4 ms·

This is a great question. What are the speed requirements? https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-for-a-human-to-generate-a-truly-random-sequence-mentally https:

by trevyn 9y ago

This is a great question. What are the speed requirements? https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-for-a-human-to-generate-a-truly-random-sequence-mentally https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-for-a-human-to-generate... You could probably come up with a reasonably good, fast mental PRNG algorithm, and practice that.

Someone 9y ago
Pick a phrase (name, address, phone number would do), discard white space, and convert the upper two bits to binary. Example: "Pick a phrase" would become 00 01 11 11 01 00 00 10 01 11 01... That's certainly not random, but unlikely to be detectable for shorter sequences. (Edit: it probably is a fun exercise to write a program that decodes this code that reaches >75% (lossy) compression)
- averagewall 9y ago
  That would hurt you on speed. It's much faster to just pull numbers out of your head as fast as you can write them down. That should be protection against using an algorithm. Even if you do have a fast algorithm, it would still get slower as you age, so you could use it to compare yourself at different ages. The test might also be scored using randomness tests that would pick up the repeated use of the same algorithm, like the one you described. Distribution of letters and their (ASCII?) bits won't be perfectly random. You could also hand code exceptions for known algorithms as you discover them. That's what interests me. Monitoring your own cognitive ability as you age for early detection and tracking of neurodegenerative diseases. For this, you need a test that's resistant to practice.
  - Someone 9y ago
    "It's much faster to just pull numbers out of your head" I don't doubt that, but the context was to generate reasonably good (in the sense of "looks like independent samples from a 50/50 distribution") sequences. Humans are notoriously bad at that (example: in the first 9 bits, one would expect four consecutive zeroes or ones. Try finding someone who produces that when 'just pulling numbers out f their head as fast as you can write them down'). I think this will be significantly better (as indicated above: for shorter sequences), even though it lumps a, e, i, n and r to the bit pattern '01'. It also can be quite fast, even if you do it by memorizing the mapping from letter to 1..26 doing 'mod 4', and conversion to two binary digits.

by trevyn 9y ago

Someone 9y ago

Pick a phrase (name, address, phone number would do), discard white space, and convert the upper two bits to binary. Example: "Pick a phrase" would become 00 01 11 11 01 00 00 10 01 11 01... That's certainly not random, but unlikely to be detectable for shorter sequences. (Edit: it probably is a fun exercise to write a program that decodes this code that reaches >75% (lossy) compression)

averagewall 9y ago
That would hurt you on speed. It's much faster to just pull numbers out of your head as fast as you can write them down. That should be protection against using an algorithm. Even if you do have a fast algorithm, it would still get slower as you age, so you could use it to compare yourself at different ages. The test might also be scored using randomness tests that would pick up the repeated use of the same algorithm, like the one you described. Distribution of letters and their (ASCII?) bits won't be perfectly random. You could also hand code exceptions for known algorithms as you discover them. That's what interests me. Monitoring your own cognitive ability as you age for early detection and tracking of neurodegenerative diseases. For this, you need a test that's resistant to practice.
- Someone 9y ago
  "It's much faster to just pull numbers out of your head" I don't doubt that, but the context was to generate reasonably good (in the sense of "looks like independent samples from a 50/50 distribution") sequences. Humans are notoriously bad at that (example: in the first 9 bits, one would expect four consecutive zeroes or ones. Try finding someone who produces that when 'just pulling numbers out f their head as fast as you can write them down'). I think this will be significantly better (as indicated above: for shorter sequences), even though it lumps a, e, i, n and r to the bit pattern '01'. It also can be quite fast, even if you do it by memorizing the mapping from letter to 1..26 doing 'mod 4', and conversion to two binary digits.