In order to have confidence that the dice are loaded, that scientist would need to play many more games: about five more, according to Izbicki’s calculations. That’s way too big of a chance for any reasonable scientist to conclude that you’re cheating. That means there’s a 26.5 percent chance those three extra sixes are a false positive. Crunching the numbers, an extra 3 sixes over the course of a game of Catan gives a p-value of 0.265. The best way to get a low p-value is to get a lot of data, but a game of Catan doesn’t give players that opportunity. Proving that a result is genuine means ensuring that false positives are extremely unlikely. In essence, the p-value is the probability of a false positive. In our example, what’s the probability that a fair die rolls an extra 3 sixes over the course of a typical game? A p-value is the probability that a certain result could have happened by chance. The most common method in science for determining whether a hypothesis is correct is calculating p-values. Pick it up for just 8.99, slashed from the normal price of 17.99. The charming game about laying down tiles to create a French countryside and claim it with meeples - who take on the roles of thieves, farmers and knights - is 50 off on Switch at the moment.
Is this enough to prove the dice are loaded? Joining Catan is another family board game favourite: Carcassonne. Over the course of a standard game, that means about three more sixes than you’d expect. Here’s how it works: According to Izbicki’s testing, your loaded dice will come up sixes about five percent more often than with fair dice. So can they prove you’re cheating? Short of directly confronting you, they have to use the tools of the scientific method, but as Izbicki shows, those tools are inadequate. But Settlers of Catan is a multiplayer game, and the other players might get suspicious when you roll your third 12.