Randomness and context

[Jim choate <ravage@wixer.bga.com>]

To talk about the randomness of a bit stream without keeping in mind the
context of that stream will lead one to make assumptions that simply are not
valid.

An example is probably best. Consider I work as a musician and record my work
on a floppy disk. In the context of a musician that data is highly non-random.
However, if I then take it and put in a airplanes inertial navigation
computer the lord only knows what the computer will do. From the pespective
of the aircraft the data is random and senseless.

Another example you can do at home is to take a computer CD and play it in
your audio deck. If you measure the resultant you will find a musicly random
stream of noise coming from your deck. The same can be had if you try to
'run' a music CD as a program.

GIGO is not absolute but rather relative to the context of the data and the
milieu that it was created and interpreted in.