Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Off topic: isn't "uniformly random" a contradiction of terms?



No. Random just means you can't predict what value will be chosen, but doesn't tell you how likely different values are.

If I roll a 12-sided die, that's random. If I roll two 6-sided dice and add the result, that's also random, but it has a different distribution of values.

The two dice verison, there's one way to get a result of 2, but _several_ ways to get 7. You'll get 7 way more often than you'll get 2.

The one-die version each outcome is equally likely. You're exactly as likely to get 2 as you are to get 7 or any other value in the range of possibilities.

The one-die version is a uniform distribution. The two-dice version is not uniform.


Random is not precise; it does specify a distribution, though uniform is commonly assumed. A better term is "uniformly distributed".




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: