Timeline for What makes a good alternative to flipping a coin for 50/50 randomness?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
11 events
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| Aug 28, 2023 at 10:53 | comment | added | Marcus Müller |
@ToddWilcox due to a cleanup, my comment there got lost: I don't think theorists have significant problems with saying that a quantum-phenomena observing component in a modern CPU is truly random! There might be implementation issues, but in theory, things should be quite truly random. (the implementation deficiencies: at least intel's implementation for x86, RDRAND, got FIPS approval, so it does seem to be on all things that you can test and that you can read from a description of the device, the randomness is true.)
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| Aug 28, 2023 at 10:52 | comment | added | Marcus Müller | @NeilTarrant I looked up the source code of the current AOSP/Android UI stopwatch. I'm not too versed in Android UI programming and the APIs, but assuming users will not install a worse stopwatch app, it seems to be quite safe to assume that last digits will be quite random. I removed my comments to that end, because while I think the concern is valid, I have been overstating it. My apologies. | |
| Aug 27, 2023 at 22:36 | comment | added | Todd Wilcox | @MarcusMüller Some theorists would object to the notion that any phone has a "true" random number generator in it. I’m no expert on randomness, although I’m not totally naive either, and I’m not able to follow your reasoning of why you think the stopwatch method is "less random" than another method. It seems like you’re saying it might be less random and since we’re not sure that it’s random means it’s not as good an answer? If so, I’d counter that the uncertainty about its randomness is part of its randomness and that seems like more than enough randomness for a game. It’s not crypto. | |
| Aug 26, 2023 at 22:07 | comment | added | Neil Tarrant | Ah! I see your point; thanks for clarifying. | |
| Aug 26, 2023 at 21:54 | comment | added | Neil Tarrant | @MarcusMüller - I don't quite follow your argument in your first comment. The advantage of this method is that it only requires a 'vanilla' phone - i.e. there is no need to install any additional software. | |
| Aug 26, 2023 at 19:20 | comment | added | Marcus Müller | I mean, if you have a phone, you have a device with a true random number generator built in. | |
| Aug 26, 2023 at 13:37 | history | edited | Neil Tarrant | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
deleted 7 characters in body
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| Aug 26, 2023 at 0:51 | comment | added | WaterMolecule | Not sure why this is being downvoted. It's a valid method and probably less easy to bias than a coin flip: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2789164 | |
| Aug 25, 2023 at 20:42 | review | Low quality posts | |||
| Aug 26, 2023 at 13:41 | |||||
| S Aug 25, 2023 at 20:09 | review | First answers | |||
| Aug 25, 2023 at 20:40 | |||||
| S Aug 25, 2023 at 20:09 | history | answered | Neil Tarrant | CC BY-SA 4.0 |