[Chicago] Throw those dice!!!!

[Joshua Herman]

Dear Lewitt,
What is the expected value of two die rolls? Also, given N dice rolls could
I create a compression algorithm for those dice rolls?
Sincerely,
Joshua Herman

On Sun, Aug 2, 2015 at 8:04 PM Lewit, Douglas <d-lewit at neiu.edu> wrote:

> Hey guys,
>
> I will admit that I'm rather proud of this little Python program that I
> wrote, but for values larger than 6 either the program crashes because of a
> stack overflow or the program becomes really painfully SLOW!
>
> Let me explain what this program does.  Let's say that you roll two dice.
> What are all the possible sums.  If both dice land with the one-side face
> up, that's a sum of 2.  If both dice land with the six-side face up, that
> is 6 + 6, which gives you a sum of 12.  Then you have all the sums in
> between.  Any student of statistics will tell you that these sums are NOT
> all equally probable or equally likely.  For example, in the case of two
> dice, the most probable sum is 7 because there are several ways to get that
> sum.  First die = 3, second die = 4, {3, 4} or {4, 3} or {5, 2} or {2, 5}
> or {1, 6} or {6, 1} or ..... get the idea?
>
> But why limit ourselves to just two dice?  What about three dice?  Or four
> dice?  Or five dice?  Or six dice?  Or any number of dice that we choose to
> throw?
>
> My approach works pretty well for any number of dice from 1 to 6.  Beyond
> 6 however, that's when I run into some real problems.
>
> Is there an "easy" way to fix this?  Probably not, but I thought I would
> check with people who are more experienced in Python than I am.
>
> I appreciate the feedback, but may not be able to reply until next
> weekend.  I'm VERY busy this week!  But still I appreciate any constructive
> feedback that you can provide.
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Douglas Lewit
>
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