such a way that they all have a massive flaw. 

Given the third outcome is soo unlikely, the only conclusion is that the test results are wrong, and GW dice are not that biased.


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## ufoturtle081 (Feb 10, 2011)

I find it so entertaining that so many guys on this thread think they know so much better than the guy(Yade) who conducted the experiement. It is as if no one has any idea how a conclusion is made using the scientific process. Yade did not come to his conclusions based on assumptions, his conclusions are based on actual data from an experiemnt. 

Making claims based on an idea that appears to make sense is wrong. You must first develop an hypothosis and then test it before you can support or refute someone elses conclusions that actually came from hard data.

It is not as if Yade just tossed some dice a few times and made a quick guess as to the times each # was shown. He rolled them over a 100,000 times in a controlled laboratory with different batches of dice.

I am not saying that I am not open to the possiblility that there were errors in Yade's methodes; it is even perfetly respectable to disagree. But saying that he is flat out wrong is a whole other matter considering none of you has any data that substantially refutes his conclusion.

I know it is hard for some to believe, but we do live in a world where progress does not come from superstitions and assumptions, but from a scientific process that supports conclusions with logic and hard data.

So please, before you go posting comments that claim that you know so much better than a real scientist, do the work to at least support your rants with more than just assumtions.


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## GrizBe (May 12, 2010)

Considering casino's, gaming companies, dice designers, roleplayer groups, etc etc have done thousands more similar experiments over the years to come to their conclusions and their results are no-where near his.... I'd say thats more then enough scientific evidence to show how wrong this guy is.

And before you assume, I've a degree in maths, so I know all about statistics and chance and can therefore flat out say the guy is wrong as I have been doing all along.


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## Quozzo (Oct 2, 2010)

> A completely fair and perfect dice would roll each number 16.68% of the time.


Your saying if i roll it 6 times I'm going to get 1,2,3,4,5,6 (not necessarily in that order) and again 1,2,3,4,5,6 and again? 

BTW its 16.6% or 16 and two thirds. 16.68% is way off considering your talking about two decimal places, I'm starting to doubt you know what your talking about.



> A percentage of 1's almost double that perfect ammount is a complete impossibility.


Have you never rolled snake eyes?


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## GrizBe (May 12, 2010)

Quozzo said:


> Your saying if i roll it 6 times I'm going to get 1,2,3,4,5,6 (not necessarily in that order) and again 1,2,3,4,5,6 and again?
> 
> BTW its 16.6% or 16 and two thirds. 16.68% is way off considering your talking about two decimal places, I'm starting to doubt you know what your talking about.
> 
> Have you never rolled snake eyes?


Okay... firstly, the statistics of rolling a 1,2,3,4,5,6 in order are highly improbable without some sort of cheating, so your not going to get that, or if you roll a dice 6 times are you likely to get 1-6 in order.. . But, in a perfect world with a perfect die, if you rolled a dice 120 times, 20 of those would be a 1, 20 a 2 and so on. 

And I goofed slightly, Its 16.67%. Its actually 16.66666 recuring, but you round it up to 16.67%, or further to 16.7%. How the hell is that way off? Your the one who has no clue what they're talking about here.


Also, snake eyes has nothing to do with it. The point was, on a single dice, your not ever going to roll it with 29% of its results being a one in a fair test. If a dice was truly biased, this would be much higher, and if the dice was slightly flawed, it would still be closer to the perfect 16.7% ratio... it wouldn't have a 13% difference towards just one number, especially in a dice where the 6 is the lightest side as indicated by the dice being pipped and having material removed from that face. 

GW dice are moulded, and if polishing is part of the process, and the die took on an 'egg' shaped due to this, you'd still get a higher propotion of the other numbers and the 6 comming up. You'd have hardly any 3 and 4 or 2 and 5 results depending on the shape and which axis was mostly polished, and again due to the 1 being the heaviest side, the 6 would come up more often.

