Any kind of random is still random.

>>20892
True, but some people say that rounded dice are more biased towards numbers when rolled. That they roll less or something like that. I have no idea but if what you are saying is true then I'm just going to buy a pound of dice from chessex.

Sharp edged dice are more controllable if you feel like learning to control your dice throws. There is such a thing as a professional craps shooter, and they get upset about not having new, sharp edged dice. So if anything, I guess they are less random.

>>20892
That is not even remotely true, and is why crypto-grade entropy sources exist.

For tabletop games, though, the answer is "unless the distribution is completely and utterly fucked, stop caring".

Sharp edged dice are far more likely to roll a number than rounded dice. I rolled sharp edged dice 2000 times, and every time they resulted in a number. Round edged dice however balanced on their edges occasionally and refused to settle flat. Thus I can assure you, straight edged dice are far more numberly than round edged ones.

Bob 2012/04/10(Tue)18:21 No. 20898 ID: affb00
File 133410728594.jpg - (55.29KB , 1014x276 , summarized.jpg )

Also

Use sharp edged dice. Listen to Louis Zocchi.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR2fxoNHIuU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxmkWrDbn34

>>20899
He's basically charging you more by eliminating a manufacturing process. Clever, but disingenuous.

Rounded edges aren't going to significantly influence dice rolls any more so than differences in plastic density from the injection moulding process, throw velocity and angle, coefficient of friction of the surface thrown onto, topology of the surface thrown onto, or the price of tea in china.

If you need absolutely random numbers, use an atomic decay RNG. If you need reasonably random numbers, milled casino dice are the most cost-effective method. If you're playing a tabletop game, anything not purposefully weighted is going to be fine.

>>20901
Rounded edges are going to make your dice roll longer and have time to settle on their center of gravity, which is going to make them significantly biased because rounded edges also means they aren't going to have uniform sides.

>>20901
The manufacturing process he's eliminating is the one they use to apply paint to the numbers. He applies the paint to the numbers in a way that doesn't destroy the geometry of the dice, which... I assume is manually? He didn't say.

At any rate, egg-shaped dice are significantly nonrandom. This isn't him just tooting his own horn. Rounded edges make the egg shape fuck up the rolls even MORE, is all.

>>20899
I love this video even though I don't really care about dice, just as an object lesson in salesmanship.

>>20903
>He applies the paint to the numbers in a way that doesn't destroy the geometry of the dice, which... I assume is manually? He didn't say.
The website says they're hand-painted. Also sells them unpainted.

>>20903
The manufacturing process he eliminates is tumbling the dice if those are GameScience dice. Tumbling the dice doesn't round the corners in a uniform way, making them less random by making the shape irregular. This effect is compounded by allowing them to roll for longer, exacerbating the irregularity.

All casinos use fresh, sharp-edged dice because they are more random. Casinos do not use dice that allow the person throwing the dice to manipulate the result.

Nothing other than cheating actually effects how random dice are. True randomness means the outcome is impossible to predict, but since dice being rolled follow the normal and consistent laws of physics, they can theoretically be predicted even if doing so is beyond human ability. The only technically accurate and practically useful measure of randomness is how difficult it is to predict. In this regard, dice have randomness that is always adequate for all practical purposes.
What is actually in question is actually the variation in probabilities of each possible outcome. As far as that goes, rounding corners decreases the reduction in roll on each turn of the die and thus increases the effect that irregularities have. So it does increase variation in probabilities, meaning that one possible outcome may be substantially more likely than the next.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/random
"being or relating to a set or to an element of a set each of whose elements has equal probability of occurrence <a random sample>; also : characterized by procedures designed to obtain such sets or elements <random sampling>"