"Wayne" <[email protected]> writes: > I am still finding the distribution is not 50:50 on the initial roll, > but have observed a significant change when I set the dice option to > www.random.org.
You didn't answer Ralph's question: over how many trials? This observation is meaningless without knowing how many samples you've taken. Pure random numbers generate long streaks far more frequently than human intuition thinks they will. (This is an old trick for distinguishing human-generated random coin tosses from truly random coin tosses. Human-generated strings of coin tosses will have fewer and shorter streaks than they "should" if they were random.) > I note something from my systems engineering: Nancy Leveson at MIT > states it is impossible to verify that software provides a safe outcome. This is certainly true in general, but random number generators are mathematical formulas and are, next to cryptography, one of the most intensively studied and verified computer algorithms in existence. GNU Backgammon uses very standard and well-studied techniques for random number generation. The chances that you've found some bias is small; the likelihood is much higher that you've not taken an adequate number of samples and the observation will disappear if you take enough samples. -- Russ Allbery ([email protected]) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/> _______________________________________________ Bug-gnubg mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-gnubg
