Thank you for answering the adlerian concepts.

I have a problem in understanding the concept of randon numbers. Random numbers are also generated on a principle, so, how can they be random?

-- candle in the wind (wish4angels@hotmail.com), March 22, 2001

Answers

True random numbers are created by a random process, such as rolling a fair die or flipping a fair coin -- thus no *systematic* principle is involved, and every number is as likely to come up as every other on any given roll (or, each coin-face is equally likely to come up on any given flip). "Random numbers" generated by a computer, however, are not truly random, they are pseudo-random -- they are generated by a mathematical funtion that is unlikely to interact with the functions into which the numbers are inserted, and so act like random numbers. A simple way of generating pseudo-random numbers is to take successive digits of an irrational number, such as pi or e or the golden section (though computers use a more complicated function than this).

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), March 22, 2001.