151–160 of 243 posts
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> Theoretically all physical processes are predictable If you count a radioactive decay event as a physical process, then this is not so.
I don’t. Radioactive decay is practically the very definition of the quantum effects I mentioned.
> 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. I am reminded of the approach that GamesByEmail.com used to address this criticism: http://www.game…
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Covering the plane randomly but without clusters is actually quite useful in simulations. The "random" numbers that do that are often call "low-discrepancy sequence".
Also called "quasirandom" numbers, as I learned it from wikipedia years ago. ("Quasirandom" and "quasirandom numbers" today redirect to "low-discrepancy sequence".)
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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.
I've never played in real life with the deck, but I first came across this version on a software version of Catan I had (I think Xbox?). I really enjoyed it and my guess is that in real life it adds a substantial angle to negotiating placement of the robber. In particular, bribing people to put/not put the robber in a given location - if the deck is 7-heavy or your good squares are already drawn, no big deal.
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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.
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…
Better have games without dice rolls. Unexpected events could come from other non-random sources (like the combination of a lot of factors involving other players actions).
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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…
Likewise, if you use the Traders and Barbarians dice-deck, the same thing applies - there are 5X as many 6s and 8s in the deck as there are 2s and 12s.
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 know this is about being "technically correct" but I'd argue that even if you're pedantic and know the behavior of true randomness, the complaints are justified.
First, "pick a song from a uniform distribution" is an implementation detail, not the use case. The use case is "pick songs in a pleasant, novel order". If the implementer chose to do this using uniform randomness, that's their descision. If that implementation does not fulfill the use case, it's a bug and also their responsibility.
Second, the function is frequently called "shuffle" - so it even gives some hints about the implementation expected. No shuffling algorithm should ever result in duplicates. (except at the beginning and end of playlists)
Can someone explain to me why there is such a large discrepancy for the different sides for math.random()? seems fairly large