> I am no mathematician but I read not so long ago that there is no
> such thing as random numbers. That even though numbers appear to be
> random, they do, in fact, form a pattern...
>
I don't think this is right, though. Just last night I was watching
a TV prog on "the magical beauty of numbers" or such, and
these two Russian emigres in New York were talking about pi.
They have an unofficial world record in calculating it, to around
8 billion digits, I believe. (Built their own supercomputer to do
it, in their own apartment, using their own money!) They were
saying that the digit sequence is (as far as can be ascertained)
perfectly random, and though you'll think you see patterns if
you stare at it long enough, you'll be wrong.
Also, at the quantum level, though there are statistical patterns
in sets of events, in fact individual events cannot be predicted,
which I guess is as good a definition of randomness as any.
Maybe what you were reading was talking about computer-
generated "random" numbers, which in fact are merely
pseudo-random.
Robin