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<blockquote data-quote="Doug Sundseth" data-source="post: 3814435" data-attributes="member: 52196"><p><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt="8-)" title="Cool 8-)" data-smilie="6"data-shortname="8-)" /> Probability theory is non-trivial. <em>Most</em> people don't understand it and don't even know what it is that they misunderstand.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Not necessarily. If the trigger is "when the user hits enter" and the seed is the last 10 digits of the time in microseconds at which the trigger fires, the seed is effectively a random number already. Since the algorithm is chaotically influenced by the seed, the number is random enough for all but encryption purposes. To see how this works, if you have access to a random number generator that allows explicit assignment of seeds, you can try seeding the generator with consecutive numbers. (This sort of random number function is available in many programming languages, for instance.) With consecutive seeds, you'll see no obvious relationship between the generated random numbers.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>You're taking a pool of random numbers, then throwing out (most of) the lowest numbers. The mean of the pool as a whole will vary about the mean of a large enough number of trials of an individual die. The mean of the pool culled of low numbers will vary about a higher number. The equation to determine the mean and distribution of an arbitrary number of dice with an arbitrary number of sides, throwing out an arbitrary number of dice from each trial is beyond my mathematical talent, I'm afraid. When I want to know, I just brute-force it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Doug Sundseth, post: 3814435, member: 52196"] 8-) Probability theory is non-trivial. [i]Most[/i] people don't understand it and don't even know what it is that they misunderstand. Not necessarily. If the trigger is "when the user hits enter" and the seed is the last 10 digits of the time in microseconds at which the trigger fires, the seed is effectively a random number already. Since the algorithm is chaotically influenced by the seed, the number is random enough for all but encryption purposes. To see how this works, if you have access to a random number generator that allows explicit assignment of seeds, you can try seeding the generator with consecutive numbers. (This sort of random number function is available in many programming languages, for instance.) With consecutive seeds, you'll see no obvious relationship between the generated random numbers. You're taking a pool of random numbers, then throwing out (most of) the lowest numbers. The mean of the pool as a whole will vary about the mean of a large enough number of trials of an individual die. The mean of the pool culled of low numbers will vary about a higher number. The equation to determine the mean and distribution of an arbitrary number of dice with an arbitrary number of sides, throwing out an arbitrary number of dice from each trial is beyond my mathematical talent, I'm afraid. When I want to know, I just brute-force it. [/QUOTE]
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