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Path: utzoo!linus!security!genrad!decvax!harpo!seismo!flinn
From: flinn@seismo.UUCP (E. A. Flinn)
Newsgroups: net.games.rogue
Subject: Nonexistent patterns in random numbers
Message-ID: <461@seismo.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 11-Dec-83 07:37:38 EST
Article-I.D.: seismo.461
Posted: Sun Dec 11 07:37:38 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 13-Dec-83 03:04:02 EST
Organization: Center for Seismic Studies, Arlington, VA
Lines: 22


>    I am sorry to disallusion you, but the "hidden characteristrics",
>    (INT, CON, etc.), are so well hidden, you cannot find them in the
>    code.    Luck is such an amazing thing, people just will not believe
>    that they are having a run of it, for good, or for bad.

Steven Maurer

Maurer is right in that people insist on seeing patterns in
random numbers.  Teddy Bullard, an English geophysicist who had been a
student of Rutherford's, said that when Rutherford discovered the
alpha particle, he was convinced that there were patterns, both in
space and time, of the flashes of light on the crt; apparently
Rutherford spent many hours recording times and places of the flashes,
and it was only with the greatest reluctance that he finally discarded
the idea.

I've sometimes been tempted to think I was on a lucky roll after
killing several H's with one tap on level 1, only to be creamed by
a lowly B or J.