Digital dice rollers and other randomness

1. Digital dice rollers and other randomness

   #1

   manfred has created a wonderful set of dice rollers for us here at the Citadel, but I am ever on the outlook for such things.
   
   Randomness is not so random in the world of computer science, but I found this site called... random.org a while ago.
   
   Now, they claim their numbers to be random, but... Well... When I roll my dice manually, the chance of getting statistical oddities are vastly greater than when I roll on random.org. I tried out their random number generator again today and it was so perfectly random that statistical oddities never occured.
   
   That is not random.

2. Re: Digital dice rollers and other randomness

   #2

   That's the odd thing about chaos.  Once you add too much of it to a system, it eventually reaches a point where it is again perfectly ordered. 

3. Re: Digital dice rollers and other randomness

   #3

   If oddities do not occur, something is very wrong. I'd say you should avoid that page.

4. Re: Digital dice rollers and other randomness

   #4

   
   Now, they claim their numbers to be random, but... Well... When I roll my dice manually, the chance of getting statistical oddities are vastly greater than when I roll on random.org. I tried out their random number generator again today and it was so perfectly random that statistical oddities never occured.
   
   That is not random.
   

   
   
   This is way the heck too late to make much difference, but I think the big thing about random.org is that it's generated from atmospheric noise, which is nowhere near as independent (i.e. randomized) as dice are for time-series data. A smooth plane of results (still random, just not clumped) is more what I would expect.

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