Si o No

si, and I believe in quantum computing too.

 

I voted in the affirmative despite not really knowing (nor caring) about "odd math issues". :lol:

 

I said sí, but I sure can't think of one. Does having humans train animals to choose a random number count?

 

Sure, there are lots of physically-based random number generators.

Humans are actually really bad at generating random numbers. We tend to distribute things too evenly.

 

Nature is not random. Nature tries every permutation and combination (as exemplified by genome projects). Only humans resort to tables of random numbers to pretend we are being random. Even then, we introduce bias.

 

To get my random number, I had the computer count to 100 100 times a second, and stop when I hit a key. I didn't think there was much bias there.

 

There is always come bias, even with the best of intentions using the best of systems.

 

What's the bias? I can't even distinguish one 1/10000th of a second from the next, let alone prefer one.

 

I voted No, but I think things like stopping a computer like you described or ping pong balls in a wind tunnel are random, but I don't think there is a mathematical way to generate a random number. - but I could be wrong.

24 hours in a day, 24 bottles of beer in a case. Coincidence?? Maybe...

 

It take some serious modeling at the atomic level, but it should be theorhetically possible to represent ping pong balls in a wind tunnel mathematically. My vote is you can't call that truly random.

 

I think intelligent design is what Squid does when he tosses out these random polls.

 

I've read about generators taht use cosmic static to generate strings of ones and zeroes. You can actualy buy individual, unique CDs filled with truly random digits. The CDs are statistically tested for randomness and have passed some tests to prove randomness. (As far as I remember, since this was 7 years or so ago.)

 

Yeah, but are they truly random?

 

So you can't get one that doesn't pass the test? That seems less random.

 

I believe there are no mathematical formulas that generate true random number sequences, but I believe there are methods to generate true random numbers.

 

Nothing is truely random.
Things happen for a reason. It appears to be random because we don't understand it enough...

There is no math formulum that generates a random number sequence that does not repeat itself. It is a matter of period. A 48bit formula may have a much longer sequence than a 32 bit one before the sequence repeats itself.

 

Why's everyone bringing in math and algorithms and computers into this? Why can't one just point a big ol dish at the sky and use the randomness of the comos' background noise to get somethin random? Matter of fact, there is a dude in switzerland with a geiger counter and a pc who's offering "tubes" of random bits to folks for a (modest?) sum... http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/

 

I think it's because we don't think background noise is truly random. We figure each bit of noise got created by a specific definable event. Maybe you can point us to a specific event that would be random. Of course, then we'll just figure that it's still happening for a specific reason, following a physical law, we just don't know why yet.