How you know when you have practiced enough

JSTAT said:
Quite right, an RNG is not truly random, but StandardDeviant
From his observation, hinted that his practice software RNG is predictable.
I wonder which software it is.
To not buy.
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I just said that I will know that I have practiced enough when I can predict the numbers my pseudo-random number generator spits out. ;)
 
QFIT said:
Computer guys rarely bother with the word pseudo-random. Since nothing is random, there is no point in writing the extra two syllables.
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You can't prove nothing is random. I realize the RNG's used in most software is merely pseudorandom, but there are true RNG's out there that are uncertainly based, and there's a Nobel Prize waiting for anyone who can prove their outputs are not random.
 
Automatic Monkey said:
You can't prove nothing is random. I realize the RNG's used in most software is merely pseudorandom, but there are true RNG's out there that are uncertainly based, and there's a Nobel Prize waiting for anyone who can prove their outputs are not random.
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I said computer guys, not quantum physicists or theologians.:)
 
randomness

I think that the term randomness is just that random. If you want to explore the randomness it will turn into non-randomness eventually. I not being a math person have tried to explore this venue with someone who is but little luck. The assigned number for rngs is 19 but hey what do I know.
 
randomness

The point of randomness is that it eventually becomes non-random because it repeats itself at some point. Rngs repeat themselves at some point what that point is, is not known we know that it exists.
 
blackchipjim said:
The point of randomness is that it eventually becomes non-random because it repeats itself at some point. Rngs repeat themselves at some point what that point is, is not known we know that it exists.
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The period of the RNG used by CVData is so long that if a PC at today's speed did nothing but generate random numbers since the Big Bang, it still would not have repeated.
 
blackchipjim said:
The point of randomness is that it eventually becomes non-random because it repeats itself at some point. Rngs repeat themselves at some point what that point is, is not known we know that it exists.
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All of the decent, well-documented RNG's commonly used in computers have a well understood "period" of repetition that's really, really big. For the RNG to be useful, it just has to have a long enough period to outlast your sim, and be "random enough" to give you a reasonably even distribution of events for whatever task you're doing.

Thanks to all of the research in cryptography, there are lots of excellent RNG algorithms around that are thoroughly validated.

There are ways to make "truly" random RNG's for computers (using external sources of noise), but for sims this is way overkill.

Here's one amusing solution:

http://gamesbyemail.com/News/DiceOMatic
 
QFIT said:
That is debatable. But then we get into quantum physics and theology again.:)
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I remember back in the day when i was still a youngling in a statistical thermodynamics class, the professor asked one student to "randomly" chose 6 numbers, and the he asked why he chose those numbers, because supposedly he had a revelation that those numbers were the winning lottery numbers.:)
 
iCountNTrack said:
I remember back in the day when i was still a youngling in a statistical thermodynamics class, the professor asked one student to "randomly" chose 6 numbers, and the he asked why he chose those numbers, because supposedly he had a revelation that those numbers were the winning lottery numbers.:)
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Would have been funny if he had won the lottery.

One of the outside sources that has been used is radioactive decay. But, one of the things that is simulated is radioactive decay. Kind of biased to use as a source of "randomness" the very thing you are simulating.
 
QFIT said:
Would have been funny if he had won the lottery.

One of the outside sources that has been used is radioactive decay. But, one of the things that is simulated is radioactive decay. Kind of biased to use as a source of "randomness" the very thing you are simulating.
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It is called a "self-consistent" method:laugh:

It is in fact a method used in quantum mechanics i kid you not
 
QFIT said:
I looked at this a few years back. Far too slow. As well as unnecessary.
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You mean for simulation? That's not the intended market. Whether it is actually serves a useful purpose in the area of encryption, as the advertising blurb would have us believe, I don't know.

I suppose speed might be an issue for a game server too, if it were dealing with many simultaneous games.

QFIT said:
It might also be noted that the blurb assumes that you accept the randomness inherent in quantum mechanics. According to a recent article, I think Einstein won the latest battle on views of the Universe.:)
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Isn't that true of all RNGs at some level?

I may be misremembering, but I think I read about a method of achieving the same sort of thing as the VIA processors using a standard processor in a very non-standard way. Something about executing a series of instructions that makes no computational sense, but leaves a particular register (or i/o port, or something) in an undefined state for a period of time.
 
London Colin said:
I may be misremembering, but I think I read about a method of achieving the same sort of thing as the VIA processors using a standard processor in a very non-standard way. Something about executing a series of instructions that makes no computational sense, but leaves a particular register (or i/o port, or something) in an undefined state for a period of time.
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The device I looked at awhile back was external making it far too slow for sims. Albeit there may be some legit application.

The idea of using instructions that could cause an undefined state in a register sounds unreliable.
 
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