Re: [9fans] Interesting research possibility?

[Sam <sah@softcardsystems.com>]

Right, I should have seen the pseudo-ness of this approach.  I'm
thinking out loud here and those who've thought through this
will likely say it's obvious, but it seems that the only true
random generators are those whose inputs are based on something
in nature we have yet to find a formula for.  A friend suggested
watching patters of raindrops as an input.  That is, until
we figure out how to calculate that.

Don't smirk, it wasn't *too* long ago that people would
have said, "why not just use the position of the planet Mars
as your input.  He's all over the sky."

Cheers,

Sam

On Tue, 25 Jun 2002 rog@vitanuova.com wrote:

> > What's left on the screen after the galaxies collide is a *very*
> > random assortment of colors.  Suppose we take a quadrant sample of
> > that and generate a number out of it.  Would this work as a very
> > simple random number generator?
>
> sounds like a fairly elaborate random number generator to me!
>
> however, i guess this isn't so far removed from Wolfram using a
> cellular automaton as the basis for the pseudo random number
> generation in mathematica...
>
>   rog.
>