Talk:Randomness

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To-do list for Randomness: edit · history · watch · refresh
  • Present Random number generators in the Communications and Cryptography paragraph? Since I'm not sure how to do it (to give details about Pseudorandom number generators and Hardware random number generators or not...), and the whole article is pretty well written, I don't want to mess with it :-)
  • Fix grammar. No run on sentences allowed!
  • In Randomness and Religion, 'Compatibilist' should be changed to 'Incompatibilist,' no? Ejhumphrey (talk) 01:57, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Pope election

The Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria is chosen from three candidates by chance, shouldn't this be added to the "randomness and religion" part ? I don't know if this is done anywhere else so I didn't add it. --George (talk) 05:13, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Although the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate is a religious institution, this selection procedure has little to do with a belief or world view informed by religion, which is what the section is about. It might be mentioned (very succinctly) in the section on Applications and use of randomness.  --Lambiam 17:32, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

It is completely about belief, this is not done for the election to be fair, it is done to reveal god's will about who should be the pope.--George (talk) 02:34, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Can you give a reliable reference for that? In that case it should be mentioned primarily in the Cleromancy article.  --Lambiam 13:05, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Actual Randomness?

I know that all this probability stuff is great, it's cool, and it fits the articloe, but shouldn't this page have something about words like chicken, flying monkeys, and othjer funny words that people seem to scream out and they call that random? When I hear the word random, I think of absurd shoutings and hijinks that are nearly non sequitur. We should have something about that for the general public who comes here looking for people finding a hobo trout balancing on a mustard bottle, then diving into it and coming out with a two-headed zebra. I know Wikipedia is not for sillyness on regular articles, but we should have a few mentions of that right? I'm just asking. --70.108.30.14 (talk) 01:52, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Please no. Not of encyclopedic interest. --Trovatore (talk) 02:00, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

isnt everything of encyclopedic interest? you'd think so —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.184.162.132 (talk) 19:37, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Like other contributors, I'm annoyed by the frequent addition of such "random" stuff to this article, often with an edit summary like "This is random!". I'm not a native speaker, but if 70.108.30.14 is right this is a common meaning of the word, I don't see why it shouldn't be briefly mentioned somewhere in the article (though it might be more relevant in a dictionnary). One could perhaps say something like this:
"The word random is sometimes used as a colloquialism for nonsense, e.g. for outburst that are non sequitur.
But is it a common usage, or minority slang?--Noe (talk) 14:38, 18 May 2008 (UTC)
It's a common usage, but Wikipedia is not a dictionary; it's not really our purpose to document usage. Since there is no worthy article to be written about that usage, in my opinion it should simply not be mentioned. --Trovatore (talk) 20:53, 18 May 2008 (UTC)