Bill Nye and Debates

I want to tackle just one question here, and one question that's been asked a whole lot.

Why even debate a creationist?  Isn't that lending them credibility?

Bill Nye was actually the perfect choice for this debate because his idea of changing the world (to borrow a phrase) is to encourage and enhance science education in these United States.  In the days leading up to the event, Bill's website had no information (no news posts, no date on his appearance calendar, no nothing) regarding the upcoming debate.  Bill did very little to publicize his role in the debate.  His twitter feed has no mention of it until right before the event.  And the reason is very simple.

He didn't want his supporters to come and watch.  That wasn't his purpose for doing this debate.  He very intentionally did not advertise this event because his purpose was to reach a new audience.  Notice how much he tailored his speaking time towards Kentucky: he had the fossil he picked up on the side of the road (side note...totally believable.  I went to college just a few hours North of the Creation Museum and did the very same exact thing during Archeology class) and he talked about how Kentucky doesn't offer any undergraduate degrees in nuclear medicine, among other mentions.  Bill's purpose was simply to try to persuade people away from the creationist model.

In that sense, the debate is a very good idea.  Rather than giving a stage to Ken Ham, the debate gave the stage to Bill Nye.  Judging from the cold reaction Bill got from the crowd, it seems the audience was largely filled with Ham's supporters.  I therefore put forward the following two possible end results.  The first possible result is that Bill was able to convince some members of the audience away from the creationist model, which would be a win for Bill Nye.  The second possible result is that those who accept the creationist model are further cemented in their beliefs.  But Bill can still say that he went in and tried to change their minds.  Because of the way the debate was promoted (mainly by Answers in Genesis), I doubt very much that there were minds in conflict at the debate who were leaning towards evolution.  Bill was walking into a no-lose scenario, his own Maru Kobayashi test, if you will.  Bill deliberately set up the debate so that the audience would consist only of two types of people: the hardcore Nye fans, and Ken Ham's followers.  Well played good sir.

There is one more thing that I want to talk about...

You know Bill, there is a book I can lend you that has the answers to those questions.  It starts with 'In the beginning...'

I'm afraid that Ken Ham has entirely missed the point of science.  Bill pointed this out several times and asked Ham directly several times what kind of questions you can ask about the world from a creationist viewpoint.  The answer was inevitably, "what evidence is there that a global flood happened?"  A similar question might be, "what evidence is there that fish evolved into amphibians?"  But the difference in these two questions is in the intent with which they are asked.  The first offers no possibility of being wrong.  The second embraces the possibility of being wrong.  Furthermore, two thousand years ago, nobody would have even dreamed of asking the second question.  You see, science inexorably builds upon itself, and each answer leads to even more questions. By assuming you know the answer before you start, you may miss out some sights along the way.  You may not even take the journey at all!  There have been many many many scientific discoveries and engineering inventions that come from the journey, not from the answer.  Just take the Apollo program.  Actually getting to the moon offers relatively little to our understanding of science, whereas developing the tools and the understanding to get to the moon propelled the United States into a position of economical and scientific prosperity.

As a stats nerd, I have to throw this out into the world too...I loved how Bill set up his arguments as a proof by contradiction.  Very elegant.  Null hypothesis is that Earth is 4000 years old (after the flood of course).  Alternative is that Earth is more than 4000 years old.  Then look at the evidence.  Oh, look, this tree has 9 thousand rings on it.  We can observe that trees grow at a rate of one ring per year.  Oh, look, this ice core has 8 hundred thousand layers in it.  We can observe that we get one additional layer per year.  Now which is more reasonable...that we were wrong and the Earth is not actually 6000 years old, or that the Earth is 6000 years old and that the laws of nature were suspended so that radiometric dating, tree rings, ice cores, and light all offer misleading evidence towards their age.

Well Mr. Ham, have you ever seen the laws of nature spontaneously change?  Were you there when that happened?

DOMA and such

Hooray!  Blogging time!


