Intransitive dice tournament is not quasirandom

We settle a version of the conjecture about intransitive dice posed by Conrey, Gabbard, Grant, Liu and Morrison in 2016 and Polymath in 2017. We consider generalized dice with \(n\) faces and we say that a die \(A\) beats \(B\) if a random face of \(A\) is more likely to show a higher number than an independently chosen random face of \(B\). We study random dice with faces drawn iid from the uniform distribution on \([0,1]\) and conditioned on the sum of the faces equal to \(n/2\). Considering the "beats" relation for three such random dice, Polymath showed that each of eight possible tournaments between them is asymptotically equally likely. In particular, three dice form an intransitive cycle with probability converging to \(1/4\). In this paper we prove that for four random dice not all tournaments are equally likely and the probability of a transitive tournament is strictly higher than \(3/8\).Mathematics Subject Classifications: 60C05Keywords: Intransitive dice, central limit theorem

Authors

Publication Details

Journal
Combinatorial Theory
Published
2025-03-14
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5070/c65165022
Citations
3
Primary Topic
Mathematical Dynamics and Fractals
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
7.38

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article

Intransitive dice tournament is not quasirandom

Elisabetta Cornacchia, Jan Hązła
3 citations
Combinatorial Theory
Mathematical Dynamics and Fractals
7.38
article

Intransitive dice tournament is not quasirandom

Elisabetta Cornacchia, Jan Hązła
article en
3 citations

Abstract

We settle a version of the conjecture about intransitive dice posed by Conrey, Gabbard, Grant, Liu and Morrison in 2016 and Polymath in 2017. We consider generalized dice with \(n\) faces and we say that a die \(A\) beats \(B\) if a random face of \(A\) is more likely to show a higher number than an independently chosen random face of \(B\). We study random dice with faces drawn iid from the uniform distribution on \([0,1]\) and conditioned on the sum of the faces equal to \(n/2\). Considering the "beats" relation for three such random dice, Polymath showed that each of eight possible tournaments between them is asymptotically equally likely. In particular, three dice form an intransitive cycle with probability converging to \(1/4\). In this paper we prove that for four random dice not all tournaments are equally likely and the probability of a transitive tournament is strictly higher than \(3/8\).Mathematics Subject Classifications: 60C05Keywords: Intransitive dice, central limit theorem

Combinatorial TheoryVol. 5(1)
Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst
Openalex Percentile: Top 6%
Mathematical Dynamics and Fractals
7.38
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