Re: Testing for randomness

500 heads followed by 500 tails, realy could happen in truly random data. I think thats part of why testing for such is impossible. It would be far better to show what algorithm you are using, so that we could then invistigate it for obvious bias. Just my 2 cents.

Dictionary.com defines random as - Of or relating to a type of circumstance or event that is described by a probability distribution.

Given that definition you could just pick 1000 numbers and then make sure that they present a distribution that you expect. Good luck.

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Eric Hodges

Comment on Re: Testing for randomness

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Re: Re: Testing for randomness by DrHyde (Prior) on Oct 23, 2003 at 19:41 UTC
Yes 500 heads followed by 500 tails could come from a fair coin. It's pretty damned unlikely to be random though, yet the example in Jon Orwant's module's documentation says that such an outcome is over 90% likely to be from a random source! The suggestion someone else put forward of instead of putting individual values into the buckets for the test to put sequences of values in would solve that.	[reply]