Confused101's blog

Random number generator.
By Confused101, history, 8 years ago, In English

Given a function that generates random natural number in range [1, 100], How can I verify if it is truly generating random numbers?

Thanks!

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8 years ago, # |
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I think you never can...

Consider a function that repeats the same algorithm for example this : 1,2,3,...,100,1,2,...,100,1,2,...

Numbers would have the same probability to be chosen and your only way to find out that it's not a real random function is to check for the loops. And you can't check this cause the length of the loop can be any number...

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8 years ago, # |
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There are some statistical tests which are used for random number generators. For example: http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/toolkit/rng/stats_tests.html .

But may be you have some special task, so your function need to have only special properties for it, and you may determine them yourself and check.

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    8 years ago, # ^ |
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    Thanks! Is there any general way to check, given that we can call the function any number of time?

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8 years ago, # |
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Please define random?

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