Portland State University Fourth Avenue Building (FAB) Room FAB 88-10

Randomness is philosophically interesting and really important to technologists. I will survey a bunch of random stuff, including:

Applications of randomness, including cryptography and game theory (they’re related). A hypothetical Poker server will be a running example.

Various definitions of “random”, including one good one and several bad ones used by most software people.

Pseudo-random number generators (PRNGs). Hardware random number generators, including entropy gatherers. I will show an open-hardware open-source high speed true random number generator built by Bdale Garbee and Keith Packard that I’ve been involved with, which will provide 12Mb/s of random bits through a USB port for about $15.

Statistical tests of randomness and how various popular PRNGs fail.

Randomized algorithms, including my well-polished minitalk on The Perfect Shuffle and a discussion of “Telephone Poker”.

Participants will write code for a couple of popular PRNGs and evaluate their performance during the session.

If you want to understand randomness better (and you should), this is the talk for you.

What is Lisp? What is Common Lisp? Lisp is the second oldest high-level programming language in today’s world. Lisp/Scheme are the favored programming language toward Artificial Intelligence applications and are an extremely valuable learning experience. Programming in a functional language like Lisp will help you think.