random

[David C. Ullrich]

On Thu, 31 May 2001 08:17:18 -0400, "Bill Bell"
<bill-bell at bill-bell.hamilton.on.ca> wrote:

>
>kamikaze at kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu (Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes) wrote:
>> Bas van Gils <bas.vangils at home.nl> spake: 
>> One of the things that I'm concerned
>> about is this random-ness. My > teacher (actually a nice guy :)
>> explained to us that not all > random-number-generators are "good",
>> and that this selection process > *must* *be* *random*. So, my
>> question: how random is the > random-number-generator that python
>> uses?
>> 
>> "Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random
>> numbers is, of course, in a state of sin." -John Von Neumann
>> 
>> Unless you have random-number-generating hardware, you don't really
>> have truly random numbers.
>
>"Gott werft nicht!" ("God does not throw dice!") -- Albert Einstein
>
>Sorry, I could not resist this urge. (What is it about random numbers that 
>provokes so much discourse?!)

Whoever said they're too important to be left to chance got it right.
(Which is more than we can say for Albert here...)




David C. Ullrich
*********************
"Sometimes you can have access violations all the 
time and the program still works." (Michael Caracena, 
comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc 5/1/01)