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Go First Dice


Go First Dice are a nonempty finite set of fair dice whose rolled values are independent random variables. No two different dice can tie, and every die in any nonempty subset is equally likely to occupy each rank when the rolls are ordered from largest to smallest. For a subset of k dice, each die has probability 1/k of each rank. They allow players to determine an order of play without rerolling ties or favoring a player (Ford et al. 2023, pp. 75-77).

If all n dice have s equally likely faces, where n and s are positive integers, each nonempty subset of k dice has s^k equally likely outcomes. Equal probabilities for the k ranks require k to divide s^k. In particular, every prime not exceeding n must divide s. For five dice, s must therefore be a multiple of 30 (Ford et al. 2023, p. 77).

Permutation-fair dice satisfy the stronger requirement that every ordering of the dice be equally likely. Equal rank probabilities for every subset do not imply this stronger property. The five 60-sided Go First Dice of Ford et al. (2023, pp. 76, 81) have the required rank probabilities, but their orderings are not all equally likely.


See also

Dice, Permutation-Fair Dice

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References

Ford, R.; Grime, J.; Harshbarger, E.; and Pollock, B. "Go First Dice for Five Players and Beyond." Recr. Math. Mag. 10, 75-87, 2023. https://doi.org/10.2478/rmm-2023-0004.Numberphile. "Go First Dice." Apr. 18, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q32heFz1bs.

Cite this as:

Weisstein, Eric W. "Go First Dice." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/GoFirstDice.html

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