[Cryptography] All dice are loaded?

Dave Horsfall dave at horsfall.org
Thu Aug 7 17:21:25 EDT 2014


It's somewhat common to throw a set of dice to generate a "good enough" 
random number, or at least a seed.  However, they appear to have a slight 
bias in favour of "6", due to the pattern of the dimples.

I reported this in the "quirky" column in a respected Australian newspaper 
(search smh.com.au for "Column 8" and "dice" for 6th August; I couldn't 
get the URL for the page itself other than an ugly search expression) and 
today it got followed up.

It seems that someone actually did the experiment back in 1966, with about 
10,000 rolls, and found a "statistically significant" bias in favour of 
"6" being uppermost.

Hmmm...  Granted, it probably belongs in the "tin foil" category, but it's 
interesting nonetheless.

-- Dave


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