On Thu, 25 Apr 2002, Ken Brown wrote:
> "Trei, Peter" wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > >Exactly what is the Choatian definition of a PRNG which requires
> > >it to repeat, anyway?
>
> Possibly confusion between 2 common English meanings of "repeat".
>
> (1) repeatable, so if someone else runs the same algorithm on similar
> hardware with the same initial conditions they get the same results,
> which a program to calculate pi will be.
>
> (2) repetitive, so that if you run the algorithim for long enough a
> given sequence comes round again. Which pi isn't.
Exactly, PRNG's -will- repeat in one of these two ways. RNG's will repeat
strictly speakin only for small k-distributions of characters. The smaller
the better.
As to the second, wrong. pi has lots of examples of repeats (visit the Pi
page and see for yourself) at different k-distribution scales. What pi
won't do is repeat the entire sequence; 314159...........314159...
If it did that would make it rational (eg 66666 or 328328328328...328...).
Not the same thing at all.
--
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