pebblerocker | (no subject)

I want a set of polyhedral dice. Quite apart from any potential dungeon-crawling activities for which they could be useful, icosahedra and dodecahedra are really nice to hold and to look at. But online sources of dice charge around $15 for a double set (two each of d4,d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20) and then add around $10 for postage, ouch. They don't weigh that much! The sellers (both that I found) are educational supply places and perhaps expect most customers to buy enough dice or base-10 blocks or whatever for a whole classroom to use, so the postage wouldn't matter so much in comparison. Hum, what sort of real-life shop can I look in?

Digressing somewhat -- if you provide a classroomful of pupils with an educational bucket of various dice, will they develop a nice mathematical understanding of probability, or are they more likely to learn superstitious thinking and become convinced of the efficacy of their particular method of dice-shaking and invocations?

I will leave you with a couple of dice-related items: a link to a lovely website where you can spin Platonic solids with your mouse -- here's the dodecahedron.

And here's a fun song involving dice.