6 ms·

Can you fool a computer at generating random numbers?

8 points by squeakynick 14y ago

hdra 14y ago
didn't have a coin with me to try it out, but just found new blog to add to my rss feed... :)
JoshTko 14y ago
Blog got it wrong for the real coin and my guesses.
- hamburglar 14y ago
  me too
  - dexter313 14y ago
    same here
Sniffnoy 14y ago
This seems to link to the result page with no data; the actual starting page seems to be at http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/january12013/ http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/january12013/
- squeakynick 14y ago
  Ooops, yes, sorry. You pasted the correct link.
revelation 14y ago
I can't tell, they both look totally random to me! You stumped me! Spooky huh? -- Am I wrong in thinking that this will only work with at best a random coin flip precision? Not to mention that the few flips people will be willing to make means you lack any significant amount of data to make such a statement.
- hdra 14y ago
  the idea is that we human sucks at generating random number. When we try to generate a random number, we tend to overthink on how to make it random, and ended up exhibiting a certain pattern (such as evenly spaced data) that we think "random" numbers should have. I think his program tries to identify the one with said pattern, and classify the data with relatively even distribution as the one you thought up, so the point the articles is more about random number rather than correctly guessing what you did. The blog has a lot interesting articles on data analysis though, I think I will be spending quite some time going through them. :) edit: I didn't miss any sarcasm, did i?
DanBC 14y ago
Mildly interesting - but determining if a sequence of maybe random numbers actually is random is hard. I'd like to see people talking about the DieHard tests, and potential problems with it. Or about the needs for different types of randomness for different applications - modelling requires large quantities of random numbers but needs to be able to recreate the same sequence later. That would be very bad for cryptography. Games need unpredictability, but true randomness isn't great. Music shuffle systems are often made less random to prevent jarring changes.

8 points by squeakynick 14y ago

hdra 14y ago

didn't have a coin with me to try it out, but just found new blog to add to my rss feed... :)

JoshTko 14y ago

Blog got it wrong for the real coin and my guesses.

hamburglar 14y ago
me too
- dexter313 14y ago
  same here

Sniffnoy 14y ago

This seems to link to the result page with no data; the actual starting page seems to be at http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/january12013/ http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/january12013/

squeakynick 14y ago
Ooops, yes, sorry. You pasted the correct link.

revelation 14y ago

I can't tell, they both look totally random to me! You stumped me! Spooky huh? -- Am I wrong in thinking that this will only work with at best a random coin flip precision? Not to mention that the few flips people will be willing to make means you lack any significant amount of data to make such a statement.

hdra 14y ago
the idea is that we human sucks at generating random number. When we try to generate a random number, we tend to overthink on how to make it random, and ended up exhibiting a certain pattern (such as evenly spaced data) that we think "random" numbers should have. I think his program tries to identify the one with said pattern, and classify the data with relatively even distribution as the one you thought up, so the point the articles is more about random number rather than correctly guessing what you did. The blog has a lot interesting articles on data analysis though, I think I will be spending quite some time going through them. :) edit: I didn't miss any sarcasm, did i?

DanBC 14y ago

Mildly interesting - but determining if a sequence of maybe random numbers actually is random is hard. I'd like to see people talking about the DieHard tests, and potential problems with it. Or about the needs for different types of randomness for different applications - modelling requires large quantities of random numbers but needs to be able to recreate the same sequence later. That would be very bad for cryptography. Games need unpredictability, but true randomness isn't great. Music shuffle systems are often made less random to prevent jarring changes.