marilee
01-14-2010, 05:13 PM
Math paradox lets you cheat your friends
Watch or download this episode now! (http://revision3.com/scamschool/non_transitive_dice)
minif
01-14-2010, 06:09 PM
The Paint was like "I'm on yer boards, making it pritty"...now my keyboard is blue/green/red/white (yes i got all the colors of paint over it -_-)
rabidbadger
01-15-2010, 03:56 AM
maybe I'm just spoiled by filmriot, but I totally scroll past the ads on scamschool these days. As a wanna-be podcaster, I dont want that to happen. Gotta make your ads more compelling. (and even filmriot been lax on that these days)
As far as this ep... hey. Someone brings their own dice, and admits they been fugged with, I'm immediately suspect.
jtgenterprises
01-28-2010, 03:57 AM
Where the heck can I buy non transitive dice? seems I have looked all over the net and can't find anyone who sells them.... anyone?
lokified
01-29-2010, 02:29 AM
I made my own NT Dice with nail polish & white-out, but there's something I noticed...
When your opponent picks red and you pick green, I've seen in come to a 5 wins-to-5-wins tie twice now. The tie-breaker roll is then a 58% chance, which is slim on a single roll.
greymatters
02-25-2010, 01:44 AM
Where the heck can I buy non transitive dice? seems I have looked all over the net and can't find anyone who sells them.... anyone?
You can buy non-transitive dice here (http://www.grand-illusions.com/acatalog/Non_Transitive_Dice_-_Set_2.html). They come in a set of 1 red, 1 green, and 1 blue for less than $5.
Keep in mind to check the dice for yourself, as the colors may not correspond to the order that Brian uses in the video.
The same store also sells them in a non-colored numbered version (http://www.grand-illusions.com/acatalog/Non_Transitive_Dice_-_Set_1.html), but the color makes it easier to work. The spots seem more familiar, too.
I made my own NT Dice with nail polish & white-out, but there's something I noticed...
When your opponent picks red and you pick green, I've seen in come to a 5 wins-to-5-wins tie twice now. The tie-breaker roll is then a 58% chance, which is slim on a single roll.
Played properly, you'll come out ahead over the long run. However, it is quite possible to lose from time to time, so with this scam, you should be prepared to pay up when betting on it. Here's a clear explanation of the odds (http://www.maa.org/editorial/mathgames/mathgames_07_11_05.html).
The Paint was like "I'm on yer boards, making it pritty"...now my keyboard is blue/green/red/white (yes i got all the colors of paint over it -_-)
Obviously, there's some sort of hassle involved in procuring the dice, be it making them yourself or ordering them online. Wouldn't it be nice to pull a non-transitive scam with regular objects?
A reader of Boing Boing known simply as "Greg" (http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/27/nontransitive_short_.html) provides the perfect answer to this quandry:
I thought that if you liked the nontransitive dice (http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/25/nontransitive_dice_h.html), you might also like a nontransitive coin-tossing problem called "Penny-ante". Basically, your opponent chooses a series of three coin tosses (HTH, for example), and you choose another series (HHT). Then you flip a coin until one of these patterns shows up. So if we flipped HTTHHHT, you would win, because the pattern "HHT" appears at the end of the sequence. Seems fair, right? Well, it turns out that, no matter what your opponent chooses, you can always choose a sequence that's more likely to occur. In fact, your odds of winning *at worst* are 2-to-1. You choose the winner by choosing the opposite of the second position of your opponent's sequence, then tacking it in front of the sequence and ignoring the third position. So if your opponent chooses "THT", you choose "TTH".
Here's a good article about the game (PDF - no longer available), And it's Puzzle 13 (http://www.qbyte.org/puzzles/puzzle02.html) on this page.
Definitely go to that Puzzle 13 link, as it has a great explanation of the math behind the scam.
This would be a nice scam to see in a future episode of Scam School, wouldn't it?