On Sat, Jun 28, 2014 at 8:46 PM, »Q« <boxc...@gmx.net> wrote: > On Sat, 28 Jun 2014 19:53:08 -0500 > Canek Peláez Valdés <can...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Sat, Jun 28, 2014 at 7:37 PM, <gottl...@nyu.edu> wrote: >> > On Sat, Jun 28 2014, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote: >> > >> >> That doesn't matter. Take a non-negative integer N; if you flip a >> >> coin an infinite number of times, then the probability of the coin >> >> landing on the same face N times in a row is 1. >> > >> > This is certainly true. >> > >> >> This means that it is *guaranteed* to happen >> > >> > That is not as clear. >> >> Let me be more precise (and please correct me if I'm wrong): It is >> guaranteed to happen at some point in the infinite sequence of random >> flip coins, but we cannot know when it will happen, only that it will >> happen. >> >> That's the way I got it when I took my probability courses, admittedly >> many years ago. > > The probability is 1 in the sense that the as the number of flips M > increases, so does the probability of getting N heads (or tails) in a > row also increases, and the upper bound for the sequence of > probabilities is 1. It's not a probability about something which > actually happens; no one so far has been able to flip a coin an > infinite number of times, not even a computer.
And no one will. Ever. >> In any way, even if I'm wrong and it is not guaranteed, the main point >> remains true: the probability of getting a large sequence of the same >> number from a RNG is 1 for every true random RNG, and therefore seeing >> a large sequence of the same number form a RNG doesn't (technically) >> means that it is broken. > > It's true that that wouldn't *prove* the generator is broken. But it > might be a good reason to take another look at the algorithm. Agreed. Regards. -- Canek Peláez Valdés Profesor de asignatura, Facultad de Ciencias Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
