4 ms·

If you're going to accuse a professional mathematics company of not knowing math, you could at least spend 5 minutes to read their explanation of the algorithm,

If you're going to accuse a professional mathematics company of not knowing math, you could at least spend 5 minutes to read their explanation of the algorithm, and mention why your pseudorandom number generator is more statistically robust.

logicallee 12y ago
I didn't accuse them of not knowing math, I said it seems to be reckless and irresponsible. I don't dispute that the method is statistically robust - in fact I said that this would make it fine in an RNG library in some programming language. (i.e. I would have zero qualms using it as my RNG.) It's just that if there is anyplace where some numerical correlation might accidentally peek through the curtains, it would be in the kinds of things someone does in mathematics software. Here is a bad algorithm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RANDU http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RANDU that was "in use since the 60s'". I'm sure it's fine for certain uses, but, "as a result of the wide use of RANDU in the early 1970s, many results from that time are seen as suspicious." How surprised would you be if this very simple RNG turned out to produce incorrect results somewhere?
- fjarlq 12y ago
  Wolfram published his analysis of CA RNG in 1986.[1] Since then, his paper has been cited 408 times.[2] Richard Feynman tried to crack rule 30, but declared he couldn't. That's probably partly why Wolfram describes rule 30 as "probably my all-time favorite scientific discovery."[3] You said earlier that "[rule 30 has] gotta be much too simple." Many serious mathematicians have felt that way over the past 30 years, but so far nobody has shown how it is a bad RNG. If someone does so at this point, they would make quite a splash in mathematics.... [1] http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/academic/random-sequence-generation-cellular-automata.pdf http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/academic/random-s... [2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22random+sequence+generation+by+cellular+automata%22 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22random+sequence+gene... [3] http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/short-talk-about-richard-feynman/ http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/short-talk-about-...

logicallee 12y ago

I didn't accuse them of not knowing math, I said it seems to be reckless and irresponsible. I don't dispute that the method is statistically robust - in fact I said that this would make it fine in an RNG library in some programming language. (i.e. I would have zero qualms using it as my RNG.) It's just that if there is anyplace where some numerical correlation might accidentally peek through the curtains, it would be in the kinds of things someone does in mathematics software. Here is a bad algorithm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RANDU http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RANDU that was "in use since the 60s'". I'm sure it's fine for certain uses, but, "as a result of the wide use of RANDU in the early 1970s, many results from that time are seen as suspicious." How surprised would you be if this very simple RNG turned out to produce incorrect results somewhere?

fjarlq 12y ago
Wolfram published his analysis of CA RNG in 1986.[1] Since then, his paper has been cited 408 times.[2] Richard Feynman tried to crack rule 30, but declared he couldn't. That's probably partly why Wolfram describes rule 30 as "probably my all-time favorite scientific discovery."[3] You said earlier that "[rule 30 has] gotta be much too simple." Many serious mathematicians have felt that way over the past 30 years, but so far nobody has shown how it is a bad RNG. If someone does so at this point, they would make quite a splash in mathematics.... [1] http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/academic/random-sequence-generation-cellular-automata.pdf http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/academic/random-s... [2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22random+sequence+generation+by+cellular+automata%22 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22random+sequence+gene... [3] http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/short-talk-about-richard-feynman/ http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/short-talk-about-...