It’s a known fact that humans absolutely suck at seeing and recognizing randomness. Yet, if you were to show those strings to someone, they would have little hesitation in describing the first as random and the second as decidedly not random. Even probability means that this is just as likely to occur as another valid set of results: 10 – 10 – 10 – 10 – 10. For example, let’s take a string of five results: 4 – 7 – 8 – 10 – 16. The problem is that most people seriously underestimate the number of results that you need in order for that to happen. And, at first blush, that makes sense each of the possible results of a d20 has an equal likelihood of occurring, and so (over many results) you would expect the number of times any given result comes up to equalize. When most people think of a random distribution of results, they actually think of an even distribution, or a scatter-plot. But the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that the majority would be just as vulnerable to the common misperception of randomness, and that understanding the difference between perception and reality could be a valuable tool. Now, most GMs are not ‘most people’ we work with randomness all the time. I was reading something on Quora the other day that offered a fairly convincing argument that most people wouldn’t recognize real randomness if it bit them on the toe (in less colorful language). all to symbolize the concept that hidden patterns may exist in the most seemingly-random of datasets. This composite image combines a d20 extracted from dice-3563941 by Dieter Staab (plus a couple of variants rotated and color-shifted), one from dices-4804498 by Armando are (contrast & brightness enhanced), a third from rpg-468917 by Sayaka Photos (contrast & brightness enhanced), a fourth from dice-3380228 by Devin (plus a copy brightened, color-shifted and rotated), and a fifth from dice-5923500 by Renate Köppel, in front of a fractal image (abstract-art-1476001) by Patty Talavera, all from Pixabay, framing, image editing and compositing by Mike,
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