Yesterday, SCOTUS issued its decision on section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (defining, for the purposes of federal law, marriage to be between one man and one woman).  I feel like most people who are impacted by this case only care about the results, or are in such a public position that they are almost required not to dissent.  Take George Takei, for example, who posted on his Facebook that he was happy DOMA was struck down 5-4.  Even if he doesn't agree with the case's results, because he is married to a man and in a public position, he's almost required to be happy.  Let's recap the events leading up to US v. Windsor so that you can understand why I believe that Takei (and many other people) should be unhappy.

1. Windsor's legally married wife passed away, leaving Windsor her entire estate.
2. Windsor paid nearly $400,000 in estate taxes to the federal government, because her marriage was not recognized as a result of DOMA.
3. Windsor challenged this in a district court.  The Attorney General did not defend the case, citing that the executive branch found DOMA to be unconstitutional.  The district court decided in favor of Windsor and ordered the United States to refund the taxes, plus interest.  The United States did not.
4. The BLAG (which was defending the case for the US) AND the justice department (which was not defending the case) both appealed to the 2nd circuit.  Again, the case was decided in favor of Windsor, and again, the United States refused to refund the taxes, even though they agreed with the ruling.
5. The solicitor general (representing the United States) petitioned for the case to be brought before the Supreme Court.  Keep in mind that the BLAG has been defending the United States and the Department of Justice has been instructed not to defend DOMA's constitutionality.

So what's my point?  People in high places wanted a case dealing with DOMA to come before the Supreme Court.  If Windsor had gotten her refund, this never would have gone to the court of appeals.  It never would even be considered before the Supreme Court.  This whole case was a charade.  It was artificially pushed onto the national stage, and the dissenting opinions note this.  This is not a "victory at any cost" situation, and I think that it should have been done right.

What do I mean?  I mean that this should be a 9-0 decision.  You cannot believe how angry I was when, listening to the oral arguments, Scalia asks Windsor's lawyers, "Do you find a federalism issue with [DOMA]," and the lawyer answers, "No" (paraphrasing).  If they had gotten into arguments (this is perhaps outside the purview of the case) on federalism, I really think that it would be easy to show that DOMA doesn't stand up.  It forces residents of the same state with the same marriage license to be treated differently under federal law.  It forces federal agents in that state to treat marriages differently.  I feel that should be a clear infringement of states' rights.

Let's look at the merits brought up in the majority opinion.  They argue that DOMA was enacted in animus, bringing up the House report on the bill.  To be sure, there are some legislators who did vote yes because of hateful and bigoted opinions, but the majority only argues that DOMA was enacted in animus.  Regardless of how the bill was enacted, the effects of the bill are demeaning and prejudiced.  In cases looking at the separation of church and state, a law can be found unconstitutional if either the motivation or the effects of the law promote a religious doctrine, and I assume the same would hold in equal protection.  Why didn't they present arguments for the effects?

I find it interesting that, yes, while I'm happy with the result of the case, I am angry at how it was reached.  In fact, were I sitting on the Supreme Court, I would have voted no.  There's no point to the court case.  There is no disagreement.  Everybody knows what the right thing is to do, so do it and don't ask for the Supreme Court's opinion.

Some will rejoice in today's decision, and some will despair at it; that is the nature of a controversy that matters so much to so many.  But the Court has cheated both sides, robbing the winners of an honest victory, and the losers of the peace that comes from a fair defeat.  We owed both of them better.
-Justice Scalia

And therefore, I agree in part and dissent in part.

Guns in Schools (and elsewhere)

I'd call this a treatise, but I'd feel a little arrogant.  Let's get to it, shall we?

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

 We can argue about the meaning and interpretations of this for years (and in fact, we do).  But I think most people can agree on the purpose of the 2nd amendment.  One way to look at our government is that it's a system of checks and balances so that no one person or group will have complete control over the country.  The 2nd amendment can then be viewed as a check on the government's power; an ultimate check on the power of the government.

