Abstract
There’s only one definition of randomness (divided into the finite and the infinite case for technical reasons): something is random if it is algorithmically incompressible or irreducible. More precisely, a member of a set of objects is random if it has the highest complexity that is possible within this set. In other words, the random objects in a set are those that have the highest complexity. Applied to the set of all n-bit strings this gives one of our definitions, applied to infinite binary sequences this gives our second definition.
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© 2001 Springer-Verlag London
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Chaitin, G.J. (2001). Theoretical interlude—What is randomness? My definitions. In: Exploring RANDOMNESS. Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0307-3_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0307-3_8
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-1085-9
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