Tag: math

Magic Item Math

Riley John Gibbs2 Comments

I had an idea for a magic item for D&D not too long ago. It works something like this:

Pick some number of dice to roll, and if none of them are a 1, then you gain hit points equal to the sum of the dice. But if even one die is a 1, then you instead lose hit points equal to the sum of the dice.

So of course, being a fellow with some background in mathematics and a penchant for giving myself problems to solve, I decided to figure out how many dice you should roll in order to maximize your expected value.

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Reinventing the Multivariate Hypergeometric Wheel

Riley John GibbsLeave a comment

On Monday morning, instead of packing—something that I’ve been saying a lot lately—I was doing research for strategies at Magic: the Gathering sealed deck tournaments, since I’m going to one on Saturday, and I generally suck at Magic, at least when it comes to the whole winning part. I ended up fascinated by the certainty with which experts break down how many lands you should have in a 40 card sealed deck, and got to thinking about the probabilities here.Read More »

Making Connections

Riley John GibbsLeave a comment

Monday afternoon my fellow Math for America colleagues in New Haven had a going away party for myself and another one of us that is moving back to New York City. (She ended up not being able to make it, unfortunately.) We ate hot dogs, drank beer, sat on the beachfront porch at Michelle’s house in Milford, and, of course, played a game: Ticket to Ride. Mike also taught me a new game he learned at the Museum of Math, but I’ll come back to that.Read More »