English

Intransitive Dice

Combinatorics 2016-07-11 v2 Probability

Abstract

We consider nn-sided dice whose face values lie between 11 and nn and whose faces sum to n(n+1)/2n(n+1)/2. For two dice AA and BB, define ABA \succ B if it is more likely for AA to show a higher face than BB. Suppose kk such dice A1,,AkA_1,\dots,A_k are randomly selected. We conjecture that the probability of ties goes to 0 as nn grows. We conjecture and provide some supporting evidence that---contrary to intuition---each of the 2(k2)2^{k \choose 2} assignments of \succ or \prec to each pair is equally likely asymptotically. For a specific example, suppose we randomly select kk dice A1,,AkA_1,\dots,A_k and observe that A1A2AkA_1 \succ A_2 \succ \ldots \succ A_k. Then our conjecture asserts that the outcomes AkA1A_k \succ A_1 and A1AkA_1 \prec A_k both have probability approaching 1/21/2 as nn \rightarrow \infty.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1311.6511,
  title  = {Intransitive Dice},
  author = {Brian Conrey and James Gabbard and Katie Grant and Andrew Liu and Kent Morrison},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1311.6511},
  year   = {2016}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T02:14:45.482Z