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One I use for random gaming needs, but requires two brains, if I want to emulate a dN die (d6, d10, d20, whatever) is I think of a number between 1 and N, and t
by gilbetron 3y ago
One I use for random gaming needs, but requires two brains, if I want to emulate a dN die (d6, d10, d20, whatever) is I think of a number between 1 and N, and the other person does the same. Then add them together and mod by N. Works well enough, although you can get into game theory and the results aren't very random because we tend to pick certain numbers.
Thinking about it, I wonder if both people picking multiple numbers and adding them all up mod N would improve things.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jetrink 3y ago> Thinking about it, I wonder if both people picking multiple numbers and adding them all up mod N would improve things. I bet that our bias against clustering and repetition when creating a pseudo-random list of numbers would mean that a list would be less random than an individual pick. As a simple example, if picking two numbers, people would probably be more likely to pick one even and one odd number than two even or odd numbers, since a mix of even and odd feels more authentically random, resulting in an excess of odd sums. As an alternative, what if each person created a short list and then blindly chose one number from the other person's list?
- RugnirViking 3y agoblindly picking from a shortish list of values then doing the addition and mod thing only seems better than the naive case of blindly picking from a list of 1 to N when we are talking about large values of N