On Sun, 26 May 2013 03:23:44 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote: > Does adding 1 to a random > number make it less random? It adds determinism to the number; can a > number be more deterministic while still no less random? > > Ah! I know. The answer comes from common sense: [snip spurious answer]
I know you're being funny, but in fact adding a constant to a random variable still leaves it equally random. Adding, multiplying, dividing or subtracting a constant from a random variable X just shifts the possible values X can take, it doesn't change the shape of the distribution. However, adding two random variables X and Y does change the distribution. In fact, a very cheap way of simulating an almost normally distributed random variable is to add up a whole lot of uniformly distributed random variables. Adding up 12 calls to random.random(), and subtracting 6, gives you a close approximation to a Gaussian random variable with mean 0 and standard deviation 1. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
