Random Is Not Random

shark music·5/1/2015, 5:43:45 AM·1 votes·515 views

i love you, rito, but the things you call random are the least random random things i've ever seen in my life. the only way you'd ever get doubles as much as they come up in aram and mystery gifts is if you were flipping a coin. i think i've even figured out what you did to have such broken dice...

i think your dice roll on a list of all the champions, including the ones you don't own. i think if it lands on a champion you don't own, it pushes down the list to the first one you do own. so if, for example, you don't own the four champions that appear directly before, say, Sona, there are actually five dice rolls that result in your getting Sona, instead of one.

i wish you'd fix it. aram and mystery gifts would both be more fun if random actually meant random. it's especially tiresome in aram, where variety really is the spice of life.

5 Comments

DrCyanide5/1/2015, 5:48:36 AM3 votes

If it worked the way you are proposing, ARAM would have had higher odds of trying to get me to main Ziggs again (the closest champion to him in order that I own is Xerath) rather than maining Alistar (which it felt like every three games I would roll for a long time).

It doesn't work that way, and if it did, you'd know for certain because it would be abused.

Ice Weasel X5/1/2015, 2:31:11 PM1 votes
  • Rule #1 of computerized randomization: It's all simulated pseudo-randomization. Computers can't do true random.
  • Randomization functions are built into all standard programming languages. Typically the variability of the function's seed is what determines the randomness of the outcome (clock values are common seeds as they are constantly changing, but are not themselves random). Further customization (such as weighted values) are expected, but tweaking algorithms to force an outcome (such as normalized distribution) reduces the randomness.
  • A truly random outcome does not equate with normally distributed.
Kazaashi5/1/2015, 3:26:29 PM1 votes

is rolling a 20 five times in a row on a 20 sided dice more or less random than rolling 1, 7, 15, 10, and 5?