OSEC

Neohapsis is currently accepting applications for employment. For more information, please visit our website www.neohapsis.com or email hr@neohapsis.com
 
Subject: Re: human failings question
From: Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton (lkclsamba.org)
Date: Wed Oct 11 2000 - 02:21:16 CDT

[hey, ppl? dis on-topic for coderpunks? dunno, but i'm posting it
anyway :)]

On 11 Oct 2000, Paul Crowley wrote:

> Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkclsamba.org> writes:
> > psychological avoidance of certain letters not commonly used in english
> > words - such as z - i vaguely remember as the reason given...
>
> Odd, when I'm trying to write "random letters" (when explaining what
> crypto is, for example) I find I tend to prefer these letters; "ZQRJW"
> looks "more random" than "ENBHT".

ah, but then again, crypto experts etc. are a skew on the norm, neh?
*grin*

i remember a news report on radio 4 about the national lottery, six or so
years ago. some statistics expert had written something that was read
out, that basically went something like this:

"currently, people are selecting sequentially-increasing lottery numbers
that are far apart, e.g. 1 5 20 29 41 60 instead of 1 2 3 45 46 47.

therefore, as things stand, if anyone was to choose numbers that are
closer together, they stand more chance of winning a higher jackpot [if
people pick the same 6 numbers, the prize is split between them].

_however_, if, as a result of this broadcast, _everyone_ decides to choose
numbers closer together, then this will result in a _decrease_ in the
chances of winning a higher jackpot."

:)

not long after, camelot introduced a "random-ness" option: the POS
computer would generate 6 random numbers _for_ you, if you so chose.