Steve D'Aprano <steve+pyt...@pearwood.info> writes: > On Fri, 27 Oct 2017 09:53 am, Ben Bacarisse wrote: > >> A source of random can be defined but "random data" is much more >> illusive. > > Random data = any set of data generated by "a source of random".
(I had an editing error there; it should be "a source of random data".) Yes, that's a fine definition, but it has the disadvantage of not being a verifiable property of the thing defined -- you can't know, from the data themselves, if they constitute random data. You would not care about a compression program that worked on some data that looks random, you'd want to present your own data for compression (and then you can use a random source with confidence because the data are yours). That's the big win (for me) of talking about "arbitrary data". -- Ben. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list