Re: Random number question?
From: T Rig (trig_at_notmail.com)
Date: 06/21/04
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Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2004 18:34:22 GMT
> Let's say I have a number between 1 and 35. What guarantee do I have that
> the computer won't habitually (or accidentally) pick the same range of
> numbers twice? Or the same individual number twice?
>
> To find out, I wrote a simple QBasic program below:
>
> 1 CLEAR
> 5 CLS : PRINT "Random Number test"
> 10 FOR x = 1 TO 10
> 20 RANDOMIZE TIMER
> 30 i = INT(RND * 35) + 1
> 40 PRINT i
> 45 NEXT x
>
> The program was run three separate times, with the following results:
>
> Ah oh...the last two tests repeated the last two sets of numbers not once
> but TWICE! That's not good!
>
Any electronic game player will tell you that if a good play is dealt then
finish the play and start another play as fast as possible because the whole
thing can repeat...And if this didn't happen very often then no-one would
have noticed.
Since every developer using a random number generator knows to seed with the
timer then there must be some hardware difficulty with the timer.
Of course this is instinctive rather than statistical...
Actually, a keno developer was prosecuted for exploiting keno outputs at
casinos using that development. I don't know if that was a situation of an
average RNG or a situation of a loaded algorithm...
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