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Tad Carlucci · 04-09-2012, 04:42 PM

To me, the question is not randomness, per se.

I take two things of faith:

First, KityCatS Resident is using nothing but the frand() function (or it's equivalent) to determine gender.

Second, frand() is a computer function and therefore not truly random.

So I have every confidence that the proportions are about equal. In fact, if KittyCatS Resident were to cite numbers showing consistent, exact, 50/50 splits .. THEN I'd be upset because that is NOT random.

But I realize that frand() has it's problems. And sometimes, after a very VERY large number of times used, it can develop into patterns. Those patterns will still hover close to the 50/50 split. But if we look at the results we see repetition. It might be "5 males, then 5 females, then 4 males, then 6 females, then 7 males ... " What's wrong with that? Well, there should be some "1 male" or "1 female" mixed in! It's still about 50/50 and it still wiggles around .. but there are NO short runs. Similarly, it might be ONLY short runs, and no long ones.

Is this what's happening? We don't know. But, as a systems admin, I look to complaints. And if I were to see a growing number of people wondering why they're getting "only males" I'd look to be sure, first, that they're not ignoring a female or two. But I might just decide .. well it's been a few days and I use frand() so much that's probably a few million hits .. so what-the-heck .. let's reboot to ensure it's not frand() gone wonky. That's easier than carefully monitoring and it can't hurt.

I've not done the calculations for KittyCatS because I have not found a good way to estimate daily box production. But, when I did it for another breedable with a daily nest production of about 12,000 I came up with about 10 days before I figured frand() would exceed the minimum guarantee of 2^24 bits output and it entered the range where randomness could begin to break down and .. guess what .. at the time the server had been up for over two weeks. Maybe frand() was not the culprit, but a few days later the hosting service messed up an ATM change, rebooted the servers, and .. yep .. you guessed it .. complaints dried up for weeks afterwards. Was that what fixed it? Dunno. No way we'll ever know but it sure didn't hurt and the lack of complaints was refreshing.