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Re:The Art of Computer Programming: Random Numbers by antics on Monday June 30, 2014 @11:08PM (#7968992)
So, the excerpt here is chapter 3, section 1. The actual definition happens in chapter 3 section 5 ("What Is a Random Sequence?"). I have the book at home, though, so I can't quote it here. Sorry. But the intuition is, if you have an infinite sequence of random numbers, then the numbers in all infinite subsequences should be equidistributed. So, like, if you a stream of random 0's and 1's, then if you pick only every other number, the 0's and 1's have to be equiprobable, and if you pick every third number, they still have to be equiprobable, etc. This is slightly wrong, but it's on the right track to the actual definition.

re: Pseudorandomness, the point of pseudorandomness is the following.

1. A lot of algorithms use randomness to make pathologically bad cases extremely unlikely. For example, choosing a random pivot in quicksort makes the worst case very unlikely.

2. But in a lot of cases, this leads to huge amounts of space consumption. For example, most frequency moment estimations involve a matrix of random numbers. So if you're getting those numbers from a "truly random" source, then you have to store the entire matrix, which can be huge.

3. So, a better solution is to use a pseudorandom number generator! That way you can store a seed of s bits, and do something clever, like deterministically re-generate the matrix as you need it, rather than storing it outright.

Notice though, that this is not independent of the notion of randomness! In fact they are quite intimately tied together.

Re:The Art of Computer Programming: Random Numbers by sidww2 on Monday June 30, 2014 @11:16PM (#7969009)
Your definition relies on the notion of probability though. So I'm not sure why you seemingly view Knuth's work as more fundamental than Kolmogorov's, etc.
Re:The Art of Computer Programming: Random Numbers by antics on Monday June 30, 2014 @11:27PM (#7969045)
Because the trick Knuth pulls is to express this intuition without appealing to the definition of probability. It's quite clever.
Re:The Art of Computer Programming: Random Numbers by tel on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @08:44AM (#7970286)
What's the sketch of the trick? I can define randomness by appealing to some of the same basic theory used to develop probability, but it's not really independent despite looking that way from the outside. Does Knuth do this uniquely?