Apologies for the lateness of the reply. Work was a gong show (sigh, my computer crashed) and right after I went out, so I'm just now sitting down on the computer.
Let me try to answer your questions, starting with a clarification for mboza (and everybody else). I kinda knew what I wanted yesterday, but couldn't put it into words. Today I can.
First, what I want to insure is that the dice have a really high confidence interval with the rolls (apologies if I muck this next part up. I hated stats and fell asleep during class oh so many years ago). My project for the die is to be as random as possible, such that there is no discernable pattern.
In my project, participants can play either die 1, 2, 3, dice 1&2, 2&3 or all three. What I want to make sure is that there is no discernable pattern to how the dice are rolled.
For example, let's say (hypothetically speaking and making these numbers up) that for the first 10 throws of the die, die 2 has a tendency to roll positives, then plummet with negatives. This behaviour (rolling positives right off the bat) would be very bad as particpants would be able to start seeing a pattern, that they should roll die 2 for the first couple of rolls, then switch to another die before the negatives start coming. I want to insure that when die 2 (or any dice is rolled), that there is no discernable pattern to how it rolls.
Does that make sense? I can provide a specific example of exactly what I'm doing, but I think this should suffice. If not, let me know and I'll attempt to re-explain.
JustAnEngineer wrote:FYI, the singular is "die." "Dice" is a plural noun.
moose/meese? Your FYI has been noted, and I hope I've corrected the usage going forward.
just brew it! wrote:How automated does it need to be? You can easily copy the formula into multiple cells by selecting a vertical range and using the "fill down" shortcut (Ctrl-D). Force a recalculate (Ctrl-Alt-F9 in Excel, Ctrl-Shift-F9 in OpenOffice Calc) and you should get a new set of random numbers.
I have no problem hitting "refresh" in Excel. Ideally I'd like a good sample size of 1000 rolls or so. So automated = bonus.
just brew it! wrote:Caveat: If you need results which will pass rigorous statistical tests for randomness, I am not sure how much I would trust the spreadsheet's built-in random number generator.
Haha, agreed. I have Excel and know how to work in it. I don't know how to program in any language (well, that's not true. I did teach myself CSS)
just brew it! wrote:
LOL. Nope.
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