4 ms·

Someone must have written a script because it is almost all 0 now.

by RoundCube 12y ago

levlaz 12y ago
I was wondering how long it would take for someone to do that :)
nmjohn 12y ago
I was curious if there was any rate limiting/filtering being used... Since someone else noticed I guess there isn't!
- cellover 12y ago
  I started implenting one but it's not behaving properly apparently. Working on it right now...
wgx 12y ago
"almost all 0" is still random. :)
- ajuc 12y ago
  No it isn't. If you can predict with more than 50% what the next bit will be - it's not random.
  - flux_w42 12y ago
    You're talking about a cryptographically secure random. Normal random can really contain any sequence, including a repeating string of 1's or 0's. The infinite monkey theorem proves it :)
    - ajuc 12y ago
      I'm of the opinion that any definition of random string that says the same string S is random or not depending on how we got it is just silly. IMHO random string = string that has Kolmogorov complexity = length of this string. Almost all strings we got from random variables with uniform distribution are random, but not all.
  - function_seven 12y ago
    Or you're lucky. One time a friend of mine was describing his fool-proof plan to win at Roulette. I jokingly asked, "What, double your bet when you lose?". He replied—in all seriousness—"No, triple it!" I then argued with him about the money he would likely lose implementing his plan. He said, "what are the odds the ball will land on red five times in a row?". (We were ignoring the existence of the green 0 and 00). I took out a quarter, flipped it seven times, and it landed heads every time. This happened straight-away. That was a random sequence, it was all 0s, and I'd like to think he was lucky that it happened that way, and convinced him to abandon his plan. But I was also lucky. I had intended to demonstrate this, and was prepared to be flipping the coin hundreds of times until the run of 0s came up. You could say I was predicting the next result correctly 100% of the time on those first 7 flips. But my ability to predict the results didn't show their non-randomness, instead it showed my "luckiness". Which really means they weren't predictions at all, I guess.
    - deutronium 12y ago
      That's called the Martingale betting system, and yeah it requires a gambler with infinite wealth
      - neotek 12y ago
        And a table with no maximum betting limit.
  - weinzierl 12y ago
    Just because it's biased towards 0 it doesn't mean there's no entropy in it. Even the raw output of an entropy source based on radioactive decay or thermal noise is biased. To generate a highly random output that appears independent from the source and uniformly distributed a randomness extractor [1] has to beapplied. The most well know is the Von Neumann extractor. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness_extractor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness_extractor

Someone must have written a script because it is almost all 0 now.

levlaz 12y ago

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to do that :)

nmjohn 12y ago

I was curious if there was any rate limiting/filtering being used... Since someone else noticed I guess there isn't!

cellover 12y ago
I started implenting one but it's not behaving properly apparently. Working on it right now...

wgx 12y ago

"almost all 0" is still random. :)

ajuc 12y ago
No it isn't. If you can predict with more than 50% what the next bit will be - it's not random.
- flux_w42 12y ago
  You're talking about a cryptographically secure random. Normal random can really contain any sequence, including a repeating string of 1's or 0's. The infinite monkey theorem proves it :)
  - ajuc 12y ago
    I'm of the opinion that any definition of random string that says the same string S is random or not depending on how we got it is just silly. IMHO random string = string that has Kolmogorov complexity = length of this string. Almost all strings we got from random variables with uniform distribution are random, but not all.
- function_seven 12y ago
  Or you're lucky. One time a friend of mine was describing his fool-proof plan to win at Roulette. I jokingly asked, "What, double your bet when you lose?". He replied—in all seriousness—"No, triple it!" I then argued with him about the money he would likely lose implementing his plan. He said, "what are the odds the ball will land on red five times in a row?". (We were ignoring the existence of the green 0 and 00). I took out a quarter, flipped it seven times, and it landed heads every time. This happened straight-away. That was a random sequence, it was all 0s, and I'd like to think he was lucky that it happened that way, and convinced him to abandon his plan. But I was also lucky. I had intended to demonstrate this, and was prepared to be flipping the coin hundreds of times until the run of 0s came up. You could say I was predicting the next result correctly 100% of the time on those first 7 flips. But my ability to predict the results didn't show their non-randomness, instead it showed my "luckiness". Which really means they weren't predictions at all, I guess.
  - deutronium 12y ago
    That's called the Martingale betting system, and yeah it requires a gambler with infinite wealth
    - neotek 12y ago
      And a table with no maximum betting limit.
- weinzierl 12y ago
  Just because it's biased towards 0 it doesn't mean there's no entropy in it. Even the raw output of an entropy source based on radioactive decay or thermal noise is biased. To generate a highly random output that appears independent from the source and uniformly distributed a randomness extractor [1] has to beapplied. The most well know is the Von Neumann extractor. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness_extractor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness_extractor