hi, Thank you-one more question. Will the information obtained from the 2^32 tests have a zero compression rate? If one of the occurance should yield all heads and one occurance yields all tails-there appears to be scope for compression. If the output is random,then it will have no mathametical structure,so I shouldn't be able to compress it at all. Regards Sarath. --- Dave Howe <DaveHowe@gmx.co.uk> wrote:
for a sufficiently large sample you *should* see roughly equal numbers of heads and tails in the average case - but : for 32 coins in 2^32 tests you should see: one occurance of all heads (and one of all tails) 32 occurances of one tail, 31 heads (and 32 of one head, 31 tails) 496 occurances of two and so forth up the chain none of these are guaranteed - it *is* random after all - but given a sufficiently large number of tests, statistically you should see the above.
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