pair o' dice no paradox, men

Joel Sieh wrote: 6 different throws on each of two sided dice gives us 36 possible throws. Possible combinations equalling 7: Die 1 Die 2 1 6 2 5 3 4 4 3 5 2 6 1 Total combinations: 6 Probability = combinations equalling 7 / all possible combos = 6 / 36 = 1 / 6 = 16.6%. Following these calculations, rolls of 2 or a 12 would each have a probability 1 / 36. I agree that these are much less probable than rolling a 7 (the most probable roll with two six sided dice), but it seems that 1 / 6 is still against the odds, if you consider "against the odds" to mean less than 50%.

Wow, you are right! What was I thinking? Well, I was working off the fact that in games involving two dice, 7 is the middle of the bell curve. I was erroneously thinking in terms of the odds of rolling >= 7 or <= 7 (which is a 58% probability), rather than just 7. With regard to the text I was also puzzled as to why a 7 would mean death, when, for example, there are 10 men. Up until the moment I typed it in, I sort of thought there were only 7 men, and the dice were saying how many would die (all, in this case); but the dice tell a group fate, not a fractional amount (all die or none die). On my first reading I thought he was supposed to roll a number related to the number of crewmen, like, say = 8 (42% chance). Even as I was typing it in this evening, and there was a glimpse of the truth (that rolling a 7 really is a 1/6 chance), I veered away from this and into the notion "Why not just use one die, if one-in-six is the desired probability -- then the roll of a =1= would make the whole thing quite obvious." And the waste of a perfectly nice bellcurve (as opposed to the "flat" curve of a single die)! (The reason why one-in-six is important is made clear in the text: that is the fatality rate for sunmen.) The reason why a 7 means death is because that is the only way to squeeze out a 1 in 6 chance out of two dice! Anyway, I was wrong. Thanks for correcting me! (I still wonder why Harness would choose to use =two= dice when one die would work better. Well, work better for =me=, at least!)