[chat] Re: maths, was Re: [SLUG] Answer + Disappointment

[Ben Leslie <benjl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 11 Sep 2001, Mike Holland wrote:

> On Tue, 11 Sep 2001, Ben Leslie wrote:
> 
> > > > 1) The chance of a combination of binary code coming out in the exact
> > > > format of "+++ath0" is literally staggering. Winning lotto, by comparison,
> > > > would be an every day event.
> > >
> > > Yes, 1 in 72057594037927936.
> >
> > or more nicely 2 ^ 56. Which means in every 16.7 million 4 gig chunks of
> 
> Whoa! Whoa! Stop right there guys. You are all making one huge assumption
> that the data is random. And thats just plain wrong. None of your numbers
> are at all meaningful, given that one little oversight.

Well yeah obviously, isn't that where we started at? I mean it is obvious that
it isn't _random_ that was all on the assumption that it it was.

Although given that most of the binary is compressed it would actually give
a close approximation of randomness anyway. (Apart from any headers, etc, etc)

But my maths in no where near good enough the prove that compressed binary
data is random though.

Oh well.

Benno.

(moved to slug-chat)