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Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy

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11–20 of 243 posts

Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy

#11
I'm probably very wrong, but I still feel there is some undiscovered science when it comes to RNG and the fallacy of the maturity of chances ( Gambler's Fallacy ).

Einstein believed the universe was deterministic. Just because it appears to us that there is no correlation between independent events ( the roll of a dice ), does not mean that there isn't some underlaying variable that we are unable to measure or perceive which is affecting the outcome of the roles.

Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy

#13
post #4

Interesting, and at first I was excited about the possibilities in something like D&D, where a series of bad rolls can have you feeling down. "I'm due for a critical hit any swing now..." Players would love that! Make my hero feel more heroic! The inevitable comeback! But then I thought about the inverse case -- you are doing really well, and now you are due for a failure. Or series of failures. That would feel awful…

Maybe a hybrid mode, where too many bad rolls bias the dice towards a more "true uniform" - lol - distribution while a series of good rolls just keep it actually fair.

Anyway, nice work!

Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy

#14

A great application for this is in randomizing playlists. My friends, who are also CS grads and should know better, have often complained that their MP3 players, CD carousels, etc play the same music too often claiming that the random is broken, when a song repeating in a short period of time or other songs never playing is what you would expect from a truly random selection. Using this algorithm, you'd be sure to he…

I think the original Zune had a bad randomizer. In my experience it would tend to play two songs from the same artist back to back.

Whether this was because they had a botched 'smart' randomizer or because they in fact used true random to shuffle, I may never know.

Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy

#15

A great application for this is in randomizing playlists. My friends, who are also CS grads and should know better, have often complained that their MP3 players, CD carousels, etc play the same music too often claiming that the random is broken, when a song repeating in a short period of time or other songs never playing is what you would expect from a truly random selection. Using this algorithm, you'd be sure to he…

This is also an example of users saying they want one thing (randomness) when really they want something else (variety).

Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy

#16
post #15

A great application for this is in randomizing playlists. My friends, who are also CS grads and should know better, have often complained that their MP3 players, CD carousels, etc play the same music too often claiming that the random is broken, when a song repeating in a short period of time or other songs never playing is what you would expect from a truly random selection. Using this algorithm, you'd be sure to he…

This is also an example of users saying they want one thing (randomness) when really they want something else (variety).

Both this and the GP are great lessons in software design.

Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy

#17
post #14

A great application for this is in randomizing playlists. My friends, who are also CS grads and should know better, have often complained that their MP3 players, CD carousels, etc play the same music too often claiming that the random is broken, when a song repeating in a short period of time or other songs never playing is what you would expect from a truly random selection. Using this algorithm, you'd be sure to he…

I think the original Zune had a bad randomizer. In my experience it would tend to play two songs from the same artist back to back. Whether this was because they had a botched 'smart' randomizer or because they in fact used true random to shuffle, I may never know.

The iPod and iTunes used to do this too - it’s because of a behavior you’d actually expect in a true randomizer called clustering.

Supposedly Jobs specifically “fixed” this behavior and it’s why there used to be (still is?) a slider that allowed you to customize that behavior.

Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy

#18

A great application for this is in randomizing playlists. My friends, who are also CS grads and should know better, have often complained that their MP3 players, CD carousels, etc play the same music too often claiming that the random is broken, when a song repeating in a short period of time or other songs never playing is what you would expect from a truly random selection. Using this algorithm, you'd be sure to he…

I actually tested the random distribution of Spotify's shuffle functionality: http://michaelmcmillan.net

Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy

#19
post #11

I'm probably very wrong, but I still feel there is some undiscovered science when it comes to RNG and the fallacy of the maturity of chances ( Gambler's Fallacy ). Einstein believed the universe was deterministic. Just because it appears to us that there is no correlation between independent events ( the roll of a dice ), does not mean that there isn't some underlaying variable that we are unable to measure or percei…

There almost certainly is but you can’t collect the data. At some point quantum effects will come into play too.

Theoretically all physical processes are predictable, but in practice there is a limit.

Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy

#20
post #11

I'm probably very wrong, but I still feel there is some undiscovered science when it comes to RNG and the fallacy of the maturity of chances ( Gambler's Fallacy ). Einstein believed the universe was deterministic. Just because it appears to us that there is no correlation between independent events ( the roll of a dice ), does not mean that there isn't some underlaying variable that we are unable to measure or percei…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem
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