Thank you so much for your amazing article! Apologies if this is a silly question, but what are the main obstacles keeping us from using "true randomness" (insofar as that can be said to exist) in statistical experiments? Stark and Ottoboni showed that PRNG were not particularly good at generating this "true randomness", but from my understanding, there are accessible RNG's based on quantum events or atmospheric noise that would fulfill the desired properties. What is stopping us from using these?
Pearson's second paragraph seems to be alluding to the fact that humans are often bad at evaluating randomness? E.g. song shuffling algorithms have been adapted from "traditional" random to perceptually random for better user experience (this one is old but I'm curious what people are using now https://engineering.atspotify.com/2014/02/how-to-shuffle-songs/).
So does evaluating randomness just come down to designing the right tests for your purposes? This seems hard, and subjective, but maybe this is what you're getting at.
"So much of what bothers me about statistics and the general flattening of experience into pat answers and chance comes from their work in eugenics." As a researcher in statistical genetics, "hear! hear!". Sure they made useful mathematical and statistical contributions, but they held repugnant beliefs about individuals who were not "of their stature" so to speak.
"I’ve run into many statisticians who think Stark and Ottoboni’s worries about pseudorandomness are pedantic. But I always ask them which part of statistics they think is not pedantic." -- love it!
Von Neumann 1949: "Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin".
Thank you so much for your amazing article! Apologies if this is a silly question, but what are the main obstacles keeping us from using "true randomness" (insofar as that can be said to exist) in statistical experiments? Stark and Ottoboni showed that PRNG were not particularly good at generating this "true randomness", but from my understanding, there are accessible RNG's based on quantum events or atmospheric noise that would fulfill the desired properties. What is stopping us from using these?
Thank you!
Pearson's second paragraph seems to be alluding to the fact that humans are often bad at evaluating randomness? E.g. song shuffling algorithms have been adapted from "traditional" random to perceptually random for better user experience (this one is old but I'm curious what people are using now https://engineering.atspotify.com/2014/02/how-to-shuffle-songs/).
So does evaluating randomness just come down to designing the right tests for your purposes? This seems hard, and subjective, but maybe this is what you're getting at.
"So much of what bothers me about statistics and the general flattening of experience into pat answers and chance comes from their work in eugenics." As a researcher in statistical genetics, "hear! hear!". Sure they made useful mathematical and statistical contributions, but they held repugnant beliefs about individuals who were not "of their stature" so to speak.
"I’ve run into many statisticians who think Stark and Ottoboni’s worries about pseudorandomness are pedantic. But I always ask them which part of statistics they think is not pedantic." -- love it!