[CoLoCo] dice rolls in C

Jim Hutchinson jim at ubuntu-rocks.org
Sun Feb 10 16:11:27 GMT 2008


On Feb 10, 2008 5:04 AM, TheZorch <thezorch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  TJ Heaney wrote:
>  These clusters don't always fit with the bell curve I am anticipating, for
> example, some times I've been "hot on the dice" and rolling nothing but
> 17-20s for a session, then other times nothing but crap on the dice. More of
> a weird phenomenon than anything.
>  Against this falls into the realm of Chaos Theory.  You know that would
> make a good science fair project ... a Chaos Theory study with dice rolled
> on different surfaces to see what the outcomes of 100 dice rolls on each
> surface would come out as.
>

Rolling fair dice is a true random event. It doesn't matter what
surface you use or how you throw them (though I'm sure there are ways
to cheat). If you throw them only 100 times you will not see this. You
will probably see "patterns" that lead you to believe otherwise. But
if you throw them a few hundred thousand times you will see them begin
to line up nicely with the theoretical probabilities. Because there
are more ways to make a 7 than a 2 you will see 7 more often. That is
why many dice rolls will produce a bell curve. Here is a nice graph
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice#Probability.

-jim
-- 
Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html



More information about the Ubuntu-us-co mailing list