I would have to lean towards No. I receive Embedded Systems Programming - recently renamed Embedded Systems Design - at the office. Last year there were some excellent articles on what I believe you are actually referring to: PRNG"s (Pseudo Random Number Generators). http://www.embedded.com//showArticle.jhtml...icleID=20900500 The math is very straighforward, at least it was for me. The problem with "proving" something like randomness is you quickly enter a paradox. If it isn't random, you'll see repetition - eventually. How long to you look? A week? How about a month? A year?? Ten years? I admit it's fun to play with the math though. Keeps you sharp.
I disagree. I believe that nature is full of randomness. It's only our attempts to immitate randomness with a mathematical formula that are doomed to fail.
I think some things are random and unexpected. For example, NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!! [Broken External Image]:http://www.geocities.com/ring_of_fnord/Spanish_Inquisition.jpg
holy hyperspace batman! stop the pressess! i FULLY agree with my second most favorite Canadian!!! well, sort of... as my no (the first no vote ) is a bit more concrete unless something new is out there i don't know about... my quick and dirty opinion is just about everything can be predicted or even computed. given enough 'computer power'.... maybe an exception for higher level organics though... then again, if we could isolate and predict EVERY chemical reaction/interaction within an organic mass, then we're back to the theory that everything can ultimately be predicted given enough computing power... although i must mention that there seem to be two classes; hardware and software.... of course, you COULD spend time kicking around theories that even software is some form of hardware.... lollololol h34r:
NICE!!!! BAwhahahahahhahaahh! I will now use this entire thread as a piece of my GAZILLION bit encryption key!!!!
hey imnotacrook: i saw this a-hole today, the rear window of his jeep cherokee read something like (in big bold white letters): GEORGE W BUSH HAS KILLED 2XXX AMERICANS AND MORE IRAQI'S THAN SADDAM EVER DID. I ALMOST honked to give him the finger as i pulled up next to him, but I suppose I had to respect his 1st Amendment rights... what an nice person though... :angry:
you do realize that posts like these make me roll my eyes right? I believe THIS is the appropriate emoticon ----> :lol:
Actually, I think that almost everything in nature is random. The cosmic background radiation, gene mutations, when a given radioactive atom splits... radiation in general has a random factor imposed on a half-life that is fixed for a given isotope... whether a particular dog will eat cat poop, given the opportunity... nature is all random. The exact branching structure of a tree is random. And I suspect that the original distribution of matter in the universe, before gravitation began to magnify the variations, was random. I cannot prove any of the above. But this is my opinion.
Speaking as a mathematician (ahem, ahem): I think randomness is big in the middle, and thin at both ends. And that's my theory. And now for the science part of our show... Actually, I think it might be best to determine what we mean by "random": Unpredictable: Numbers appear without any pattern, cycle, or way to predict them. (I keep thinking that someone got this by putting a cosmic particle (i.e., cosmic rays) detector out in the middle of a field somewhere.) Non-cyclical, but evenly-distributed: What we often want when we ask for a random number -- something that will come up with a number from a set of numbers; but, over time, will generally pick all of the items within the set. (Think your iPod or VAIS AIC-100i's "RAND" mode.)
I think you're onto something, Bookrats. That's why iTunes let's you adjust the "randomness" of its picking. If truly random, it might play the same song twice in a row, which most people would not consider random at all. And here we're only picking from a finite set... Think of the infinite universe, and the next one right next to it.
