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How can something be more random ... (Score:1)

by milardj (4452) on 2005.04.27 15:03 (#40020) Journal

I came into computers from a liberal arts background so my math-fu is very weak but isn't something random or not random? How can you have gradations of randomness?
Maybe I should just FTFL or some such slashdot acronym.

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- Re:How can something be more random ... (Score:2)
  
  by jmm (276)
  
  Gradations of randomness are quite meaningful. The degree of randomness is how accurately you can guess what value is coming next. A two-headed coin is non-random, since you know it always comes up heads. A regular coin potentially provides one bit of randomness, since it can come up either heads or tails, and you don't know which. But, it the coin is lopsided it could have a greater tendency to come up on one side than the other, say 50.1% heads and 49.9% tails. That is no longer absolutely random, bu

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