Now, if we were serious about starting a revolution against the United States government, my first thought is that it would be crazy for us (even if we all had assault weapons), to try to fight the US military without tanks.  Recent history has shown us though that an insurgency is the most effective way to fight a standing army.  In both Gulf Wars, the coalition forces very quickly gained air superiority over Iraq, and then any army forces left were quickly demolished.  The truth nowadays is that putting yourself in a tank is akin to painting a target on yourself.  We would be crazy to start a revolution and use tanks.

While the ubiquitous weapon for insurgents in the Middle East (and elsewhere) is the AK-47 (definitely an assault weapon), I have no doubt that they could create an effective insurgency using weapons like the M1 Garand, a WWII-era semi-automatic rifle.  Maybe not as effective, yet effective nonetheless.

Interesting thought experiment: is it possible for a mass (school, theater, etc) shooting to happen in 1776? Of course, but the only way would be to grab 15 of your buddies and convince them it's a good idea too.  Or you could bring 15 loaded muskets.  My point here is that it's much easier for one person today to do something crazy than it was in 1776.  Perhaps (pure speculation) we thought that, since groups tend to be more rational than individuals, the killing capacity of a gun was a reasonable check on the people's power to keep arms.  Just a thought.

Anyway, let's get down to what I really wanted to talk about:

Every teacher in America should carry concealed weapons. (8 people like this)

This showed up on my Facebook newsfeed this week.  I wanted to respond to this from a teacher's perspective.  Let's make a list of why this is a bad idea.

1.  Teachers can be crazy too.  If every teacher had a concealed weapon, I would guess that we would see this headline at least once a year: TEACHER DRAWS GUN ON CLASS TO GET THEM TO SHUT THE FUCK UP.  Perhaps a TEACHER DRAWS GUN TO BREAK UP FIGHT; STUDENT SHOT.  We may even have a TEACHER EXECUTES PROBLEM STUDENTS.  When n increases, the highly unlikely becomes highly likely.  If one in a million teachers is this crazy, we'd still expect 4 of them to have incidents like this.
2. It undermines the student-teacher relationship.  What people like Salman Kahn (and those frakkin' learntobe.org ads...) don't understand is the importance of the relationship between a student and a teacher (ok...maybe Kahn gets it, but people who propose that his program can replace schools don't).  Every year I work hard to build relationships with my students, to get them to trust and respect me (and my authoritah).  Once those relationships are built, they can learn the curriculum much better and I am transformed into a life coach and I become a roll model for my students.  That is so much more important than teaching them the quadratic formula.  I go to work every day because I love my students.  If I were carrying a gun, I am no longer forced to earn my students' respect; they are extrinsically motivated to respect me.  Intrinsic motivation is much better.
3. Teachers are not, and do not have time to be, trained to react in an emergency situation.  I have no idea how long cop school is, but it might be a month.  Sure, most teachers could put in the time over a summer, but that's for the initial training.  Cops apply their training every day, which keeps their training fresh.  Teachers don't have the time to put the kind of daily training you need in order to be the "good guy with a gun"
4. Walls don't stop bullets.  I've been told the first rule of discharging a firearm is to be sure of your target and beyond.  Earth is really the only good natural material that will stop a bullet (ever wonder why indoor ranges have a dirt wall in the back?).  If I'm at school and we're in lockdown due to a shooter, teachers having guns is just going to result in lots of stray bullets which are going to hit kids (remember the part about the training?  My aim is pretty bad already without the adrenaline rush of an emergency situation).
5. Kids steal things.  I know a teacher who got the mounted projector stolen from her room twice.  And her wallet stolen once.  They don't need an opportunity to steal a gun.

As a result of the Sandy Hook shooting, I spent a lot of time thinking about what I would do if my school were in a similar situation.  Whether or not I had a gun would not change my action, or the likely outcome of my action.

Unless by concealed weapon he meant sword-cane.  Everyone knows sword-canes give you super-speed and general boost to your badassery stat.

And yes, my birthday is coming up.