Also, we're not given the guys other results anywhere. He only says that '1 came up 29% of the time'. How do we know that purely 6's weren't the other 71%, or given the 'egg' example, the other results weren't 23.7% 2,5 and 6 equally?

Whichever way you look at it, the research is flawed and you cannot conclude that GW dice are biased towards 1's, especially when the 1 is the weighted dice. 

Unless they're using some sort of superheavyweight paint to fill the pips, which they're not, theres no way to counteract the fact the dice should be naturally biased towards 6's.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

ufoturtle081 said:


> I find it so entertaining that so many guys on this thread think they know so much better than the guy(Yade) who conducted the experiement. It is as if no one has any idea how a conclusion is made using the scientific process. Yade did not come to his conclusions based on assumptions, his conclusions are based on actual data from an experiemnt.


*T/S goes and finds dice study*
Different paper looking at if removing the pips changed anything compared evendd results since on average each even result is 1 pip heavier then each odd result. In 20'000 throws there were 10'145 even results. Thats a 50.72% chance of getting an even.
So this study shows that A) lighter sides are favoured (so 1 woulod be least likely) and B) while the effect is noticable and, to me, surprisingly high it is still below the 1% mark... and then only with dice that they lable as "non-precision"

I'll even include where I got it: http://www.springerlink.com/content/e8322vu4035118p8/



ufoturtle081 said:


> So please, before you go posting comments that claim that you know so much better than a real scientist, do the work to at least support your rants with more than just assumtions.


Gotta say I love this, its hillarious... and for 2 reason.
First no-one made any scientific claims... they just expressed doubt in the original conclusions, which is actually precisely how science works. You might have a conclusion that you know is right and even have data to support it, but unless the data is good enough to convince others its just a waste of time. Any real scientist would never be convinced by a second hand retelling of some random bloke's investigation.
Secondly while I might be a maths teacher now, my degree was in Earth Science... and why is that funny? Because _every_ major advance in the entirety of Earth Science was assumed to be bollocks by more or less everyone when first announced. "The Earth is spherical" "bollocks"... "The Earth moves round the sun" "bollocks"... "The continents move" "bollocks" ...


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## ufoturtle081 (Feb 10, 2011)

GrizBe said:


> Considering casino's, gaming companies, dice designers, roleplayer groups, etc etc have done thousands more similar experiments over the years to come to their conclusions and their results are no-where near his.... I'd say thats more then enough scientific evidence to show how wrong this guy is.
> 
> And before you assume, I've a degree in maths, so I know all about statistics and chance and can therefore flat out say the guy is wrong as I have been doing all along.


I am definatly open to the possibility that Yade's data was corrupted by some other factor.

I tried surfing the web, but I could not find any other articles that refuted his data. Would you happen to have a link to one of the casino's artilces you speak of?



Tim/Steve said:


> *T/S goes and finds dice study*
> Different paper looking at if removing the pips changed anything compared evendd results since on average each even result is 1 pip heavier then each odd result. In 20'000 throws there were 10'145 even results. Thats a 50.72% chance of getting an even.
> So this study shows that A) lighter sides are favoured (so 1 woulod be least likely) and B) while the effect is noticable and, to me, surprisingly high it is still below the 1% mark... and then only with dice that they lable as "non-precision"
> 
> ...


Thanks T/S for sharing that article with us, but unfortunately I am to cheap to pay to access it at the link you provided. Would you be able to copy and paste the pertinant parts in this thread? But based on the part you did share, we have a big problem: two similar expariments with completely different data results.

You definalty got me thinking about how it is tough to truly believe any of these scientists. I could understand a difference in data by a few percenatage points but not this big of a margin between the two sources. I am going to do some rolling of these dice myself; it is the only way that I can be truly sure of it.

Very funny how people back then and now have always been quick to say "bollocks" about anything. I like to keep an open-mind to almost anything unitil see proof supporting or refuting it.



GrizBe said:


> Also, we're not given the guys other results anywhere. He only says that '1 came up 29% of the time'. How do we know that purely 6's weren't the other 71%, or given the 'egg' example, the other results weren't 23.7% 2,5 and 6 equally?


