Re: [FWP] Shufflebug

[Amir Karger <karger@fermi2.chem.yale.edu>]

On Tue, Jul 18, 2000 at 02:58:55PM -0400, Jeff Pinyan wrote:
> >I believe your shuffle has a bug (at least if it's meant to produce a
> >truly shuffled deck).  
> 
> I write a card shuffler that does the following:

[snip]

> Perhaps that's stupid of me, but I think it's more like the real shuffling
> that occurs.  So shoot me.

I agree that it's more like real shuffling. You could ask the question of
whether there's any reason to make the virtual shuffling be so much like
real shuffling, if the only idea is to generate randomness, but since it's
for fun anyway, who cares?

>From what Randall says, there are only 2^32 possible
rands, so whether they're used to shuffle my way or your way, it doesn't
help.  

The only question I would have is if there's some magical way to generate
more randomness than the 2^32 you get from rand, without requiring
Math::TrulyRandom. 

Perhaps I'll just include a warning for anyone planning on starting an
online casino (good thing Congress just passed a law keeping them legal!)
that for truly random shuffles they should use MT.

-Amir

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