

What does randomness look like? - helium
http://www.wired.com/2012/12/what-does-randomness-look-like

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anw
Before clicking the link, the title reminded me of an article I had read a few
years ago. The article mentioned how true randomness can be prone to heavily
favoring one outcome for a long stretch; while "faked" randomness will usually
try to just look random, rather than being so.

Lo and behold, this is the same article I was thinking of. It seems some of
the pictures are not loading now—no surprise, as it was published in 2012.

For a view of this article with working pictures, check out the archived
version of it:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20140803073404/http://www.wired....](https://web.archive.org/web/20140803073404/http://www.wired.com/2012/12/what-
does-randomness-look-like)

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graeme
This script linked to in the article is very interesting. It shows random and
non-random distributions side by side:

[http://bl.ocks.org/roryokane/4358325](http://bl.ocks.org/roryokane/4358325)

I used to play Catan a lot with a group of engineers. I noticed that even
their mathematical intuitions of randomness were off. For instance, one would
try to shuffle the deck so that Knight cards were spaced evenly apart. They
did it in the name of randomness, even though their deck manipulation was the
opposite of random.

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praptak
There are some situations where it makes sense to label data as "too random".
Cooked books, election fraud and steganography can sometimes be detected by
checking for atypically high randomness levels.

In this context it night make sense to make a game less random as it might
make it more realistic.

Also: Wheeeee, I'm in the article :-)

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anon4
It looks like nothing at all... nothing at all... nothing at all...

