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Si o No

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by Mystery Squid, Dec 29, 2005.

?
  1. si

    0 vote(s)
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  2. no

    0 vote(s)
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  1. Mystery Squid

    Mystery Squid Junior Member

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    think

    entro y

    :ph34r:
     
  2. jayman

    jayman Senior Member

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    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.
     
  3. galaxee

    galaxee mostly benevolent

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    i don't know about numbers, but my results in the lab seem to be rather random lately... :(
     
  4. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    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.
     
  5. parrot_lady

    parrot_lady Member

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    you realize without the accent on the "si" it really means "if" in English.

    so, of course, No.
     
  6. jeneric

    jeneric New Member

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    Oh, I thought it was Portuguese and meant "itself."

    For instance?
     
  7. sanguis

    sanguis Member

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    i voted no; everything happens a certain way, for a particular reason, right?
     
  8. TonyPSchaefer

    TonyPSchaefer Your Friendly Moderator
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  9. bigdaddy

    bigdaddy Member

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    Lava lamps. http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?...8&RS=PN/5732138
     
  10. Mystery Squid

    Mystery Squid Junior Member

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    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 :D ) 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

    :ph34r:
     
  11. imntacrook

    imntacrook New Member

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    LOL that is very good!!!
     
  12. Mystery Squid

    Mystery Squid Junior Member

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    NICE!!!!

    BAwhahahahahhahaahh!

    I will now use this entire thread as a piece of my GAZILLION bit encryption key!!!!
     
  13. Mystery Squid

    Mystery Squid Junior Member

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    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:
     
  14. Mystery Squid

    Mystery Squid Junior Member

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    you do realize that posts like these make me roll my eyes right?

    I believe THIS is the appropriate emoticon ----> :rolleyes:

    :lol:
     
  15. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    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.
     
  16. bookrats

    bookrats New Member

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    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.)
     
  17. parrot_lady

    parrot_lady Member

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    That was indeed the point of that post :D :p
     
  18. Mystery Squid

    Mystery Squid Junior Member

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    you're all right parrot lady... :D
     
  19. Bill Merchant

    Bill Merchant absit invidia

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    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.