Fair Dice A Tilt and Motion-Aware Cube with a Conscience.pdf

Fair Dice: A Tilt and Motion-Aware Cube with a Conscience Kristof Van Laerhoven and Hans-Werner Gellersen Lancaster University {kristof, hwg}@comp.lancs.ac.uk Abstract As an example of sensory augmentation of a tiny object, a small cube-sized die is presented that perceives rolls and records what face it lands on. It is thus able to detect bias for unfair behaviour due to its physical imperfections. On a deeper level, this case study demonstrates the integration of energy-efficient sensor fusion, combination of classifiers, and a wireless interface to adaptive classification heuristics. 1. Introduction The chance element in thousands of indoor games is introduced by a variety of simple random-number generators. The most popular of such devices, ever since the time of ancient Egypt, have been cubical dice. (Martin Gardner, Mathematical Magic Show). These remarks beg the question: How fair are dice? Does each face appear with equal probability when it is tossed? And: how can one find out whether particular dice are fairly rolled or not? Dice are thrown to provide uniformly distributed random numbers. Fair dice need to be symmetrically shaped and have a centre of gravity in the exact middle. The methodology that dice manufacturers apply to achieve fair dice, is based on making near- perfect smooth and symmetrical cubes of a homogeneous material. However, even with these measures in place, no single die is perfect or fair. 2. Unfair dice Intentionally unfair dice are also called loaded or crooked dice: they are altered to produce skewed or predictable results, for cheating or entertainment. Some have round and sharp edges and slightly-off square faces, others have weights added to one side. More sophisticated versions of the latter type include tappers, which have a drop of mercury load in the center of the cube that is activated by tapping the die, and variable loaded dice, which are hollow with a small weigh