This reminds me of an article discussing the perceived outcome of RNG decisions in video games. In many types of games, the system will display a percentage chance of success for a given action which allows the player to make risk assessments regarding possible choices. Unfortunately, the unmodified RNG behavior creates an unpleasant experience for the user because the unweighted random outcomes feel "unfair" when failure streaks pop-up, thus, game designers almost always introduce some type of magic cushioning to the RNG so that the user never faces too many repeated failures.
Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
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Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually tested the random distribution of Spotify's shuffle functionality: http://michaelmcmillan.net
On your website you put a source mark on the statement 'This is the same reason the Brits mistakenly assumed that the Germans had an exceptionally good aim with their V-1 flying bombs during World War II ' I'd like to read about this, do you still have the intended link?
Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
#73I had the privilege of studying probability from G-C. Rota. One of my favorite quotes from him was "Randomness is not what we expect", which he used to describe the phenomenon of people disbelieving that random data was actually random. Another great was "This will become intuitive to you, once you adjust your intuition to the facts."
Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
#74Interesting, 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…
I made this specifically for my online D&D sessions. I can tell you that nobody was suspicious when I replaced the standard Math.random() with this version, and all of the "I think your dice function is broken" statements all the sudden stopped happening.
As a D&D player I can see how this might be nice, but at the same time it would be frustrating to get a 20 for something stupid (passing a DC5 check) and know that it had a real effect on my chances for getting a 20 when I could actually use it (a critical attack roll).
Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
#75A 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…
Not sure this works perfectly for playlists, because it's still possible for it to roll the same thing twice in a row - it's just less likely.
Long ago I asked this related question on stackoverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5467174/how-to-implement... - it surprises me still that nobody has identified a classic algorithm for solving exactly this problem.
Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
#76Now I really want physical loaded dice which follow the gambler's fallacy! Is it too crazy of an idea?
You could just use a deck of cards with numbers on them. That's the simplest way to do "Gambler's Fallacy Dice" IRL. For example, there's a popular Catan expansion pack that replaces the dice with a deck of cards with numbers on them for just this reason, because in Catan each roll of 2D6 represents different regions of the map paying out so if a number never comes up it never pays out.
One of our first house rules for Catan was to introduce a deck. Not quite sure why they went with dice for that game; the deck eliminates a lot of boring games.
Some purists insist that they role dice, so we just let 'em and the resulting game feels quite like you're using gambler's dice.
Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
#77I like to think of this as "human random". It's easier to get along with people using this type of algorithm.
Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
#78I think they didn't trust your programming skills as much as the possibility of absurd sequences :D
Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 typica…
Oh my god, you totally could use reaction wheels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_6p-1J551Y
Re: Show HN: A Set of Dice That Follows the Gambler's Fallacy
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. https://labs.spotify.com/2014/02/28/how-to-shuffle-songs/
As it is apparent from the comments, most people want the playlists shuffled, but after a song is played, it is taken out of the set that's to be shuffled. So a song is never repeated.