“Ah, spring. As Demeter, goddess of the harvest, it’s your favorite season. Humans and animals look to you to balance the bounty of the natural world, which, like any self-respecting goddess, you do with a pair of magical dice. Every day you roll the dice at dawn, and all lands that match the sum of the two dice produce their resources. The resulting frequency of sums across the season keeps your land in perfect harmony; any other rates would spell ruin.
“And that’s why it was particularly rotten when Loki, the Norse trickster god, invaded your land and cursed your dice, causing all the dots to fall off.”
You have the chance to reattach the dots, but now that they’re cursed, one die won’t accept more than four dots. This is a problem, because if the results of your rolls don’t remain well-balanced, your lands and people will suffer.
How will you fix all 12 sides so that you can roll sums with the exact same probabilities as a standard pair of dice? Can you solve the cursed dice riddle?
Consider the sums and frequencies in this TED-Ed by Dan Finkel, with animation by Igor Coric, Artrake Studio, and stop at 1m23s if you’d like to solve it without help.
For a bit more support—the setup of a table to work through the numbers—don’t pause until 2m11s.
Potential spoiler/related reading: Find a pair of Sicherman dice at Maths Gear.
Watch these videos next:
• Math in Motion: Playing with a desktop Galton Board
• Can you solve the frog riddle?
• Can you cheat Death by solving this snakes and ladders riddle?
• How to make a DIY Dice Shaker
• Fate adrift: Max Mulhern’s Aqua Dice
Bonus: Kea parrots understand probabilities.
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