talkmagic.co.uk

Lol, i think i saw it on bravo. I'm not talking about if you're trying to get a number I'm talking about if you hold it one way twice and then a different way for another time its going to effect the outcome. How a rain drop splashes when it hits the ground, some would syat hat was random but it all dpends on how high the clud is its dropped from and the surface. I'm yet to think of a case of randomness where there are no factors that have an effect on the outcome. Apart from maybe nuclear activity, but again that depends on the equipement that the activity is being measured on

i do fluid dynamics, so i could happily tell you how drops fall and splash, and why.

as for random things i've given you 2 pretty good ones: the coin toss. and if you want something has you can't give a "oh one side of the coin is heavier, it depends how you flick it" arguement to then the sex of a baby (come to think of it, just someones gender) is totally random!

Welll....i'd love to agree with you on this one but

www.choosethesexofyourbaby.com (which i punched in RANDOMLY and was a real site) begs to differ lol. Seems like a load of codswallop to me though

i think "codswallop" may actually be the correct technical term to discribe that site

agree with me! genetics agrees with me! you should too!

Meh go on then. But don't think I'm going all soppy on you!

i love being right!

Lawrence wrote:i love being right!

Technically though there must be deciding factors on whether the baby becomes boy or girl. By 1012 it is predicted that there will be 6 girls for every 1 guy in the UK. Something suggests that girls are more likely than boys

seige wrote:Out of 1 million random numbers chosen, between 1 and 1000, there were a good chunk of duplicates around the numbers 500 to 900. Very few matches in the 1 - 100 mark, and the LEAST common number was 999.

I don't know what this means, but it seems the computer's randomness was biased between 500 and 900.

Every number between 1 and 1000 was chosen at least once.

The most popular number was 723. For some reason.

I may run another loop and repeat the test 1 million times and compare the cumulative result... it sounds like a lot of number crunching, but takes about 3 seconds for 1 million results to be checked!

I'm not 100% sure on this, but it looks as if the randomness follows some sort of a normal distribution. Of course, the "population" might be too small to be sure it actually follows a normal distribution. If it would have been truly random the distribution chart would be flat (or near to flat depending on the population of course). I don't remember how to calculate the population needed to get a reliable result, but there is a method, I'm sure.

But if we leave the statistical mathematics and try to look at it in a more philosphical/theoretical manner, I believe that a computer can get pretty close to a 100% random number, but it won't get the whole way. After all, you have to give it a seed. The act of giving it a seed implies human action of feeding the computer with data. I believe this resets any 100% randomness from the computer. If we imagine a biiiiig (not beeg but big ) wheel of fortune numbered from 0 to 999 (or 1 to 1000) that we will have to give a spin manually, the result will not be random (not even close). The result will depend on how hard we spin the wheel and the position of the wheel when we spin. We won't get a truly random number. Not even if you tell me that the wind will spin the wheel. Then we are coming into chaos theory. But that I cannot give any further ideas about.

Phew... sorry if this was boring.

statistic hacks is a very interesting book...it mentions the coin toss in that...

the rest of this post might as well of been written in the language of lions for all the sense it made to me..

Throwing a coin is fairly random. V.Neuman the inventor of the modern computer came up with a trick that generates random heads and tails even if the coin is not completely fair. Make two throws. If head is followed by tail then the result is head. If tail is followed by head the result is tail. If the two throws leads to the same result disregard the result.

This elaborate procedure reminds me of the following problem.

Problem:
Suppose n people are to divide a bowl of pudding. Find a method that is fair in the sense that if someone gets to little they can only blame them selves!

Solution:
Assume the people is sitting around the table. Lets enumerate them 1,2,...,n.

Person 1 put a portion on a plate. Then person two is asked if he thinks the portion is too large. If he thinks it is, he is allowed to remove any amount of pudding from the plate he might wish. Then its the third persons turn. If he thinks the portion is too large he can remove from he plate any amount of pudding he wish. When all people have had a chance to remove pudding, THE :AST PERSON WHO REMOVED ANY PUDDING gets the plate, and is out of the game. If noone removes any puddling, the first person gets the plate. This procedure is repeated until only two people are left in which case the procedure reduces to the usual "you divide, I choose" game.

Notice that if someone gets too little pudding, they only have themself to blame.

Not quite sure what this has to do with randomness. Ramseys Theorem is a famous theorem in mathematics that in some sense says that true randomness is never possible and that large dataset AFTER WARDS (magicinas choice!!) ALWAYS contains some unusual and surprising patterns! If the data had been slightly different and that pattern had not been present some other pattern would have been there instead.

Ramseys theorem is very good news for magicians, though its hard to apply the principle in practice since the dataset usually needs to be huge and it might take the magician a few hours (if not days) to work out the hidden pattern.

according the stat hacks, there is a slight bias towards one side, whichever is less indented/carved, and therefore a tiny heavier than the other side...only minutely..but its there apparently...

I disagree about throwing a coin being random.

Statistically, yes, you could see no pattern.

However, for it to be deemed truly random, EVERY toss of the coin would need to be exactly the same... i.e. same position on the finger, same velocity of throw, same wind conditions etc. etc.

It stands to reason that if every throw was exactly duplicated, the coin would always land the same, correct? Therefore, it's not the TOSS OF THE COIN which is random, it's the person throwing it and the physical discrepancies between each throw which make the coin fall differently.

Consequently, therefore, if the person is somehow able to influence the outcome—whether consciously or not—surely this isn't a method of random choice?

I am wondering if there is a true random base anywhere in the physical world... it seems that almost any scenario I come up with is subject to influence.

And for something to be truly random, it cannot be influenced, can it?

(I think Lawrence may be about to make me look like a pillock for this one...)

In the early nineteenth century, the Marquis de Laplace suggested that if we knew the positions and velocities of all the particles in the universe at one time, the laws of physics would allow us to predict what the state of the universe would be at any other time in the past or in the future.*

If he was right, then I'm afraid that nothing at all is random and we have absolutely no free will whatsoever. Every minutest action we make is determined by the predetermined collisions and interactions of the particles that affect our bodies and make up our nervous systems. Whilst it might 'feel' that we have choice, we are actually only observers of the decisions that physics determines we would have made all along.

Kind of makes you feel like giving up doesn't it.


*Source: Stephen Hawking - The Universe in a Nutshell

seige wrote:I had a lengthy discussion today with a work colleage about generating random numbers.

My side of the argument is that it's not strictly possible with a computer, because computers are mathematical by nature, and randomness isn't in the rulebook.

Any thoughts?

I wrote about this a couple of years ago. Random number generator algorithms are pseudo-random. What is being explored is generating true randomness from on-chip using thermal noise as the seed.

Or may the case just be that we laymen in our daily speak have distorted the true scientific meaning of random? I was googleing for some scientific definitions of random variables and I found this http://www.math.mcmaster.ca/canty/teach ... tures6.pdf. I believe definition 3.5 is the one we are discussing. What I mean is that just as we distort other definitions or words to mean something we all understand implicitely maybe we have distorted random to be what we all understand it to be, i.e truly random without any sort of deviation no matter how small the deviation may be. I don't know if I've made my point. I'll try to find some examples.