Now I really want physical loaded dice which follow the gambler's fallacy! Is it too crazy of an idea?
Maybe if the dice think they are settling on a too-common result, the internal servo gives them an impulse?
Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
61–70 of 243 posts
Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
#62This reminds me of Sid Meier's talk at GDC about having to game the random number system because of player's expectations: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1012186/The-Psychology-of-Game-... More often than not, true RNG in game design takes a back seat to fun.
Playerunknown's battlegrounds currently suffers from item spawns being "too random". You can go houses without finding a rifle then suddenly find 2-3 practically on top of each other.
They could do with learning a little from other games and making it a little less random.
Ultimately you can see it as a bug in human reasoning but we're the ones playing the game.
Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
#63There's a probability model called the Pólya urn where you imagine an urns containing numbered balls (colored balls in a typical example, but to draw the comparison with dice we can say they're numbered 1-6), and every time you draw a ball of a certain color, you put back more balls according to some rule. A few probability distributions can be expressed in terms of a Pólya urn, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%B3lya_urn_model.
A fair 6-sided die would be an equal number of balls numbered 1-6 and a rule that you simply return the ball you drew. You can get a gambler's fallacy distribution by, say, adding one of every ball that you didn't draw. I read the code as a Pólya urn starting with 1 ball 1-N and doing that on each draw plus reducing the number of balls of the drawn number to 1.
Also related, in 2d space, is the idea of randomly covering the plane in points but getting a spread-out distribution, since uniformity will result in clusters. (If you're moving a small window in any direction and you haven't seen a point in a while, you're "due" to see another one, and vice versa if you just saw a point.) Mike Bostock did a very nice visualization of that here: https://bost.ocks.org/mike/algorithms/
Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
#64Eh, I thought this was something more mathematical, like non-transitive dice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontransitive_dice). Apparently it's... a weighted random number generator? in node.js?
Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
#65Now I really want physical loaded dice which follow the gambler's fallacy! Is it too crazy of an idea?
I was a little disappointed when I clicked, too. I can't think of a way you could make physical dice like that, unless maybe the faces were LEDs? That might be too fragile.
Apple has a patent[0] for a fall-protection system that will rotate the phone while it's in the air. If something like that could be made small enough to fit into a die, that would work.
The biggest challenge will probably be the power supply. I'm sure that a processor, accelerometer, and the Taptic Engine (the thing that provides vibration and haptic feedback in Apple devices) are all small enough to fit in a typical die. Of course, something like this could easily be built into a larger novelty die.
Bonus points should be awarded if the die is perfectly balanced when it's not actively adjusting itself in mid-air.
[0] http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/12/02/apple-patents-acti...
Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
#66A 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
Spotify wrote a brilliant blog post on this. Highly recommend reading.
Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
#67There's a probability model called the Pólya urn where you imagine an urns containing numbered balls (colored balls in a typical example, but to draw the comparison with dice we can say they're numbered 1-6), and every time you draw a ball of a certain color, you put back more balls according to some rule. A few probability distributions can be expressed in terms of a Pólya urn, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3…
Thank you! Sometimes the hardest thing is knowing what to google!
Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't this be the opposite of what you want? You'd weigh down the current bottom face, making that face more likely to be on the bottom for future rolls.
if the die is leaving residue, that face is getting lighter, and therefore will want to be on "top"
Oh, you're right. I was thinking the residue material was all contained inside the die, not that the die itself was made from it and would gradually fall apart as you used it.
Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
#69A good application for this would be prevent "Starvation" when doing random rewards in a video game. For instance, if a special item is to be dropped after defeating a boss...
Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
#70[deleted]