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Sicherman Dice




Customer Reviews

  Awesome!  These dice are really cool! The're quite the mathematical trick. Almost like non transitive dice if were talking about mathematical aspects.   Emmi

Sicherman Dice
An unusual pair of dice. One has sides 1,3,4,5,6,8. The other has sides 1,2,2,3,3,4. Martin Gardner reported on the discovery of these dice by a certain Colonel George Sicherman, of Buffalo, New York, in a 1978 article in Scientific American.

What is special about these dice? When you roll a normal set of two dice, and add up the total of the two faces, you get scores ranging from 2 (when you throw two 1's) up to 12 (when you throw two 6's). However there is also a certain probability of each score. Throwing a total of 2 has a 1 in 36 chance of happening, as does throwing a 12. Some scores are much more likely. Throwing a total of 6 has a 5 in 36 chance of happening, and can involve throwing two 3's, a 4 and a 2, or a 5 and a 1.

Sicherman Dice behave just like a normal set of dice, in that the chance of throwing a combined total of 2 is 1 in 36, and of throwing a total of 6 has a 5 in 36 chance of happening. There is no other arrangement of numbers on 2 dice that will replicate the behaviour of normal dice (excluding dice with blank or zero faces, or negative numbers!)

So any game that you can play with a normal set of 2 dice can also be played with a set of Sicherman Dice, with no difference in the outcome!

However the odds of throwing a double are not the same as a normal pair of dice. You might like to work that one out for yourself!

Made in UK

Price: £3.99 [$6.30] (Including VAT at 20%)

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