Thursday, April 29, 2010

Inefficiencies of imitation

The other day, I saw a mobile phone application. It rolled dice. Basically, you shake the phone, the screen shows a pair of dice rolling, and then they lands on a number.

From a coding perspective, this is a project for a high school kid. It's super easy: create an application that randomly selects a number from 1-6 on each dice. Show that number on the dice.

Now, here's how the imitator sees it. "Application shows a total of 7. Then a 6. Then an 8. Then a 7. Oh! Simple!"

So what do I get? An application that consistently rolls 7-6-8-7-6-8-7-6-8-7-6-8-7.

I won't say that that this little mobile application did exactly that, but... it did have enough 6-7-8's to be statistically possible, but highly highly improbable.

Which brings me to my conclusion: it's better to learn the why behind the application, than just the what.

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