POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.advanced-users : Random variation : Re: Random variation Server Time
29 Jul 2024 14:13:31 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Random variation  
From: Christopher James Huff
Date: 26 Sep 2002 16:11:48
Message: <chrishuff-FF433B.16091526092002@netplex.aussie.org>
In article <3D93604D.4292E793@gmx.de>,
 Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde> wrote:

> All right, but mathematics don't care about double precision

What branch of mathematics are you thinking of? Computer science is 
largely mathematics, and definitely does care. Finite binary 
representations of numeric values may not matter in the abstract 
concepts of mathematics, but those concepts do deal with the same 
situations.


> so since there is an infinite number of real numbers between 0 and 
> 1...

A specific value still has the same chance of coming up. It doesn't 
matter if it has already come up the previous time, or the previous 10 
times. Um...I really don't know how to express this, I haven't taken any 
classes in it or done much research on my own. The probability seems to 
be 0 but is obviously not 0, and I thought things like the term 
"infinitesimal" weren't used any more. How about: as the size of the set 
(n) increases towards infinity, the probability of a specific value 
being picked (1/n) decreases towards 0, with all values having an equal 
possibility of being picked.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/


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