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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe NYC who wrote (127913)	11/10/2000 12:06:48 AM
From: Scumbria	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1570751

Joe, I'm trying a run with 28 coin tosses right now, but I suspect it will take several hours to complete on my Ultrasparc 5. I'm using a very brute force algorithm, but I'm sure there is a simple equation. Scumbria

To: Joe NYC who wrote (127913)	11/10/2000 12:16:31 AM
From: Scumbria	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1570751

Joe, Random systems with large numbers of objects behave very predictably. That is why the air inside your house is still. If there was any reasonable probability that 75% of the air molecules would suddenly start pushing one direction, and only 25% pushing the other direction, the air would be in constant turmoil. Glasses would tip over from random movements of water molecules. The glass remains stable because there are almost identical numbers of molecules pushing in every direction at any given time, which keeps the system in equilibrium. Did you know that much of the mathematical theory of randomness came from Poland? In high school I attended a lecture at Los Alamos from one of the great Polish mathematicians. The topic was "It is impossible to build a true random number generator, and it would be impossible to prove it if you did". Scumbria