Fighting over Dice Math II - The revenge of the nerds

I didn't say that you can't identify a crooked dice within a game. I said that if you can't, it doesn't matter if it is or not. The statistical difference between casino dice and standard dice (chessex for example, which in fact is already not-so-bad dice compared to what you can find elsewhere) probably won't matter much in a game if you're not aware of it. I played a long time with old GW dice, and it didn't changed anything when I started using casino dice. Tough rolls still don't work, my favorite Mauler still overkill anything it contact, and my favorite Bomber is unable to hit with the first bomb

Well, rolling under average certainly would be a disadvantage, but considering that the average is somewhat close to the statistic (dixit Trollock's chart) even with slightly off dice, I wouldn't say there would be something to remark in one game.
In the end, between the two-dice rolls, the influencing mechanics like the boosts & co, and the fact that you only need the numeric result of the dice on a low number of rolls (attacks rolls only need to get past a certain value for example, and most damage rolls too), I'm really not persuaded that playing with standard chessex (to say "badly balanced dice") put you at a disadvantage.

Just out of curiosity... If i get my hand on a GW die, roll it 1000 times and find "oh, it actually seems to be as random as the numbers generated by random.org", how would you interpret that?

The article where they rolled 144 dice 1000 times seemed very convincing, and that is why i wanted to test it out. Since my old crap (pun not intended lol) die did not show any significant bias i have a hard time believing that a die that looks basically the same can have the incredible bias mentioned in the article without being deliberately hollowed out. They may not have the best quality in the world, but we can assume they do not have air bubbles the size of a pea in every single die, right?

That you got another decent die.

Article was published in 2007, so it's been a decade or so, so it's very likely they're replaced the molds multiple times, and probably change manufacturers and factories. They likely have multiple suppliers on different continents which is also going to effect quality. So the dice you get in Sweden aren't the same as what I have available in the states.

Honestly, the problem I have is that most dice are not manufactured with any guarantee of quality rolls. They could be high, could be low, could be average, you just don't know, until you roll them several hundred times.

Casino dice ARE manufactured to produce fair results, and are tested by organizations with a vested interest in producing fair results. The manufacturing process includes transparent resin, so you can see voids, and filing in pips with material with the same density as the removed resin, and machining the material, instead of using a mold. Since they're relatively cheap, I don't see why you would chose the inferior product. Only time I use them is when I'm play 40K, and I need a bucket of dice, at which point Casino dice become too expensive.



After Fine Cast I would not make much such an assertion. Air bubbles are also not the only possible problem, it's also possible to have sagging, warping, uneven corners due to the tumbling etc.

I also had a long argument with a friend of mine about 1/8", which was the result of the crappy red GW "whippy" sticks put into the game for measuring were off 1/8" or more on all measurements because the mold didn't fill in the tip.

So between the GW die I had with an obvious hole the size of a pea on the surface AND the whippy sticks AND Fine Cast I don't have any confidence that GW does much in the way of quality control.

Really if you want to change my opinion of GW's products you have to give me a reason to believe they care about how random their dice are, and that they're doing some reasonable QA to assure that they have a quality product, and that they're manufactured in a similar way to how casino dice are made. Otherwise you're just going to get random quality.

And that random quality sounds an awful lot like exactly what you get when you have people claiming that they have good or bad luck.  How often do you see people switching their dice out?  I know I've got some that are older than members of our gaming community.

Not sure what's confusing about it.  Those dice were made a decade ago, and the molds, machinery, factories, material, and people involved have all changed. 

Do you think it's still the same product?

If you do, are you aware of the concept of not buying a car made on Monday?

Oh I get what you're trying to say. Never underestimate the power of producing products with exactly the same flaw in great quantities with modern manufacturing. It doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that GW buys their dice from Chessex, or whoever supplies Chessex also supplies GW. Could very well be that all the dice came off the same assembly line at the same time, or close enough to have the same flaw.

The author really don't explain how they sourced their dice, but my guess would be bought a couple of bricks from the local store. 144 goes into 36 4 times. I believe 36 is the size of a brick of dice the size of the GW dice. If you really want to pick a problem with the original methodology, I'd point out that it's very possible to get a slant if you only buy 4 bricks, and a better test would have been to get a single die from 144 dice bricks, but it could be more than they wanted to do.

If you look further into the original thread a number of people note that the rounded corners make the dice roll further, which could give the real problem more time to manifest. Honestly, I don't know, and it doesn't sound like the author does either. They conclude the corners are part of the problem by "fixing" the rounding, but it doesn't completely eliminate it, so it's likely to be multiple problems or not the main problem.

Why? If there are multiple problems, with the tested dice that yours doesn't have then the rounded corners on yours doesn't make them worse.

Really though we're guessing. If we had some of the problem dice it would be easier to test them for various problems.