Live data from Hacker News

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

github.com

141–150 of 243 posts

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

#142
post #120
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! Sometimes the hardest thing is knowing what to google!

Another algorithm along these lines is the "shuffle bag" algorithm.

Settlers of Catan switched to this at some point--from 2 dice to a set of numbered tiles with the same distribution that you shuffle and draw from. It definitely pared some "oh man I'm so unlucky" scenarios from the game but I'm not convinced it made it more fun.

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

#143
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some competitive games like Dota and LoL, the random distribution for critical hits is weighted so that it ramps up over time, resetting after a successful crit. ( http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Random_distribution ) This both reduces the chance of two high rolls coming up twice in a row as well as long periods of low rolls. It doesn't have the "you are doing really well, and now you are due for a failure" since "not…

I've heard Blizzard does the same thing for valuable random drops (like legendary drops in Hearthstone and Diablo 3): instead of being random, there's a proc rate so you can't get screwed by chance.

They do it in Hearthstone for pack openings, the players call it the "pity timer" - you're guaranteed to get a legendary card after opening 40 packs or something like that.

There are even websites like https://pitytracker.com/ that keep track of where you are in your chances.

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

#144
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…

In some competitive games like Dota and LoL, the random distribution for critical hits is weighted so that it ramps up over time, resetting after a successful crit. ( http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Random_distribution ) This both reduces the chance of two high rolls coming up twice in a row as well as long periods of low rolls. It doesn't have the "you are doing really well, and now you are due for a failure" since "not…

Dota was my first thought when I read the article. Good Dota players pay attention to their crits, and if they haven't had one in a few hits they adjust strategy with the expectation of higher damage, something you would never do if it was truly random.

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

#145
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The thing about rolling 2D6, is the distribution isn't even. I'm not sure that factors into the game (have played but its been a while). Cards seem like a more controlled way to distribute the results with some randomness. only one way to get a 12 (6+6) but 7 much more likely.. (6+1, 5+2, 4+3, 3+4, 2+5, 1+6) as someone who played a bit of online backgammon back in the day, We always suspected the random dice rolls be…

Catan takes the distribution into account, and is pretty up front about it (There are dots on the numbers that represent the probability). I've played a lot of games of Catan and, every once in a while, you'll have a statistically unprobable game where 11 is rolled 10-15 times, but 6 is only rolled 3 times the whole game.

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

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some competitive games like Dota and LoL, the random distribution for critical hits is weighted so that it ramps up over time, resetting after a successful crit. ( http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Random_distribution ) This both reduces the chance of two high rolls coming up twice in a row as well as long periods of low rolls. It doesn't have the "you are doing really well, and now you are due for a failure" since "not…

Fascinating! I wonder if the distribution is engineered like that to avoid specious cheating claims. E.g. Player:"Look at this video of Famous_Player getting 3 crits in a row! They're probably cheating!" So much potential for fallacies; Gambler's Fallacy, Silent Evidence Fallacy..

Nah, Icefrog doesn't make decisions like that. It's all about what makes the game more fun.

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

#147
post #80
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Read the blog post, what you their feedback was about is the same artist playing for too long.

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

#148
> I made a chatbot that rolled dice, and it was constantly criticized for being "broken" because four 3's would come up in a row.

> These accusations would come up even though they (all being computer science majors) know it's possible (although unlikely) for these events to happen. They just don't trust the black box.

This reminds me of a talk [1] given at Game Developer's Conference (GDC) about the game Civilization, in which the Sid Meyer -- creator of said game -- spent a bit of the time talking about the difference between fairness and perceived fairness. The talk is only an hour long and worth watching.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts

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

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some competitive games like Dota and LoL, the random distribution for critical hits is weighted so that it ramps up over time, resetting after a successful crit. ( http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Random_distribution ) This both reduces the chance of two high rolls coming up twice in a row as well as long periods of low rolls. It doesn't have the "you are doing really well, and now you are due for a failure" since "not…

Dota was my first thought when I read the article. Good Dota players pay attention to their crits, and if they haven't had one in a few hits they adjust strategy with the expectation of higher damage, something you would never do if it was truly random.

[deleted]

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

#150

Can someone explain to me why there is such a large discrepancy for the different sides for math.random()? seems fairly large

It's actually not that bad. The graph just emphasises the subtle differences. The worst one (a 10) was rolled 696 times extra over the expected number of 100,000 rolls. That's like 0.3% deviation.
Post reply on HN