Math and Spawn Rates

[Estu]

Originally Posted by rahmani [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Try the same test on ANY pseudorandom algorithm, it'll fail.

Without actually having a program to test it, I don't believe this statement. Just because you have a pseudorandom generator doesn't mean it can't produce uniform numbers in the sense you described. You can do something as simple as expand pi or the square root of two to get digits between 0 and 9, and it will satisfy your test.

[Lagaidh]

There was a certain finite automata professor at W&M that could have used your elegantly direct explanation of pseudorandom in computing versus true randomness, rahmani.

In the physical realm, are there any grander (read: pie-in-the-sky) theories that the very concept of randomness is a fallacy? I.e., given the proper resources and computational power, could humanity construct a model that deconstructs an event that appears random? For example, could the model tell you that a flipped coin is going to land head-side-up if all physical conditions are known? If humanity had this capability, could we model all interactions that led up the flipping of the coin back to the beginning of space time?

Hmm. I think I read "The Last Question" too recently ago.

If any of you mentions Chaos Theory in any reply to this post, I spirit you back to 1993 so that you may once again thrill at Jurassic Park in theatres. Just remember that at the same time, Kris Kros will be very popular, the national NASCAR craze will be exploding all around you and Tim Allen will have a hit TV show... so... you know... careful.

[Fael]

Supposedly, Pain soul is supposed to spawn 1/2 as many times as rotting skeleton.
Whether those numbers (.25 and .5%) are accurate or not is hard to say. Most people tend to camp RS for 8-12 hours and PS for 16ish.

RS took me 12 hours on my main. When getting my alt his vp key, I killed the PH once and spawned two Rotting Skeleton's back to back. Getting two in 18 minutes is probably much more rare than you not getting one in 26 hours.

Dolic

[rahmani]

Originally Posted by Estu [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Without actually having a program to test it, I don't believe this statement. Just because you have a pseudorandom generator doesn't mean it can't produce uniform numbers in the sense you described. You can do something as simple as expand pi or the square root of two to get digits between 0 and 9, and it will satisfy your test.

Pi, or any other irrational number, has never been proven to be random

[Estu]

Originally Posted by rahmani [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Pi, or any other irrational number, has never been proven to be random

It hasn't been proven to be random but you can't just say "it will definitely fail this test". If you actually perform your test you'll see that it appears to succeed, you just can't prove that it will succeed no matter how long you run it.

[rahmani]

Originally Posted by Lagaidh [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

There was a certain finite automata professor at W&M that could have used your elegantly direct explanation of pseudorandom in computing versus true randomness, rahmani.

In the physical realm, are there any grander (read: pie-in-the-sky) theories that the very concept of randomness is a fallacy? I.e., given the proper resources and computational power, could humanity construct a model that deconstructs an event that appears random? For example, could the model tell you that a flipped coin is going to land head-side-up if all physical conditions are known? If humanity had this capability, could we model all interactions that led up the flipping of the coin back to the beginning of space time?

Hmm. I think I read "The Last Question" too recently ago.

If any of you mentions Chaos Theory in any reply to this post, I spirit you back to 1993 so that you may once again thrill at Jurassic Park in theatres. Just remember that at the same time, Kris Kros will be very popular, the national NASCAR craze will be exploding all around you and Tim Allen will have a hit TV show... so... you know... careful.

No, you can't construct a system to behave randomly, because in order to create it, you must know the inputs. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This is the fundamental theory behind quantum mechanics, by nature of our limited senses and their attachment to our brains (See: Epistemology).

We can never fully understand the processes that govern subatomic particles, because of how they react to light, i.e. photons which then react with our eyes. Our understanding of location and frequency breaks down exponentially the smaller the particles are, and they appear to behave randomly. And also, by measuring them, we are affecting their behavior.

However, for us humans there is one method to get truly random numbers, in the sense of quantum mechanics. We can attach a radioactive material to a sensor, which then counts the time between nuclear particle decay. However, the numbers would be random, their measurements of central tendency (mean, median, mode) would change over time, as there were fewer and fewer nuclear particles to produce said phenomena.

[Estu]

Originally Posted by Fael [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Getting two in 18 minutes is probably much more rare than you not getting one in 26 hours.

Say the chance of it spawning is 5%. Then the chance of getting two in a row the moment you start camping it is .05^2 = .0025. The chance of getting none for 270 consecutive spawns is .95^270 = .00000097, i.e. much less likely.

Say the chance of it spawning is 1%. Then the chance of getting two in a row from the get-go is .01^2 = .0001. The chance of getting none for 270 consecutive spawns is .99^270 = .067, i.e. much more likely.

So if the Wiki information is correct, getting the spawn twice in a row is by no means an impressive feat compared to missing it 270 times in a row. If the assumed probability of 1% people have suggested in this thread is correct, then neither one is astronomically unlikely but getting the spawn twice in a row is the rarer occurrence (although, again, the event here is that you just come in to camp, and the next two spawns are both what you're looking for, not that you camp it for a while and at some point get two in a row).

[rahmani]

Originally Posted by Estu [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It hasn't been proven to be random but you can't just say "it will definitely fail this test". If you actually perform your test you'll see that it appears to succeed, you just can't prove that it will succeed no matter how long you run it.

Pi cannot work for a random number generator because although the numbers may roughly conform to the serial randomness test, the numbers aren't random. So if you are a player and you can see that you are on the portion 3.1415, you know the next digits are 926535... A random number generator must be dynamic or it's utterly predictable, and purposeless.

[Estu]

Originally Posted by rahmani [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Pi cannot work for a random number generator because although the numbers may roughly conform to the serial randomness test, the numbers aren't random. So if you are a player and you can see that you are on the portion 3.1415, you know the next digits are 926535... A random number generator must be dynamic or it's utterly predictable, and purposeless.

How on Earth is a player of an MMO like EverQuest that generates thousands of random numbers per minute going to know which digit of pi is currently being used for his rotting skeleton spawn??? Or that it's pi that's being used and not the fifth root of 19?

[Splorf22]

By definition it is impossible to compute random numbers. This should just make good intuitive sense. Personally I don't believe that random numbers even exist. I read a really interesting physics book (I forget the name sadly) that proposed that quantum mechanics isn't random; what is random is our ability to measure quantum events. In the mean time you will obviously do better trying to use large, highly-chaotic systems like the weather or whatnot to produce pseudorandom numbers. IIRC lava lamps are actually good for this [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]