Why is it impossible to produce truly random numbers?

Posted by Vinoth Kumar on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Vinoth Kumar
Published on 2011-12-09T15:54:44Z Indexed on 2013/10/27 16:00 UTC
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algorithms

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language-agnostic

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random-numbers

I was trying to solve a hobby problem that required generating a million random numbers. But I quickly realized, it is becoming difficult to make them unique. I picked up Algorithm Design Manual to read about random number generation.

It has the following paragraph that I am fully not able to understand.

Unfortunately, generating random numbers looks a lot easier than it really is. Indeed, it is fundamentally impossible to produce truly random numbers on any deterministic device. Von Neumann [Neu63] said it best: “Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.” The best we can hope for are pseudo-random numbers, a stream of numbers that appear as if they were generated randomly.

Why is it impossible to produce truly random numbers in any deterministic device? What does this sentence mean?

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