Randomness
Randomness describes anything which is sufficiently unpredictable perhaps because it is undetermined. The idea of generating random values has existed since prehistory and tools have been constructed to generate randomness like rolling dice, shuffling cards, tumbling balls, etc. However, trying to ensure the method is fair to prevent cheating is just as old.
There are different levels to randomness. For example, the weather may be described as random, but the fact that it is usually colder in the winter than the summer means it still follows predictable patterns. To be truly random, a process should also be statistically random, meaning, in a large sample, the values should be equally spread across the entire possible range. If you roll a fair six-sided die six times, you shouldn't expect to see each side come up once, but, if you roll it 60,000 times, you should expect to see each side come up around 10,000 each. However, if one side ends up showing up many more times than the others, you're clearly not using a fair die.
Generating random numbers is important to many different fields including data sampling, simulating systems, cryptography, and games of chance. However, since rolling dice or flipping coins it's not very conducive to these fields, they typically employ pseudorandomness, which appears to be random, but, if the generation process is known, can be predicted.
In recent time, scientists have begun using real world phenomena to generate true random numbers. Chaotic systems that can't be predicted by any known method are used for their source. Examples include using the static the atmosphere (think a radio that isn't tuned into a station), measuring the beta decay of radioactive material, one very clever system uses a camera pointed at a lava lamp.
Personal
Being an avid fan of games, I learned about randomness early in life. Also, from my less-than-moral older brother, I also learned about cheating randomness. As I played more games I also encountered more tools for generating random numbers. My favorite was when I was around 13 and my friend Kevin introduced me to his set of polyhedral dice which he used to play Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Second Edition. When I started computer programming around the age of 10 I used programs that included random functions, but it didn't take me long to realize that it wasn't actually generating numbers randomly. Looking back at it, I didn't know what I was expecting (tiny dice in the PC?). In my early 20s, I learned about random number generators that were based on unpredictable systems like atmospheric static.
Random number generators
Links
- random.org - Random.org.
