Path: csiph.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Tavis Ormandy Newsgroups: comp.programming Subject: Re: Getting random numbers. Date: 21 Jan 2021 18:39:17 GMT Lines: 32 Message-ID: References: <33e7892e-fe91-4440-9843-515c88da309an@googlegroups.com> <6009add6$0$35081$a92e2ab9@news.vipernews.com> <3f62690f-ff35-4b99-84ab-e2bb06fc154bn@googlegroups.com> <6009c3dd$0$34724$a92e2ab9@news.vipernews.com> <8dc9d017-0dea-43ac-92f6-cc6f03ab7673n@googlegroups.com> X-Trace: individual.net mNQ5iPwanOHvCclE0MvipgOAaTlzATaqVTmxR94p+JRt8LgdR9 Cancel-Lock: sha1:eoAxvljBxTn0ZMIUHDedEf8AVws= User-Agent: slrn/pre1.0.4-5 (Linux) Xref: csiph.com comp.programming:11886 On 2021-01-21, H E wrote: > To Tavis. > > You might be right. > But when I look the results, they look just incredible. > How can you tell if a number is random or not? Is just looking random good enough? It's a really interesting question! You will find this really fascinating, read about Buffon's needle problem! I found you a fun video so you don't have to read anything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHSWNsnJGeE Now, instead of throwing needles in the air, what if we use your random function? If it has the same statistical properties as throwing needeles in the air, it should work right? This is just a quick example of how to really evaluate a RNG (Random Number Generator), and why I was suggesting reading about diehard. Diehard is big collection of problems like this can check if the output has the right statistical properties. Tavis. -- _o) $ lynx lock.cmpxchg8b.com /\\ _o) _o) $ finger taviso@sdf.org _\_V _( ) _( ) @taviso