Random Variable:

A variable whose outcome is uncertain." definition from Wooldridge text

Just felt like saying one more thing. I don't believe that a person can really choose to be random. Not on their own. Like, I might say something that you think is a random, non-sequitor, but given my train of thought, & all of those things that I just plain don't say, it turns out that random isn't random. For example, I was thinking of something the other day, while standing next to a friend of mine, & I just said, out of the blue, "I've never been in a Turkish prison." He, naturally, did a comical double take of amused confusion, but it made total sense to me. Not random for me, but yes for him. I couldn't possibly be random if I actually tried to be.

I had a friend, I think it was in high school, that wanted to see how random they could actually be by listing numbers from 1-100 in various intervals, recording them, & then doing the stats that would determine if he had computer random-status, or if he were subject to the natural pattern seeking nature of man. Yeah, that was kind of weird.

Most people, when told to scatter randomly, will actually try to put equal distance between them and the people around them. Yeah, that's not random. It would be better for someone to be standing extremely close to their buddy, or to start running with their eyes closed while singing the fight song, alternating between directions based off of whether the word starts with a consonant or not. But even that has a pattern.

Something that I find amusing is that when I try to explain to someone that good, human randomness can't be planned, they inevitably will say something like "refrigerator" or "banana" or "purple!". Those are perhaps the most common responses. Again, those being the most common responses means that, you guessed it, not random. I laugh.

Take that in mind; I cannot choose to be random. But, I can withhold information, thus making my speech appear to be random. I hope that this will explain to some extent why it is that the last paragraph of my last post actually isn't random. & I was just a little serious with that bit about the spatula...