Diaconis is a real character. He gave a guest lecture to my statistics class at university ... um, several decades ago. His then-current research was around the effects of unfair dice. He was going to get his grad students to roll unfair dice thousands of times and see what effects loading and shaving would have on the outcomes.
To get some unfair dice, Diaconis went to a loaded dice shop somewhere in Los Angeles to see about ordering a set of custom dice. (This was before you could order unfair dice over the internet.) Since an unfair die is intended to have one face come up more frequently than the others, he wanted each die to have a pip only on that side, with the rest blank. This would make it easier to record the results.
The proprietor of the shop looked and him strangely and said, "What kind of game are you running, buddy?"
Diaconis said, "Oh I'm not running a game. See, I'm a university professor, and I'm doing some research into the effects of unfair dice."
To get some unfair dice, Diaconis went to a loaded dice shop somewhere in Los Angeles to see about ordering a set of custom dice. (This was before you could order unfair dice over the internet.) Since an unfair die is intended to have one face come up more frequently than the others, he wanted each die to have a pip only on that side, with the rest blank. This would make it easier to record the results.
The proprietor of the shop looked and him strangely and said, "What kind of game are you running, buddy?"
Diaconis said, "Oh I'm not running a game. See, I'm a university professor, and I'm doing some research into the effects of unfair dice."
Proprietor: "Yeah. Sure."