In Yade's original thread, he gives much more detail then what is posted here. Just go to this link and read his comments throughout his thread.
*http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65531*

EDIT: Oops, my bad. GrizBe is right. I thought Yade did post more data...I know I saw it somewhere...maybe by brain has finally given out. That link above does have more details of the experiment but the totals of how many times each # came up. Although YADE say he'd email the full spreadsheet to whoever asked.


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## GrizBe (May 12, 2010)

> 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%.


Thats the only line that mentions results, and as said, no-where does it mention what the otehr results for those dice rolls were. 

Also here: http://dicephysics.info/0107.htm

That was presented at a mathamatics conference by physics professors. It used dice of a much lower quality that GW dice. As can be seen from the results tables, even on spectacularly crappy dice, 1 was still of the least common numbers rolled. If a dice that cost less then $0.10usd for a pack of them isn't biased, GW ones that cost $.25 EACH aren't going to be either. The dice were rolled over 600,000 times, 6 times as many as the other guys, soo its a much more substantial, and therefore accurate sample.


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## GrizBe (May 12, 2010)

Tim/Steve said:


> Secondly while I might be a maths teacher now, my degree was in Earth Science... and why is that funny? Because _every_ major advance in the entirety of Earth Science was assumed to be bollocks by more or less everyone when first announced. "The Earth is spherical" "bollocks"... "The Earth moves round the sun" "bollocks"... "The continents move" "bollocks" ...


Erm.. hate to call you wrong there, but they've known the Earth was round as far back as the Ancient Greeks in the 6th century BC. 

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

Even before then, they still believed the earth to be disc shaped, which is still technically round.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

*T/S was going for emphasis not accuracy* ... When Columbus set out the general thought was that Earth was pear shaped, but its not really relevant. If you really want a laugh go investigate the flat earth society- they still argue that earth is flat. I could have given many better examples, as all the best examples are from the last 150yrs or so... but almost no-one would have understood them.

@ufoturtle... you should be able to follow that link for free: I searched for it from google scholar, not any fancy uni programme... though having said that I am on the internet through me uni broadband, which might change things. If you do want to find that document elsewhere search for:
Bias and runs in dice throwing and recording: A few million throws
Gudmund R. Iversen, Willard H. Longcor, Frederick Mosteller, John P. Gilbert and Cleo Youtz

now having said that *cough*mods voice*cough*
DO NOT MULTIPOST
The last 5 posts have been made by 2 people... there is no reason why they should not have been made in 2 posts and its a waste of bandwidth. Heresy doesn't like needless formatting or multiposts as they are wasteful and add nothing.. please dont do it
T/S
*cough*


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## ufoturtle081 (Feb 10, 2011)

Thanks for the addtional articles guys: good stuff.

I will still be running my own experiment to be sure though. 

It has been fun, thanks everyone for the constructive comments.

I have had enough talk of dice to last me a lifetime; I done.

See you all around the threads.


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## lockeF (Feb 18, 2011)

I have read through every post and have found it all very entertaining how everyone defends their claim with so much conviction. Now, I have not taken a statistics class yet but here is my two cents.

After reading a funny play, _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead_ I learned flipping a coin is always independent of itself. Yes you have a 50% chance of getting one result but that doesn't effect anything about the next flip. I always considered dice rolling to be the same, maybe I've been wrong, but I roll a dice and have an equal chance of getting any number. I roll again and have the same equal chance. No matter how many trials each dice roll is independent of itself so it's perfectly reasonable to get 1's ~30% of the time. All in all it's just a game with fancy army men and as soon as you decide that which dice you roll matter more than your skill then you have forgotten you are simply playing with expensive toys. 
On another note experiments should be done several times before results are considered. Again, I don't know much about statistics but I know there are tests to run to see if results are purely by chance, was a test like this ran?


