What is the statistically superior character

creation method, twelve 3d6 or six 4d6?

A. N. Other
October 26, 2010

Regarding the question posted on StackExchange, “What is the statistically

superior character creation method, twelve 3d6 or six 4d6?”:
When you roll 4d6k3, each of your 6 ability scores follows the exact same
probability distribution. In statistics lingo, your 6 ability scores are i.i.d.—
independent and identically distributed—random variables. Call one of these
i.i.d. random variables Y. The mean of Y is E[Y]=12.2445987654321, and its
standard deviation is σY = 2.8468444453115. Additionally, this distribution is
skewed to the left; its skewness is -0.283507652977282.
By comparison, when you roll 3d6 once, you get a random variable X, with
E[X]=10.5, and standard deviation σX = 2.95803989155. Additionally, it is
symmetric, so its skewness is 0.
However, when you roll 3d6 12 times and keep the highest 6, you get 6 dif-
ferent random variables (not i.i.d.), called the 7th through 12th order statistics,
denoted X(7) , . . . , X(12) . E.g., X(12) is the maximum of the 12 rolls. Each order
statistic has its own mean, standard deviation, and skewness:
Order statistic mean standard deviation skewness
X(7) 10.8184 1.1411 -0.00564534
X(8) 11.4663 1.14865 -0.00978342
X(9) 12.1517 1.1693 0.00712255
X(10) 12.919 1.2154 0.0435863
X(11) 13.8598 1.30455 0.0503448
X(12) 15.2263 1.44603 -0.125062
Of course, you can easilyPfind the average of the means of the 7th through
12
E[X ]
12th order statistics: µ = i=7 6 (i) = 12.7403, so µ > E[Y ] by about a
1
2 point. But note that E[X(7) ] < E[X(8) ] < E[X(9) ] < E[Y ], meaning the
expected value of each of the 6 ability scores generated with 4d6k3 is greater
than what you can expect from half the ability scores generated by the largest
6 of 12x(3d6). So the answer isn’t so simple.