On: A Syntax for Self-Tracking (2020)

[kazinator]

> alias coindecide='if (( RANDOM % 2 == 0 )); then echo Yes; else echo No; fi'

I would probably (put intended) not use that. IANAS[tatistician] but I'm seeing suspicious runs of 1's or 0's which have a low probability:

  $ for x in $(seq 1 10); do echo $((RANDOM % 2)); done
  1
  1
  1
  1
  1
  1
  0
  1
  1
  0
  $ for x in $(seq 1 10); do echo $((RANDOM % 2)); done
  0
  1
  1
  0
  0
  0
  0
  0
  0
  1
  $ for x in $(seq 1 10); do echo $((RANDOM % 2)); done
  1
  0
  1
  1
  1
  1
  1
  1
  1
  1 
  $ echo $BASH_VERSION   # on Ubuntu 18.04, x86-64
  4.4.20(1)-release

If this is just an interactive thing you run manually, you may be better off tossing an actual coin.

[mg → kazinator]

If there are runs of zeros, this should result in a number greater than 25000:

    for i in {1..100000}; do echo $((RANDOM % 2))$((RANDOM % 2)); done | grep 00 | wc

For me, it always comes out very close to 25000.

[kazinator → mg]

Hmm. I also tried this with four bit codes:

  $ for x in $(seq 1 1600000); do \
    echo $((RANDOM % 2))$((RANDOM % 2))$((RANDOM % 2))$((RANDOM % 2)); \
  done | awk '
  { hist[$0]++ }
  END { for (code in hist) print code, hist[code] }'
  0100 99668
  0101 99832
  0110 100026
  0111 99837
  0000 99899
  0001 100451
  0010 99846
  0011 99980
  1000 100246
  1001 100182
  1010 100116
  1011 100383
  1100 100014
  1101 99470
  1110 99535
  1111 100515

Doesn't seem like anything deviates too much. If there were excessive runs of 1's and 0's, the 1111 and 0000 codes would be excessively frequent.