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Suppose a source produces an indefinite sequence of positive integers. How can you check whether the numbers are generated truly randomly?

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    What does that mean?2011-03-12
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    Do you mean to ask what I mean by 'random'?2011-03-12
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    See: http://www.kodyaz.com/forums/22308/ShowThread.aspx2011-03-12
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    Well, from a practical point of view, I think it will be impossible, since random positive integers are so large that you cannot expect to be able to store them in a physical computer.2011-03-12
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    I can't comment, so... I assume you've seen this [previous question][1]? [1]: http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/61962011-03-12
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    That's actually precisely the kind of thing I was looking for. Thanks!2011-03-12
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    @dbrane: yes. There are lots of things this can mean, most of which are not well-defined without more information.2011-03-12

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There are two answers.

In classical probability theory, the question doesn't even make sense. From the usual perspective of probability theory, if I roll a fair die, I get a "random number" from 1 to 6, but none of those numbers is "random" on its own. "Randomness" here corresponds to the process of obtaining a measurement; it's a property of a random variable, not the property of a particular value I measure from the random variable. So I roll the die over and over and get "1,1,1,1,1,...", that's still the outcome of a random variable, and in this sense that sequence was still "generated randomly". Individual measurements are not random on their own, and so any sequence of numbers from 1-6 could be generated randomly by rolling a fair die.

There is a separate theory, called "Kolmogorov complexity" or "algorithmic randomness", which can be used to measure "how random" certain objects are, but the meaning of "random" here is not the same. Instead, a sequence of numbers is called "algorithmically random" if it satisfies a large collection of randomness properties (more formally, the sequence is random if it does not lie in any effective $G_\delta$ set of measure 0). This area is also well studied, and a lot is known about the sequences that are random in this sense. But a "random process", such as repeatedly rolling a fair die, is perfectly capable of generating a sequence that is not algorithmically random.

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Given some time dependent data-set, autocorrelation can be used to detect randomness and lack thereof. Take a look at for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlogram