Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Random Thoughts on Randomness
Here's a random thought on randomness...
In a typical state lottery, like California's Powerball, a player chooses five or six combinations of numbers between 1 and 59.
So, how likely is a lottery's winning set of numbers to be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6?
Surprisingly, it's no more or less likely than California's most recent Power Ball winning numbers: 3, 13, 17, 42, 52, 24. Random numbers are random numbers. While 1, 2, 3, etc doesn't seem random, it's no different than any other combination with non-patterns. Don't forget, since we're dealing with pure numbers there's solid mathematics behind it.
Labels:
coding,
computer science
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