Design Schemes for Fair Dice

Abstract

A cube is used as a fair die of 6 faces. However, there are many dice of different shapes on the market. To make them fair, most of them usually have some symmetric shapes. We here classify these variants of dice on the market into two groups. We first consider that a sphere as a model of a fair die with infinity faces. Based on this model, many symmetric shapes can be modeled as dice obtained by caving spheres. We also have a familiar fair device; a coin. That is, a fair coin can be seen as a fair die with 2 faces. However, a real coin has a thickness, and hence it is, in fact, an unfair die with 3 faces. From this viewpoint, we propose a way for designing a fair die with n faces for arbitrary n.