crummer%AEROSPACE@sri-unix.UUCP (12/19/83)
From: Charlie Crummer <crummer@AEROSPACE> Randomness contains order because humans create the order. The old saw about the million monkeys at a million typewriters eventually writing all of Shakespeare's works is an example. A true random symbol generator will produce all possible strings of symbols. Some of these strings will seem to be ordered but only because we BRING the concept of order to the string. Order is not an attribute of the string but is a property added by the observer. That is the result of the experiment: When asked to find order people create it. --Charlie
stekas@hou2g.UUCP (J.STEKAS) (12/21/83)
Finding "order" in short random sequences is a tribute to the
human brain's extraordinary powers of pattern recognition. Standard
tests frequently have "find the next # in the series" type questions.
But given any 4 integers there are an infinity of descrete functions
which could generate them, each giving a different prediction for the
5th # in the series! Whether the initial set of 4 #s was generated by
a random function (like alpha decay) or a deterministic function chosen
randomly (by a tester) from an infinite number of such function, the
pattern recognition process is the same.
Jim