Pi: Less Random Than We Thought

Autoversicherung writes "Physicists including Purdue's Ephraim Fischbach have completed a study comparing the 'randomness' in pi to that produced by 30 software random-number generators and one chaos-generating physical machine. After conducting several tests, they have found that while sequences of digits from pi are indeed an acceptable source of randomness -- often an important factor in data encryption and in solving certain physics problems -- pi's digit string does not always produce randomness as effectively as manufactured generators do."

Comments

For example, pi always starts with 3...

[solarrhino]

Your tax dollars at work.

Re:Pi experiments and random numbers

[frank_adrian314159]

if you want to store a character string in a strange format, you could conceivably store two digits in one byte, because four bits are enough to describe all ten digits, leaving plenty of room for things like a decimal point or a negative sign...

Wow! What an unusual format. Lets think of a name for it. Hmmm... it's in binary, but it's encoded in a decimal form... I know, lets call it Binary Coded Decimal! It even has a catchy acronym (BCD) that fairly rolls off the tongue. Wow! Maybe we could get some hardware manufacturers to provide support for this crazy, new data format. This bold, innovative idea just points out the intellectual might that is unleashed by the power of the interwebs!