a little while ago i actually had to take a class on creating accurate simulations of systems... which included generating random numbers.

i believe that most computers (and their computer languages) are unable to really come up with a random set of numbers. most of the time most random number sets will require an initial seed to generate the random numbers from. if one is not provided it simply uses the time (epoch?) as the random seed. most random numbers generated from a computer are called pseudo-random because they can either be predicted from the seed, or they will begin to repeat at one point in time.

the only true way to get random numbers would be to have them generated by a physical process that is completely unpredictable (number of raindrops falling or perhaps radioactive decay). Thus it's very hard to actually determine the randomness of an algorithm, you can only hope to make it more random by perhaps randomizing the seed every time, or something to that effect.

some quick searches on comparing pseudo-random numbers to random numbers, or even looking up 'random number generators' should give you a little more insight onto your question.

In reply to Re: Random Math Question by ickyb0d
in thread Random Math Question by Limbic~Region

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