Evolution vs Intelligent Design

I've always been interested in this argument.  I suppose this is mostly since I've never really understood how, in the light of Mendel's peas, Darwin's finches, Peppered moths, and the thousands of experiments done each year with Drosophila (fruit flies) in high school and college courses demonstrating the mechanisms of evolution, a rational human being can deny this and say, "we were put on Earth 6,000 years ago and things haven't changed since."  I recently learned that someone whom I respect does not believe evolution is an open and shut case, as I always have.  I was eager to jump at the opportunity to learn about an intelligent design argument without traveling to the ridiculous (see below)

I got a pair of very good sources from this person, one written by William A Dembski (who has himself written several books on the merits of intelligent design), and another by Dr. Caroline Crocker, as recounted in the Washington Post (Dr. Crocker is a former university professor who taught intelligent design as an alternative to evolution and was featured in the documentary Expelled).

First I want to clear the air, because there's a lot of confusion (on both sides) on exactly what intelligent design is.  There are four distinctive camps when in comes to the origin of life.  First, there's the creationists who insist on using the Bible as a literal source of information.  I call them "Creationists." What makes them distinctive is their refusal to admit material evidence into their decision making process.  Next up, there are the Evolutionists, who refuse to admit any non-material evidence into their decision making process.  When I was a practicing Catholic, I belonged to a third camp, where God (or your divine being of choice) worked through evolution.  "Basically," I thought, "evolution is brilliant.  If I were God, I'd have totally designed evolution!"

Lastly, there's the intelligent design group.  This group really has much more merit than most people give them credit for.  They really are trying to use science to prove the divine (however counterintuitive that may seem).  In any case, let me sum up what design theorists do and what they believe

• Design theorists investigate biological and ecological systems for "signs of intelligence"
• EX: Wouldn't Mt. Rushmore look clearly "designed" if investigated by an alien species??
• A sign of intelligence must have a complexity with the following conditions:
• The complexity is contingent, and thus not necessary.
• Not readily repeatable by chance.*
• It exhibits and independently given pattern.
• It is argued that "irreducibly complex" systems are a sign of intelligence
• The Human Eye needs rods, cones, a lens, and many other parts in order to function properly.  Removal of one of these components renders it largely useless.  Keep in mind that each component is itself very complex.  (further research has shown more primitive versions of eyes, called eye spots, on single cell organisms).
• Microevolution and natural selection, in general, is NOT argued against by design theorists.
• Macroevolution and speciation IS argued against by design theorists.

Throughout all my my sources, it astounded me how few biological analogies there were to help explain the points being made.  In her lecture, Dr. Crocker explains that you can't get a new book by making a few spelling mistakes, as an analogy to help make her point that you can't get a new species by making a few errors in the DNA.  That is, "No one has ever seen a dog turn into a cat in the laboratory." Out of many analogies made, I'd like to address this one because it gets right down to this idea of macroevolution.

Back when books were manuscripts, they were copied, word for word, by scribes when a second copy of the manuscript was needed.  Inevitably, these scribes misspelled words or omitted passages, resulting in different versions of the same book.  There are, currently, 80 different versions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales because of this phenomenon.  Furthermore, we've found through the various genome projects that chimp DNA and human DNA are 96-99% the same.  That means that you're not really looking for a new book.  Relatively simple changes in a book can have vast changes in the story.  Think about "Harry Potter died" versus "Harry Potter lived."  This makes a huge change, and in the right spot, it can completely change the tone of the book.

The crux of this argument, at least for me, is what is taught to children in high school and college.  As those who take design theorists seriously repeatedly refute arguments, those same design theorists will come up with new arguments, floundering to find some foothold.  This means that we need to ask the question, "what belongs in a science classroom?"  Well, science, clearly.  What is science?  In latin, science is knowledge.  In the Mariam-Webster dictionary, science spans several fields, not just the familiar "a body of knowledge which has been tested using the scientific method."  So what is science?

