Re: Random number generator without duplicates?
Re: Random number generator without duplicates?
- Subject: Re: Random number generator without duplicates?
- From: "M.S.R.F. Schonewille" <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 01:38:15 +0200
- Organization: University of Nijmegen
Sorry, but that's not true. You confuse the original sample (which is not
random but stochastic) and the random selection from this sample. Compare
choosing numbered pieces of papers from a hat. The last number will have a
probability P=1 of being chosen, the sequence still being perfectly random.
Mark
Chris Espinosa wrote:
>
No, it's not, because that wouldn't be random. Randomness is "every
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time I ask for a number from 1 to 10, I have P=0.1 chance of getting any
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number from 1 to 10". If a random number generator were constructed as
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you propose, if it generated, say, 5 on the first iteration, then on the
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second iteration the probability of generating any number would be
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P=0.1111111... except for 5, where it would be P=0. Then if it
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generated the number 3, the probability on the third pass would be P=0
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for 3 and 5 and P=0.2 for all others, until it got to the tenth cycle,
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where it would be P=1 for a certain number and P=0 for all others.
>
That's not random.