Random (pronounced ran-duhm)
(1) Proceeding,
made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern; lacking any
definite plan or prearranged order; haphazard.
(2) In
statistics, of or characterizing a process of selection in which each item of a
set has an equal probability of being chosen (the random sample); having a
value which cannot be determined but only described probabilistically.
(3) Of
materials used in building and related constructions, lacking uniformity in
size or shape.
(4) Of ashlar
(stonework), laid without continuous courses and applied without regularity:
(5) In
slang (also clipped to “rando” and some on-line sources insist “randy” is also
used), something or someone unknown, unidentified, unexpected or out of place;
anything odd or unpredictable (not necessarily a pejorative term and used as
both noun & adjective).
(6) In
slang, someone unimportant; a person of no consequence (always a pejorative).
(7) In
printing, the sloping work surface at the top of a compositor's workbench on
which type is composed (also called a bank and use now almost exclusive to the
UK).
(8) In mining,
the direction of a rake-vein.
(9) Speed,
full speed; impetuosity, force (obsolete).
(10) In
ballistics, the full range of a bullet or other projectile and thus the angle
at which a weapon is tilted to gain maximum range (obsolete).
(11) In
computing (as pseudorandom), mimicking the result of random selection.
1650s:
From the earlier randon, from the Middle
English randoun & raundon, from the Old French randon, a derivative of randir (to run; to gallop) of Germanic
origin (related to the Old High German rinnan
(to run) (from which Modern French gained randonnée
(long walk, hike), from either the Frankish rant
(a running) & randiju (a run,
race) or the Old Norse rend (a run,
race), both from the Proto-Germanic randijō,
from rinnaną (run), from the
primitive Indo-European r̥-nw- (to flow, move, run). It was cognate with the Middle Low German uprinden (to jump up) and the Danish rende (to run). The development of the adjective to mean “having
no definite aim or purpose, haphazard, not sent in a special direction” evolved
in the 1650s from the mid-sixteenth century phrase “at random” (at great speed)
which picked up the fourteenth century sense from the Middle English noun randon & randoun (impetuosity; speed).
In English, the meaning closely mirrored that in the Old French randon (rush, disorder, force,
impetuosity), gained from Frankish or other Germanic sources. The spelling shift in Modern English from -n
to –m was not unusual (seldom, ransom et al).
Random is a noun & adjective, randomness & randomosity are nouns,
randomize is a verb and randomly is an adverb; the noun plural is randoms.
A “random person” is one variously unknown, unidentified, unexpected or out of place.
In
general use, the meanings related to speed (full speed; force, trajectory of
delivery etc) faded from use between the fourteenth & seventeenth centuries
but persisted in the field of ballistics where “random” described the limit of
the range of a bullet or other projectile (thus the angle at which a weapon was
tilted to gain the maximum range. Even
that was largely obsolete by the early twentieth century but the idea of the
angle being “a random” persists still in pockets in the UK to describe a
sloping work surface on which printers compose pages (although few now use
physical metal type). The now familiar
twenty-first century slang use can be either pejorative (someone unimportant; a
person of no consequence) or neutral tending to the amused (something or
someone unknown, unidentified, unexpected or out of place; anything odd or
unpredictable). The modern adoption
appears to have its origin in 1980s US college student slang when “a person who
does not belong on our dormitory floor” was so described; from this the hint of
“inferior, undesirable” was perhaps inevitable.
“Rando” seems to be the standard abbreviation but some on-line sources
also list “randy” which would seem to risk confusion or worse.
In computing, random access memory (RAM) had
since the 1980s become familiar as one of a handful of the critical specifications
of a computer (CPU, RAM, drive space) and the origin of the terms dates from
IBM’s labs in the early 1950s when it was used to describe a new form of memory
which could be read non-sequentially.
The modern RAM used by personal computers, servers, smart phones etc is
an evolution from the original memory model; in the world of the early
mainframes there was simply storage which could fulfil the functions now
performed by both RAM and media like hard disks & solid state drives. RAM is now a well-known commodity but the companion
ROM (Read-Only Memory) is understood only by nerds and only an obsessional few of
them give it much thought. RAM volatile in
that the contents are inherently temporary lost when the device is powered-down
or re-started; it can thus be thought of as using static electricity for data
storage. That characteristic means it’s fast,
affording the most rapid access by the CPU (Central Processing Unit) so is used
to hold whatever data is at the time most in demand and that can be parts of
the operating system, applications or documents. ROM is non-volatile and whatever is written
to ROM remains even if a device is switched-off; it’s thus used for essential, information
like firmware and hardware information.
In
mathematics and statistics, random does have precise definitions but in general
use it’s used also as a vague synonym for “typical or average”. To a statistician, the word implies “having
unpredictable outcomes to the extent all outcomes are equally probable and if
any statistical correlation is found to exist it will be wholly
coincidental. Thus, although all dictionaries
list the comparative as more random and the superlative as most random, a
statistician will insist these are as absurd as “very unique” although even among
mathematicians phrases like “increasingly random” or “tending to randomness”
are probably not unknown. For others,
the forms are useful and the colloquial use to mean “apropos of nothing;
lacking context; unexpected; having apparent lack of plan, cause or reason” is
widely applied to events, even those which to a specialist may not be at all
random and may even be predictable. For
most of us, any sub-set of numbers which appears to have no pattern will appear
random but mathematicians need to be more precise. In the strict, technical sense, a true random
number set exists only when two conditions are satisfied: (1) the values are
uniformly distributed over a defined interval or set and (2) it is impossible
to predict future values based on past or present ones. In the pre-computer age, creating random
number lists was challenging and subsequent analysis has found some of the sets
created by manual or mechanical means were not truly random although those
which were sufficiently large probably were functional for the purposes to
which they were put.
“Random news” is something strange, unexpected and often amusing.
Now,
random number generators (RNG) are used and they can exist either in hardware or
software and there are two types (1) pseudorandom number generators (PRNG) and true
random number generators (TRNG). A
software algorithm, a PRNG emulates a TRNG by mimicking the selection of a
value to approximate true randomness, the limitation being the algorithm being based
on a distribution (the origin of the term pseudorandom) which can only produce
something ultimately deterministic and predictable (although to determine the
pattern can demand much computational power).
Relying on a seed number, if that can be isolated, other numbers can be
predicted although, if the subset is large, for many purposes, what PRNGs
generate is functional. TRNGs don’t use
an algorithm (although their processes can be represented by one) but are
instead based on an unpredictable physical variable such as radioactive decay
of isotopes, airwave static, or the behaviour of subatomic particles, the
latter now favoured for their utterly unpredictable movements, now called “pure
randomness”. So random is the behaviour of
subatomic particles that their observation appears to be immune to measurement
biases which can (at least in theory) afflict other methods.
Random
numbers are important in a number of fields including (1) statistical sampling
and experimentation where it’s essential to select a random sample to ensure
that the results are representative of the entire population, (2) cryptography
where random numbers are used to generate the encryption keys which ensure the
security of data and communications, (3) simulation and modelling where there’s
a need to replicate real-world scenarios, (4) gaming & gambling where the
need exists to create unpredictable outcomes and (5) randomized controlled trials
(RCT), notably in medical and scientific research where true randomness is
needed to assist in the assessment of the effectiveness of treatments,
interventions, or policies.
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