Thursday, November 13, 2008

Cheap customizable dice

While browsing through our local Michael's store, I came across these in the woodcraft section and I immediately thought, "Wow, 24 6-sided dice for $4 that I can customize!"

They come in larger and smaller sizes, too. (Kids gravitate to unusual sizes.)

This has endless math applications, and I am sure I can think of some science ones, too. Maybe something with elements on it? Please comment if you create something interesting!

2 comments:

Sue VanHattum said...

Hi, I found my way here from your comment on the living math group. Here's a cool dice activity:

“Efron’s Dice.” four dice having the following numbers on their faces.
A 0, 0, 4, 4, 4, 4
B 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3
C 2, 2, 2, 2, 6, 6
D 1, 1, 1, 5, 5, 5
Play a game in which two players each pick a die and roll it once, the winner being the person with the higher number. Compute the probability of winning in the
games A vs B, B vs C, C vs D, and D vs A. Surprisingly, the first die in each pairing
wins with probability 2/3.

(from circle in a box, a pdf at mathcircles.org)

-sue

Kris said...

Very interesting, especially trying to figure the probability when comparing C to D and D to A. What a perfect use for cheap customizable dice!