Catan Is Broken. Unplayable

[Jellby]

huh i thought it was very strange! so many 3, 5, 11 and very few 7 and 8. actually there were as many 3s as 6s! there were as many 11s as 6s! there were more 3s than 7s and 8s combined! that's wild.

Trying to draw conclusions from a small number of rolls is moot. If I roll the dice once and get a 12, would you say that's suspect because it's the most unlikely result? Does that indicate the game is unplayable? OK, one roll is too little, let's say I roll twice and get 12 and 12. Sure, that is pattern and the game is broken, right? Well, no, that will still happen, on average, once every 1300 times, or once every 650 if you also count two repeated 2 rolls, which are just as (un)likely. Clearly, you can't judge the dice quality with just one or two rolls. How many do you need? Many, and many more than 55. You can't get anything useful out of a single game statistics. Did you get an unlikely result? Perhaps. But that tells nothing.

[Cile]

ok here's a dice distribution from my recent game

2 0
3 15
4 4
5 20
6 16
7 5
8 7
9 11
10 5
11 15
12 4

seems very strange to me and rather unexpected, anyone wanna run an analysis on them?

table id 445859988

So the question here is why did you pick this game's data to look at out of the 150 games of Catan you have played?
Did you happen to stumble upon a month old thread and added your most recent game's data to it? Or did you have an outlier game and then found this thread?

The fact of the matter it dice don't have memory, that's what makes them random. If I roll a die 10 000 times I'll have a fairly even distribution of all values by the end. If in the process of doing so I stop and say "look, I've just rolled 6 five times in row! What are the odds of that?" The odds are roughly 1 in 7776, so it was actually likely to happen at some point in those 10 000 those rolls.

Over the 150 games of Catan you have played you've seen the dice be rolled over 7500 times (assuming over 50 rolls per game). You are going to see weird sequences at some point in those thousands of rolls.

It is indeed unlikely that in a string of 55 dice rolls 7 and 8 would be rolled less than 5, 6, or 9. However, there are currently over 3000 games of Catan being played on BGA right now. It would be far more unlikely for such an occurrence to not happen to someone at least once a week. This time it was you. Congratulations.

[yfimc]

I find very strange distributions often on BGA Catan. This time I was annoyed enough to find a thread to talk about it but this is not the first time.

I know how random numbers work. As long as you're in teacher mode what is the expected probability of a distribution over 55 rolls where there are more 3s than 7s and 8s combined, and also more 11s than 7s and 8s combined?

More to the point, has anyone pulled the dice distribution for all Catan games (or a daily sample of Catan games) and verified that it matches a random distribution?

[yfimc]

It is indeed unlikely that in a string of 55 dice rolls 7 and 8 would be rolled less than 5, 6, or 9. However, there are currently over 3000 games of Catan being played on BGA right now. It would be far more unlikely for such an occurrence to not happen to someone at least once a week. This time it was you. Congratulations.

I'm not sure why the folks who have responded here keep trying to belittle the extraordinariness of the distribution I posted. It's not that 7 and 8 are rolled less than 5, 6 or 9. That's fairly unsurprising. They're rolled less than half as much as 11 and 3!! That is not the same as them rolling less than 5 or 9.

[RobertBr]

I'm not sure why the folks who have responded here keep trying to belittle the extraordinariness of the distribution I posted. It's not that 7 and 8 are rolled less than 5, 6 or 9. That's fairly unsurprising. They're rolled less than half as much as 11 and 3!! That is not the same as them rolling less than 5 or 9.

The only thing it tells anyone is that you do not understand random numbers. Unfortunately like many people you use your lack of understanding to try and interpret things - there is nothing odd about such a distribution in this situation because as has already been pointed out to you if you generate enough parcels of random numbers some will inevitably deviate by this amount from the expected values.

[Romain672]

Here is some random distributions with 60rolls:
https://www.zupimages.net/up/22/29/xu8k.jpg

[Silene]

It is true that the numbers in said game are somewhat extreme. But it's also true that it's a normal thing to have extreme results in some games
55 rolls is really not that much.

Your example is more extreme than the results in romain's examples. But given that your example was handpicked while the results of the example - i assume - were not, it's still nothing to worry about. Do more examples and you'll find something of similar extraordinarity.

[Silene]

Here is some random distributions with 60rolls:
https://www.zupimages.net/up/22/29/xu8k.jpg

It's a bit confusing that you don't have the same heights for all of them. Is that maybe fixable?

[Romain672]

Here is some random distributions with 60rolls:
https://www.zupimages.net/up/22/29/xu8k.jpg

It's a bit confusing that you don't have the same heights for all of them. Is that maybe fixable?

Not easily
And i did that a very long time ago.

[Stroom]

I know how random numbers work. As long as you're in teacher mode what is the expected probability of a distribution over 55 rolls where there are more 3s than 7s and 8s combined, and also more 11s than 7s and 8s combined?

More to the point, has anyone pulled the dice distribution for all Catan games (or a daily sample of Catan games) and verified that it matches a random distribution?

You clearly don't know how randomness works

There are probably hundreds of Catan games being played on BGA. And a few of them have skewed distributions. Those are what are posted about. People get angry but they don't mention the majority of somewhat OK distributions.

If you do a coin flip 4 times and you get 3 heads, 1 tails or even 4 heads, it would seem very irregular. But in the grand scheme, it is expected to happen quite often. Similarly, a game of Catan lasts for about 70 rolls. Which is about 2 sets of combinations for 2 die rolls. Very few turns so you won't get a perfect bell curve in every game.

Humans believe that the dice roll patterns have to be as close to the average in every game. And that's wrong. People who can't get over it, should play some other games.

For sure, over thousands of games, the averages of dice roll results will resemble a bell curve. Enough has been done already to display the fairness of RNG. But every few weeks another person comes and asks us to re-do these tests. It's like hitting refresh and expecting a different result.