I struggled with this question for a while before I remembered a video which I had seen this past month.  This is Simon Sinek's TED talk (which is very interesting...you should watch it):

In it, he describes his Golden Circle.  Most people approach a task in a What-How-Why fashion.  The most successful of us reorder this, and approach a task in a Why-How-What fashion.  I was asking the wrong question.  The question is not, "What is science?"  The question is, "Why do we science?"  I believe I have the answer.

The best scientists science because they want to ask questions.  The best science experiments have led us on an incredible journey of question after question after question, and always leave us with more questions than answers.  Yes, what science does is answers questions, but we do it so we can ask more questions.  Would we really be content, as a species, if we knew all the answers and had no more questions to ask?  Let's examine what a design theorist and a biologist would do if given a design schematic for a flagellum:

Design Theorist: Hmmm, very interesting diagram.  What would happen if I took out one of these parts?  It wouldn't work!  GOD DESIGNED THE FLAGELLUM.

Biologist:  Hmmm, very interesting diagram.  What would happen if I took out one of these parts?  <experiment>  It didn't work very well.  What else does this part do?  Have I seen it before?  Which gene expresses this protein?  Is there an enzyme used to make it?  Where did the enzyme come from?  Does the enzyme have any other parts?  Hey look!  Here's another bacterium which has a flagellum too!  I wonder if these parts are similar.  How would the bacteria function without the flagellum.....

Do you see the difference?  Both people are going to answer "What is a flagellum?"  They've both done the "What" of science.  But the Design Theorist hasn't done the "Why."  He stops questioning!  He's depriving us of the spirit of science that makes it such an intriguing field.  It hurts.  It pains me to think that we would stop seeking knowledge because we "know" everything.

Right now, we've stopped.  Biology touched a tricky question: "How did we get here?"  We found an answer, an answer that is supported by data and repeatable experiments.  An answer which biologists are confident enough in to say that we've answered the question.  And in the true spirit of science, the biologists have moved on to ask more questions.  Yes it's true, new hypotheses should be rigorously tested and analyzed.  But this one has been, and it has passed the tests.  Please.  Let us inspire a new generation to ask even more questions.  Let us continue our journey as a species, rise to new challenges, and find those juicy answers which give rise to the greatest questions of all.

Trashy Game Theory

Of the trashy TV that I watch, I think that Paradise Hotel has got to be the trashiest.  The first week there were 6 girls and 5 guys on the show.  In order to continue their stay at the Paradise Hotel, the girls would each pick a guy, one by one, to be her roommate for the week.  One pair would then have a "third wheel" (since the girls outnumber the guys), and the guy would then choose which girl he would keep as his roommate.

Now, since I'm a complete nerd, I stated working out odds and percentages and maximizing how to play the game.  Game theory has to do with making decisions based on the decisions of other people.  It's incredibly useful and valuable, so let's take a second to break it down in a more simple example.  Let's say there are two competing coffee shop companies, Staribou Coffee and Carbucks Coffee.

Both are national chains and are looking to expand their business in either New York City or Oklahoma City.  Since NYC real estate is much more expensive than OKC real estate, each chain could either open one shop in NYC or 2 shops in OKC.  Because these are two competing businesses, if both choose to open shops in the same cities, neither company will turn a profit.  How does each business choose where to open the new shops?

We probably need a little bit more information, but each shop is going to use game theory.  If you're in Staribou's position, the most important thing is to not open shops in the same city as Carbucks.  So you're going to put yourself in Carbucks' position.  And you may ask yourself, "well, how did I get here? what would Carbucks do?  I'm going to open my shops where they won't open shops."  Well, Carbucks is doing exactly the same thing, and putting itself into Staribou's position, quoting Talking Heads....Game Theory tends to get very circular ;)

Let's get back to the Game of Paradise Hotel:

In the Game of Paradise Hotel, you either put out, or you go home.  I told you it was trashy!

