Hi Doc,

I don't get much chance to come by here but here is my 2 cents worth. I think you are confusing randomness with a human's desire for evenness & fairness. If you truely want even pulls for each number then forget randomness to some extent. Put in a check of the current size of the piles of each number & shift the selection probabilities so each pile more-or-less stays even with the other piles.

I don't have the inclination to do the combinatorials but I seem to remember a proof of the fact that betting that a triple comes up in series of 10 digits has good odds. (I believe this was discussed in relation to betting on the digits on a dollar bill.) It simular to the idea that in any school classroom of kids the odds favour that at least 1 pair of children will share a birthday.

As another side point, I am not sure which random function is being called by Kixtart but it is my understanding that the random number generators in Excel & VB are of a relatively high quality. For many years MS had a really terrible generator in both apps but the critism of the algorthim became so great they eventually moved from a poorly conceived 50 year old algorthim to one invented in the late 80s. As I understand it, the current MS algorithims are a bit dated but quite acceptable.

Another interesting side point is computer generated card hands tend to look freaker & less random than hand shuffled cards. An analysis of empirical facts showed the opposite was really true. In a real card game, players regroup cards in their hands & thus create small non-random groupings & shuffling does not break up these groupings. But when the dealer gives out the cards the created groups are split evenly between all the players so odd arrangements such as flushes or 4 pairs happen less frequently than they should. Interesting humans interpret this as being more random.

In closing, I suspect both Richard's & the internal MS algorithim are creating reasonably good pseudo-random series but they appear biased to us humans because we equate fairness with equality.

PS: Hi Shawn - sorry for putting my 2 cents worth in & then vanishing. I have little to do with kixtart lately & I stop by this site once or twice a week (usually very late) just to read what you guys are up to. I really enjoy the group on this board & I often find myself briefly dropping by to visit you guys even though I have little to add these days.

Edited by Jack Lothian (2005-04-01 07:04 AM)
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Jack