Randomness

Is all life predestined, or is existence blown about by the whims of entropy? If we restarted the universe with the same world generating seed a la Minecraft, would it all play out the same??? These are ginormous questions that we do not get into in this episode! Instead, we're examining slightly more manageable examples of randomness in nature, in computing, and even in ourselves.
SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces!
Head to patreon.com/SciShowTangentsto find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter! A big thank you to Patreon subscriber Garth Riley for helping to make the show possible!
And go to store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy some great Tangents merch!
Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions!
While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @im_sam_schultz Hank: @hankgreen
[The Scientific Definition]
The Lost Boarding Pass Problem
varsity.co.uk/science/23162
The Secretary Problem
www2.math.upenn.edu/~ted/210F10/References/Sec…
slate.com/technology/2014/12/the-secretary-pro…
The Sleeping Beauty Problem
youtube.com/watch?v=cW27QJYNXtU
scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-sleepin…
[Trivia Question]
Sum of numbers on a D120 vertex where 10 faces meet
wired.com/2016/05/mathematical-challenge-of-de…
[Fact Off]
Fastest computer worm in history was the random-scanning worm called Slammer (aka the Sapphire Worm)
cseweb.ucsd.edu/~savage/papers/IEEESP03.pdf
science.org/content/article/fastest-worm-ever
ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/1523881
Effectiveness of randomly promoting employees in a business instead of promoting by merit
[Ask the Science Couch]
Humans are (maybe) bad at intuitively understanding or predicting randomness
cocosci.princeton.edu/tom/papers/hard.pdf
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5215234
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5933241
sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S001…
zhaolab.psych.ubc.ca/pdfs/Zhao_2014_JEPHPP.pdf
Patreon bonus: pseudorandom number generators and randomization seeds
random.org/randomness
csrc.nist.gov/glossary/term/pseudorandom_numbe…
acsac.org/2003/papers/79.pdf
fourmilab.ch/hotbits
[Butt One More Thing]
Dung beetles that attach themselves to butts to find poop non-randomly
sfzoo.org/dung-beetle
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19169550

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
See Privacy Policy at art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.