The first girl and the last girl are trivial choices.  The first girl has open season, and the last girl will be forced to (we'll see why she's forced to in a second) double up on a man.  Let's work on the second girl.  She has a choice; either she can double up on the first girl's choice, or she can pick a new hunk.  IF she doubles up, then she has a fifty percent chance of going home, depending on who the guy chooses (every other girl will choose an open man because that is the choice that gives a one hundred percent chance of staying).  IF she does not, and picks a new man, then we need to find the odds of another girl choosing the same man.  Recursion, ho!

3RD GIRL: We've assumed that the 2nd girl picked a new man.  There are now 3 open men.  She can either pick a taken man (50%) or pick a new man.  Recursion, ho!

4TH GIRL: Assuming 3rd girl picked a new man.  2 open men.  She can either pick a taken man (50%) or pick a new man.  Recursion, ho!

5TH GIRL: Assuming 4th girl picked a new man.  1 open man.  If she picks a taken man, she has a 50% chance of going home.  Since there's one girl to go after her, she has a .2*.5=10% chance of going home if she picks the open man.  The 5th girl will, naturally, pick the last man standing.  Ho, recursion!

4TH GIRL:  OK, how we know what the 5th girl's choice is.  That means that the 6th girl is the only girl that can challenge you for your man.  10% chance of going home if she picks a new man.  The 4th girl will pick an single man.  Ho, recursion!

3RD GIRL:  Now we know what 4th and 5th girls' choices are!  They're going to pick new men!  10% chance of going home for picking a single man, so the 3rd girl will pick a single man.  Ho, recursion!

2ND GIRL: That brings us to the end of the recursive argument.  Now we know what each girl after us is going to do; they're picking new men.  So, to recap, there's a 50% chance of going home if she doubles up.  Since each girl after us is picking a new man, that means there's a 10% chance that, if you pick a new man, the 6th girl will 1) choose your man AND 2) your man chooses girl #6 over you.  Therefore, the 2nd girl will choose a new man.

Thus, each girl will choose a new man (unless she thinks that a particular man has more than a 90% chance of picking her over the other woman).  The 6th girl must be doubled up, and thus has a trivial decision (any man she picks will result in a 50% chance to go home).

Due to the nature of the game, she has a 50% chance of going home.  Every other girl has a 10% chance of going home.

I pity the girl who chooses last!

US Space Program

It's been almost a year since the last shuttle mission.  I've spent a lot of time (time which probably is normally better spent grading or lesson planning...) thinking about the American space program, reasons for its being there, reasons for it not to be there, etc.  Although NASA represents a very small percentage of the federal budget, and has for a majority of the organization's lifetime, the question remains: is space exploration and research a worthwhile use of our money?

In preparation for November's election, I've been trying to figure out, exactly, what my political stance is.  Take the budget for example.  It's easy to say "we need to raise taxes and cut spending in order to reduce the deficit."  However, it's much harder to try and figure out where to cut that spending.  The government provides many services for the people; where do I draw the line to start classifying projects as unnecessary spending?

For example, I think Planned Parenthood is a wonderful program.  It provides safe, easy, and affordable medical services, and contrary to popular Republican belief, does much much more than birth control and abortions.  Could we, as a society, afford to cut it?  Probably.  It's not, strictly speaking, necessary for our lives.  Just the same, I think I'd like to keep it around.

Let's look back at NASA.  They've made some incredible inventions, innovations, and brought technology leaps and bounds within the course of about 60 years.  They are responsible for inspiring and realizing the genre of science fiction.  In turn, the scientists took the best tech that came from sci fi and turned it into reality.  NASA has improved our understanding of the universe and took some of the first steps to exploring that universe.  And yet, somehow I have a sinking feeling that their well has run dry; that space has nothing left to offer.  I sincerely hope I'm wrong, but with this feeling I find it hard to justify spending federal tax dollars to fund NASA.

I think what I need is a set of rules for what the government should spend its money on.  Now, the Constitution has very specific things that it says the federal government is responsible for.  While that will drastically reduce spending, it will also entirely cut out funding for things like Planned Parenthood, NASA, the NSF, and public education, just to name a few.  And I like those things.  They're badass.

