Re: Dice
Re: Dice
- Subject: Re: Dice
- From: Graff <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 23:31:46 -0400
On Oct 26, 2004, at 10:23 PM, Bill Briggs wrote:
At 9:56 PM -0400 10/26/04, Graff wrote:
On Oct 26, 2004, at 3:39 PM, John C. Welch wrote:
On 10/26/2004 13:28, "Graff" <email@hidden> wrote:
So no, it doesn't seem to be perfect but it's probably good enough
for most applications.
Out of curiosity, what would the std deviation be if the random was
perfect?
A perfectly even distribution would be for every value to show up
the
same number of times. In that case the std deviation would be 0.
However, a perfectly even distribution is not, by definition,
perfectly
random, or even close.
Well a fairly even distribution over the long term is a semi-decent
indicator of randomness. Of course it doesn't necessarily mean that
the sample is random as you can have even distributions that are not
random.
Check this out. It's a lottery called 6/49. The numbers come out of
one of those bingo cage things full of little balls. No digital
technology involved. Note the unevenness of the histogram, even
considering that there are a few hundred draws in the data. It should
be a good random process, btu the histogram is not "evenly
distributed".
http://lottery.sympatico.msn.ca/cgi-bin/english?
job=frequency_chart&lottery_name=na_lotto_649&order=0&years=0
Let's see, from that data I get a standard deviation of approximately
19. So 68% of the data is within 309 ± 19, or 290 - 329.
Yep, sounds fairly even to me.
Besides, who says that a "bingo cage things full of little balls" is a
good random number generator. For all we know some balls weigh a bit
more, are slightly larger, or are out of round. Hell, maybe even the
contest is fixed in some way. I've always suspected that of the
lottery...
- Ken
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| References: | |
| | >Re: Dice (From: "John C. Welch" <email@hidden>) |
| | >Re: Dice (From: Graff <email@hidden>) |
| | >Re: Dice (From: Bill Briggs <email@hidden>) |