On Fri, 25 Jun 1999, Ge' Weijers wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 23, 1999 at 12:46:43PM -0500, Matt Crawford wrote:
> > > > > There are 52! bridge hands, so a random hand has
> > > > > log2(56!) = 226 bits of entropy or 68 decimal digits worth.
> >
> > No, just 52! / (13!)^4 hands, which is around 2^96.
>
> The interesting part is to come up with an algorithm that only uses 96 bits.
Take the 96 digits as a really big number base two, find it's value modulo
52! ...
The real point, though, is that you never, *ever* need more than about 80
bits of entropy for *any* amount of random numbers if you use a
crypographically strong pseudo random number generator.
-Bram
