Talk:Random sequence

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[edit] Huh? Major error in first sentence.

A random sequence is an element of a measure space whose elements happen to be called sequences. It is not a usually sequence of random variables. The word random indicates that the sequence lives in some set of measure 1, with the precise measure 1 set often determined by context.

[edit] Is Chaitin-Kolmogorov randomness really different from statistical randomness?

I'm not sure about this statement. Really, if you look at the string created by the outcome of ALL coin tosses, and append the results of each new coin toss to this string, you'll find that there is no computer algorithm which significantly compresses this string: in other words, no computer program can predict the outcome of all the worlds coin tosses. Therefore coin tosses are random, in the Chaitin-Kolmogorov sense of randomness. Neptune235 20:03, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

The difference is that statistical measures don't tell you whether a particular sequence is random; they only tell you that with high probability a certain procedure will generate a random sequence. It is perfectly possible for a fair coin to flip an infinite sequence of zeros. CMummert · talk 03:48, 9 March 2007 (UTC)