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28020: RE: [MUD-Dev] Expected value and standard deviation.
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From: "Ben Chambers" <gtg983q@mail.gatech.edu>
Newsgroups: nu.kanga.list.mud-dev
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 20:55:36 -0400
References: [1]
Organization: Kanga.Nu
From: Zach Collins (Siege)
> On Sat, 30 Aug 2003, Ben Chambers wrote:
> The thing is, xDy dice numbers do the same thing, simply
> increasing the floor of the curve. Lots of dice means a high
> center and floor, while large dice increase the spread. 20d2 is a
> lot; it hasn't got nearly the high-scoring potential of 5d12, but
> still guarantees you'll tend to roll higher on the mean. Add in
> the +z component of a standard dice roll and you have a means of
> effectively managing the floor (lowest possible score on the
> curve). 20d2-10 seems a whole lot less attractive versus a
> straight 4d8, while still guaranteeing a good average score.
I agree. But as a developer, it is in my opinion more intuitive to
be able to manipulate the spread and center independently. That's
the big difference. I want to maintain the mean but increase the
spread of dice, it is a pain. Doing it with mean/spread format is
easy, simply increase the number corresponding to the spread. The
other difference is that a normal distribution produces numbers that
are continuous -- a decimal number with theoretical range from
-infinite to infinite. Furthermore, if you investigate the amount
of random number generation necessary, using the normal distribution
only requires 1 random number for every generation (actually 2 for
the first, and then none for the second, and then 2 for the
third... but average is 1). The dice require a number of random
numbers equal to the number of dice. While not a significant
bottleneck, it is still a potential optimization.
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