Re: Re: Fractional dice (more not fewer)

I think the question is not how many trials you take (rolling 1 die 50000 times), but how many dice you sum at each trial (rolling 2 die 50000 times). Though more dice give you a better chance of getting a good sample, rolling 1 dice will give you, on average, a straight horizonal line, where rolling 2 dice and summing them give you something like a bell curve but too high. Rolling more dice than that at a time give you something less like a bell curve (way to high), not more. Rolling 1.2 dice, as the OP states, gives you a distrobution more like a bell curve, no matter how many trials you take.

Code is (almost) always untested.
http://www.justicepoetic.net/

Comment on Re: Re: Fractional dice (more not fewer)

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Re^3: Fractional dice (more not fewer) by tye (Sage) on Jan 30, 2004 at 03:54 UTC
1 die gives you a flat-line graph (on average). 2 dice give you a tent-shaped graph (points along two straight, diagonal lines that meet at a peak in the middle). More dice give you a bell-shaped graph and the more dice you add, the closer it comes to a true "bell curve". A bell curve is defined by the shape, not how high or wide it is. Adding more (regular) dice makes the resulting values larger. Instead you can use balanced dice that give values from -2, -1, 0, 1, and 2, for example, or -2.5, -1.5, -0.5, 0.5, 1.5, and 2.5. - tye	[reply]
Re: Re^3: Fractional dice (more not fewer) by jweed (Chaplain) on Jan 30, 2004 at 03:56 UTC
Hmm... I thought that I remembered that a bell curve was defined by a particular function. Sorry, then. Code is (almost) always untested. http://www.justicepoetic.net/	[reply]
Re^5: Fractional dice (more not fewer) by tye (Sage) on Jan 30, 2004 at 04:09 UTC
Yes, a particular function that is parameterized such that you can make it as high or wide as you need, but it will still hold its shape. No need to apologize. - tye	[reply]