Are Zocchi Dice Viable? » Design for the D5
5-sided.jpg
|
5 Responses to “Design for the D5”
Trackbacks
Leave a Reply
|
|
Papers & Pencils is powered by WordPress, and uses the Mandigo theme designed by Tom. "Papers & Pencils" logo and topbanner were designed by Melanie Tetro, and are © 2011-2012 Nick Whelan. Background image courtesy of Old Town Book Shop. Papers & Pencils and any original content contained herein is © 2011-2012 Nick Whelan. Content may be redistributed for any non-commercial use so long as credit is given. For additional information on licensing, privacy, and disclosure please see the policies page.
Site Map, 
Entries (RSS)
and Comments (RSS).
Viable in the sense that when you roll it, you don’t know for certain what it will land on. However, it will produce results that are non-random, favoring the triangular sides (1) and (5). Occasionally, it will generate 2 through 4 results, but the results will be skewed towards the (1) and the (5).
I have done a study rolling the d5 through a dice tower 250 times. The results suggest it a U-shaped curve highlighting very high and very low results. Triangle 1=69. Triangle 5=71. Square 2=39. Square 3=32. Square 4=39. Using a computer program called SPSS, the results suggest that this distribution is not a random one.
I’ve often suspected that this was the case. It’s unfortunate. Perhaps making the sides a little wider might help.
250 seems like kind of a small sample size. Are your tests ongoing?
I will go up to 1,000. This will give me a confidence level of .01%. But the tentative results are not promising.
After 1,000 rolls down a die tower into a catch box, here are the results. I think it is safe to say, this is a non-random outcome.
Triangle Side 1 = 273 (27.3%)
Triangle Side 5 = 269 (26.9%)
Square Side 4 = 158 (15.8%)
Square Side 3 = 155 (15.5%)
Square Side 2 = 145 (14.5%)
Asymptotic results and statistically significant at the .05 level
Mean of die rolls = 3.0050
Standard Deviation = 1.572
That’s disappointing. Your numbers and methodology are solid. The d5 is not random. Likely the same is true for the d7, though I imagine the rest of the Zocchi dice are okay.
I’d be interested to see the same test performed with multiple dice. I’ve heard that Game Science Dice were of higher quality in the 80s and early 90s than they are now. But getting your hands on those would probably be difficult.