What does randomness look like? (opens in new tab)

(wired.com)

12 pointshelium11y ago4 comments

4 comments

anw11y ago

Before clicking the link, the title reminded me of an article I had read a few years ago. The article mentioned how true randomness can be prone to heavily favoring one outcome for a long stretch; while "faked" randomness will usually try to just look random, rather than being so.

Lo and behold, this is the same article I was thinking of. It seems some of the pictures are not loading now—no surprise, as it was published in 2012.

For a view of this article with working pictures, check out the archived version of it: https://web.archive.org/web/20140803073404/http://www.wired....

graeme11y ago

This script linked to in the article is very interesting. It shows random and non-random distributions side by side:

http://bl.ocks.org/roryokane/4358325

I used to play Catan a lot with a group of engineers. I noticed that even their mathematical intuitions of randomness were off. For instance, one would try to shuffle the deck so that Knight cards were spaced evenly apart. They did it in the name of randomness, even though their deck manipulation was the opposite of random.

praptak11y ago

There are some situations where it makes sense to label data as "too random". Cooked books, election fraud and steganography can sometimes be detected by checking for atypically high randomness levels.

In this context it night make sense to make a game less random as it might make it more realistic.

Also: Wheeeee, I'm in the article :-)

anon411y ago

It looks like nothing at all... nothing at all... nothing at all...

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