I'll leave you with what I think is one of the most powerful clips NASA has made.  It's a view of the Tail Service Masts at the base of a Saturn V rocket.  Try to keep in mind the scale; I could easily drive a truck into one of the five F-1 engines at the base of the rocket.  Each of the TSMs is about 9.5 meters high, and the Saturn V experiences an initial acceleration of about 12 meters per second per second.  Look at how fast the mechanism works to get the TSM clear of the vehicle and safe from the engine exhaust.  It's incredible how many little details there were to get 12 men on the moon.

Anyway.

 

Fair Dice

I came upon this really intriguing question here in the 11th Company forums.  The gist of the question is that if he "knows" his dice have different rolling percentages than average, is it fair to use them?  And when does it cross the line into cheating?  A very interesting question, indeed.  However, with the power of STATISTICS (fanfare), I believe the answer can become quite clear.

When you look at the data, it appears to be fairly irregular.  You should expect around 16-17% for each face of the die, and with one of his sets, he gets a percentage of 22%!  I won't get too much into the meat and potatoes of the statistics here, but I took the original poster's data and ran it through a Chi-square goodness of fit test (By the way, for all you haters, this sample size is plenty big).  Assuming the dice are fair to begin with (a standard assumption with any hypothesis test), there is a 12.13% chance that you would get similar results or a more extreme result.  This means that I have (roughly....) a 10% chance of any face showing up 22% of the time or more!  It's only for very large sample sizes (read: infinite sample sizes), where you expect to have exactly 16.67% proportions for each face of the die.

Just for fun, I did another goodness of fit test with the OP's second set of dice.  Instead of asking "what's the probability that I get a more extreme result" like I did last time, I asked "what's the probability of getting a more consistent result."  Our assumption that the dice are fair remain the same.  Guess what?  The probability that we get this level of a result or a more consistent result (that is, proportions closer to 16.67%) is only 8.78%.  It's very very rare to take a finite sample size and get perfect proportions.

To illustrate this point, I'd like to bring up a childhood anecdote.  On my TI-83 plus from high school, I got an application called "probability simulator."  When I was bored in class, I would call up this application and simulations.  Simulations with thousands of trials.  Despite this, I never got a perfectly uniform bar graph.  Why?  Because probabilities address only long-term proportions.  And long term does not mean a thousand trials.  It doesn't even mean a million trials.  Long term means an infinite number of trails.

Click to embiggen

That being said, let's talk about the cheating aspect of the question.  At what point would I consider this cheating?  My answer if very simple.  You're cheating if you brought unfair dice, knowingly or not.  If you make a decision based on an series of test rolls, you're probably just fooling yourself; there's nothing spectacularly unusual about the first set of dice.  And let's say that you engineered your dice so that sixes were rolled 20% of the time instead of 16.67%.  On average (that is, in the long-term), that means that you get an extra four sixes out of every hundred rolls of the die.  I don't believe that's enough of a chance to ruin a game.

Can you test for this?  Of course not!  That would be silly!  Nearly as silly as this xkcd.  (the "p" in the comic is the probability that you saw an increased chance of acne assuming that jelly beans are not correlated with acne.  .05 means 5%.   There.  Now you can read it and understand!).

Of course, the joke here is that they tested 20 different jelly bean colors and one of those tests was significant.  1/20 is 5%.  It's bound to happen that, if you do an experiment enough, you get the significant results.  That's the nature of the game.  And this would directly apply to a tournament testing dice.  If I have 64 people in a tournament and I'm testing at a 5% level, I would, on average, throw out 3 of them for having unfair dice, even if they had fair dice.


There's one last topic I'd like to address that was brought up in the thread.  That's the idea of "precision dice."  Why do people sell "precisions dice" if they're just as good as normal, cheapo dice?  Well, probably because people want to buy into it.  It's been shown time after time that tap water is at least as safe as bottled water (and/or that bottled water comes from a city's municipal water supply....in layman's terms...tap water), yet the bottled water industry is wildly successful.  It's all about how you sell your product, and Penn and Teller do a marvelous job of showing it.