Live data from Hacker News

What is randomness? Nobody knows..

johndcook.com

11–20 of 39 posts

Re: What is randomness? Nobody knows..

#11
post #5

Randomness is an equal chance that one of a number of events occur. Is he arguing that we do not know what randomness is? Or that we have not found anything truly random?

No. There are plenty of random variables without non-uniform distributions. Plus an event in probability theory is not what you think it is. An event can be any subset of the sample space.

Re: What is randomness? Nobody knows..

#12
post #5

Randomness is an equal chance that one of a number of events occur. Is he arguing that we do not know what randomness is? Or that we have not found anything truly random?

His discussion pertains to actual sources of randomness(not just the notion of randomness). Even randomness in our technology is generated from deterministic models.

It's sort of strange -- Physics seems like it should be deterministic, so where could random possibly come from? If the Universe is deterministic, then shouldn't anything we observe that seems 'random' actually not random(including human thoughts!?!?)? Enter philosophy land.

Re: What is randomness? Nobody knows..

#13

Reminds me of the question of consciousness.

Both may be related.

A major candidate for the physical substrate of consciousness is the ability for a system to integrate information, thereby locally reducing its entropy and thus its randomness, at the expense of its environment.

--

- Consciousness as Integrated Information: a Provisional Manifesto; Giulio Tononi; http://www.biolbull.org/content/215/3/216.long

- Integrated Information in Discrete Dynamical Systems: Motivation and Theoretical Framework; David Balduzzi, Giulio Tononi; http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj...

- Qualia: The Geometry of Integrated Information; David Balduzzi, Giulio Tononi; http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj...

http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj...

- A perturbational approach for evaluating the brain's capacity for consciousness; Marcello Massimini1, Melanie Boly, Adenauer Casali1, Mario Rosanova1, Giulio Tononi; http://www.coma.ulg.ac.be/papers/vs/massimini_PBR_coma_scien... - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079612309...

- Granger Causality Analysis of Steady-State Electroencephalographic - Signals during Propofol-Induced Anaesthesia; Adam B. Barrett, Michael Murphy, Marie-Aurélie Bruno, Quentin Noirhomme, Mélanie Boly, Steven Laureys, Anil K. Seth1; http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...

- Hierarchical clustering of brain activity during human nonrapid eye movement sleep; Mélanie Boly, Vincent Perlbargb, Guillaume Marrelec, Manuel Schabus, Steven Laureys, Julien Doyon, Mélanie Pélégrini-Issacb, Pierre Maquet, and Habib Benalib; http://www.pnas.org/content/109/15/5856.short

Re: What is randomness? Nobody knows..

#16
I love when financial types talk about a "20% chance" of X happening (like earnings miss, default, etc) If you are familiar with the postulates of probability, you realize that they are talking out of their butts, and are trying to sound oh-so-precise-and-mathematical.

Much of the financial world is about the appearance of quantitative thinking and not actual quantitative thinking.

Re: What is randomness? Nobody knows..

#17
I think one of the most widely accepted definitions of randomness in mathematics was given by Martin-Löf.

Basically it says that a process is random iff it doesn't exhibit any atypical property that you can test with an algorithm.

In other words: if there is no computable way of proving that it's not random, then it is random.

Re: What is randomness? Nobody knows..

#19

I love when financial types talk about a "20% chance" of X happening (like earnings miss, default, etc) If you are familiar with the postulates of probability, you realize that they are talking out of their butts, and are trying to sound oh-so-precise-and-mathematical. Much of the financial world is about the appearance of quantitative thinking and not actual quantitative thinking.

It is better to be wrong than to be vague. --Freeman Dyson

Re: What is randomness? Nobody knows..

#20

I think one of the most widely accepted definitions of randomness in mathematics was given by Martin-Löf. Basically it says that a process is random iff it doesn't exhibit any atypical property that you can test with an algorithm. In other words: if there is no computable way of proving that it's not random, then it is random.

In a practical sense, I'd say the definition is simply our inability to recognize a pattern at this point; it's completely subjective.
Post reply on HN