Friday, July 31, 2009

Randomly Generated...

What exactly is random? I have had a few encounters with random number generation in my software engineering career and I've seen that it's generally not exactly random. You can make it as close to random as your imagination lets you. But the thing is, your imagination also has its limitations. Here's something to try out. Think of a two digit number, both digits odd, both digits different from each other. This is something I picked up from a TV show called David Blaine: Street Magic years ago. Eight out of ten people will pick thirty seven here.

I had a music player in my car in India which had a randomisation feature. If I asked it to play stuff randomly from my pen drive, it would do so. It had a very strong affinity for Indian Ocean's music. Now I carry an iPod to the gym with me. It seems to really love Shania Twain's You've Got A Way With Me and Mera Jahaan from Taare Zameen Par. I want it to like Mar Jaawan or Khudaya Ve (I really like the remixed version) but it has a mind of its own.

I have another thought for you to chew on. We meet lots of people in life. Is it just a set of random coincidences, or is it all pre-planned for us by a supernatural power?

4 comments:

actinium said...

btw, nothing beats d randomization of winamp...u make a playlist, turn random on...n it'll play each track only once till d playlist ends...

Bhavya said...

Thanks for the tip, but I just don't use winamp. just the famous windows media player :P

Preeti Shenoy said...

I picked 53.
Tried it on my husband--and he picked 37! :)
According to paulo Coelho and Brian weiss, meeting people is pre-destined and a part of the larger plan. It is not 'random'.
Cheers
preeti

Bhavya said...

Preeti: Well, I picked 37 and so did a lot of people I tried it on. It's a very high probability thing.
And yes, Paulo Coelho and others seem to very strongly believe in that theory. I've sort of started believing it a little bit too, lately