josh's clients aren't stupid, they're smart [LWN.net]

josh's clients aren't stupid, they're smart

Posted May 10, 2011 10:45 UTC (Tue) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: josh's clients aren't stupid, they're smart by cmccabe
Parent article: Scale Fail (part 1)

Of course it's meaningless. There's no such thing as a set of digits that are "random" or "non-random". You can take a sequence generator and run some statistical tests, but that doesn't prove anything. You can test a sequence of digits for compressibility, but that also doesn't prove anything. The digits in the decimal expansion of pi pass all kinds of statistical tests for randomness, but they are assuredly not "random".

As for a pattern, given a finite sequence of digits, you can construct any pattern you like. I could construct a degree-71 polynomial that fits the 71 digits you posted and say "Yes, that's the generator!"

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josh's clients aren't stupid, they're smart

Posted May 10, 2011 14:20 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (3 responses)

Wow. Did you miss the "just for fun" in cmccabe's original post? You must be a riot at parties.

josh's clients aren't stupid, they're smart

Posted May 12, 2011 1:33 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] (2 responses)

Well, at the parties I go to, people don't usually open the conversation with "69804177583220909702029165734725158290463091035903784297757265172087724".

josh's clients aren't stupid, they're smart

Posted May 12, 2011 4:43 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (1 responses)

That doesn't explain why why you feel a need to shout someone down here. Must everybody conform to your narrow idea of fun?

josh's clients aren't stupid, they're smart

Posted May 12, 2011 16:12 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Chill out.

josh's clients aren't stupid, they're smart

Posted May 10, 2011 19:05 UTC (Tue) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link] (2 responses)

> I could construct a degree-71 polynomial that fits the 71 digits you
> posted and say "Yes, that's the generator!"

That would be a pattern, but not an interesting one.

josh's clients aren't stupid, they're smart

Posted May 10, 2011 19:07 UTC (Tue) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]

Sorry, what I meant to say was, that polynomial would not represent a pattern in the sequence itself.

A non-interesting pattern would be something like the observation "this is a number!" or the observation that all digits from 0 to 9 occur.

josh's clients aren't stupid, they're smart

Posted May 12, 2011 11:39 UTC (Thu) by etienne (guest, #25256) [Link]

A more interesting pattern in PI would be this one:
http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/mf55-spoiler.html