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

Statistical relevance- yeah you can work out the likely standard deviation depending on how many times you roll teh dice, the more you roll them the more accurately the result should become. For example, if you roll a dice 1 million times you are almost certain to get 50.00% even rolls (if its perfectly fair), while only roling it once will obviously not get you that result.

As for independance- yeah, its one of the things thats most counter-intuitive to most people. If you flip a coin and get 5 heads on the trot then almost everyone would guess tails because its its 'turn'... this is rubbish, its always equal chance of tead/tails. The reason that getting 20 heads in a row is so unlikely is because you have specified what every result has to be... but its equally likely as getting 19 heads in a row and then a tail (or getting THHTTHHTTHHHHHTTHTHT). Each individual pattern of results are 1:1'048'576 when you deal with 20 throws... but many different patterns will end up giving you 10H and 10T, which makes thqat the most likely result.
This gives rise to something called the Central Limit Theorem... basically its always the one/thing in the middle thats most likely.


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## Ghost792 (Jan 6, 2010)

Something tells me it's a little poor to assume that rolling dice is so simple an act that small, painted dimples of plastic would have such a significant event. Every little thing that goes into the action of rolling dice is going to be slightly different everytime and all those little things in concert will have more effect than whether the dice has pips or numbers.


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## Quozzo (Oct 2, 2010)

GrizBe said:


> Whichever way you look at it, the research is flawed and you cannot conclude that GW dice are biased towards 1's, especially when the 1 is the weighted dice.


Thats the first thing you've said i agree to.



GrizBe said:


> Erm.. hate to call you wrong there, but they've known the Earth was round as far back as the Ancient Greeks in the 6th century BC.


Hmm. thats the second.



Quozzo said:


> Your saying if i roll it 6 times I'm going to get 1,2,3,4,5,6 (not necessarily in that order) and again 1,2,3,4,5,6 and again?





GrizBe said:


> Okay... firstly, the statistics of rolling a 1,2,3,4,5,6 in order are highly improbable without some sort of cheating,


I agree thats is why i said not necessarily in that order, but doesn't mean it can't happen without cheating, even you said it was "highly improbable" and not impossible. 



GrizBe said:


> But, in a perfect world with a perfect die, if you rolled a dice 120 times, 20 of those would be a 1, 20 a 2 and so on.


Thats not true not even close, even if the world was perfect, the results wouldn't be effected by the previous result and would randomly be anywhere between 1 and 6 everytime it was rolled. Even in the real world the result isn't effected by the previous result, ignoring the Chaos Theory and such things. So i rolled a dice 120 times and guess what, i got 25 1's (thats 20.8%). Here's the results

1, 3, 5, 1, 5, 6, 3, 4, 6, 5, 6, 6, 2, 1, 2, 1, 5, 2, 3, 2, 6, 5, 4, 1, 5, 2, 2, 4, 3, 5, 6, 1, 4, 6, 2, 1, 1, 2, 6, 4, 5, 3, 3, 1, 5, 2, 3, 5, 1, 4, 5, 2, 3, 1, 1, 6, 5, 4, 2, 1, 3, 1, 2, 4, 4, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 4, 5, 5, 1, 3, 1, 1, 3, 2, 1, 6, 2, 1, 5, 5, 2, 6, 4, 4, 4, 6, 5, 2, 1, 3, 3, 6, 6, 5, 1, 4, 4, 6, 2, 5, 1, 2, 3, 1, 1, 2, 5, 2, 5, 5, 5, 4

I didn't check the frequency of the other numbers as the first number proved my point.

Just for the record. getting a 1 for 29% of the time is possible, even throwing it 100,000 times. the problem is how many experiments do you need to do, to get the 29% results. In Yades case it was the first!



Ghost792 said:


> Every little thing that goes into the action of rolling dice is going to be slightly different everytime and all those little things in concert will have more effect than whether the dice has pips or numbers.


Clearly, thats why you dont get the same result everytime, but the weighted (or lack of weighted) pips influence what number the dice will land on. Thats why your toast lands butterside down, its heavier.


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