Random behavior: mechanical and psychological

Abstract

To continue an earlier discussion of random number generators in SIMULETTER (Vol 8, No 1, pp. 10--37), it is frequently said of the sequences produced by random number algorithms that they are not genuinely random, but rather, pseudo-random. Two reasons are given; a) the sequence is predictable and repeatable, b) each number is dependent on the preceding number. Yet the first reservation would hold for any gambling device and the second may be true without affecting the randomness of its output.