Someone once said "Anyone who uses arithmetic methods to produce random numbers is in a state of sin."
Most random number generators use a measure of a randomly varying physical property (such as the internal 'tick time' of a computer) to 'seed' an arithmetic random number generator.
The argument against this is that even physical phenomena can lose their randomness, leading to unreliable results.
What are your comments on this random number generator:
Draw a table with 10 columns and 1 row. The first 'cell' is 'cell(1)', the second 'cell(2)' etc...
Take the ticker time, say 2114457852323654475
Take the last digit (5) and place the number '0' in cell(5).
Take the ticker time again, say 21153214578965428654
Take the last digit (4) and place the number '1' in cell(4) or the cell next to it if it's been filled....etc. The10 digit number containing digits 0-9 in random order is then used as a seed in an arithmetic random number generator.
How 'random' is the result?
2006-11-16
19:45:42
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3 answers
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➔ Mathematics