Dice are not fair; they cannot be manufactured precisely. However, some dice are fairer than others. See the latest dice testing information and a dice mechanic that rolls fair with unfair dice.
Description:
No dice are fair because you cannot manufacture them with absolute geometrical precision. The closest we can come are D6 casino dice whose manufacture is controlled by Federal and state gaming laws. They are machined to within a few ten thousandths of an inch and the material of the pips (spots) has the same density as the body of the dice. In contrast, D20s are especially problematic, because it is difficult to precisely manufacture a perfect icosahedron. For this reason, we have focused on D20s. Though all dice are unfair, some are very close to fair, and some are not. Using tens of thousands of physical dice rolls, and billions of simulated dice rolls, we have studied several statistical methods for testing dice with special attention on the power of the test. We will also show you a dice mechanic that rolls fair even with unfair dice.
Dice: Everything You Always Wanted to Know but Were Afraid to Ask
Summary:
Some dice are fairer than others. How do you test your dice? Are metal or plastic dice better? These questions and more will be answered.
Description:
Hundreds of millions of dice are sold each year and none are absolutely fair. Some are fairer than others. How do you test the fairness of your dice? Which methods work and which are useless? Are metal, plastic, or mineral dice better? Are expensive dice better than bargain dice? How many times do you have to roll dice to determine whether they are fair or not? The answers to these questions and many more are based on simulations of billions of dice rolls and more than 100,000 physical dice rolls. Dice misinformation abounds on the Internet. We will lay some of these to rest using sound probability theory and practical tests.
Are your dice cursed? Do float tests tell you anything useful? Are some dice systems fairer? Are metal dice fairer than plastic dice? All these questions and more will be answered.
Description:
Questions about dice are answered based on tens of thousands of physical dice rolls, detailed analysis, and billions of simulated rolls of fair and unfair dice. Some of the answers to the questions are at odds with conclusions of some very popular Internet sites. We have physically rolled 32 different dice 3000 times each. These include D6 dice, a D7, a D12, and many D20s. This database of dice rolls includes dice manufactured by Chessex, Crystal Caste, Eldritch, Game Science, Koplow Games, Level Up Dice, Metal Dice Games, Norse Forge, and Q Workshop.
Classroom Gamification: What Works and What Does Not
Summary:
Not every attempt at gamifying the classroom works. We'll facilitate a conversation on the best practices and those to avoid when attempting to achieve course learning objectives.
Description:
Face it; not every form of classroom gamification works, but we learn more from our failures than our successes. This seminar will facilitate a conversation on what works in the classroom and what doesn’t. The motivation for this course came from an experience with a 2015 Floodplain Management course at Western Kentucky University. Since 2007, my student pass rates for the national certification exam for floodplain managers (Certified Floodplain Manager – CFM exam) averaged about 80 percent. However, in 2015 only one out of seven students who took the exam passed it. This occurred even though more class time was spent on CFM topics than in previous years and more time was spent on learning games.