Another reply to my email.

Yesterday Laura Wherity, a maths graduate, replied to the email I sent out:

"Question 1:

Rolling a die may appear to be random, but in fact it depends on your starting conditions. For example, if you could control the experiment such that the die is always rolled from the same height, at the same angle with the same forces etc. then it should be possible to achieve the same outcome each time. What would appear to be random actually depends on the starting state. Extending this idea, it may be possible to control the starting conditions of other events aswell, so in this sense events that appear 'random' at present may become more predictable in the future as we understand the conditions in more detail. Another good example of this are the weather models used for predicting the weather in forecasts. The better we can get at determining the initial conditions, the better our models will become. Of course in certain situations there may be a limit to the accuracies involved, and thus exact predictions or modelling may not be possible.



Question 2:

I liked your comment that randomness is subjective - this may well be true, mainly depending on people's understanding of the models. This links into the comments in the previous paragraph - the idea of the randomness of rolling a die depends on how well informed a person might be. To some it may be random, to others it may be predictable.

An area of maths associated with randomness is chaos theory - a book that has been recommended (although I have not read it) is James Gleick - chaos. I am afraid I do not know much about chaos, although the basics of it are that a small change to the starting conditions can start to spiral out of control and lead to large changes. The book appears to be an overview of ideas regarding to chaos, with some maths in it although only a small amount.


I hope some of this helps.


Good luck with the project,

Laura Wherity"



The "Question 1" section to Laura Wherity's email is similar to that of Jonathan Wright's. They both believe that a random event can be calculated if we know all the conditions of the situation. This seems very logical. In the Mechanics 1 module of my Further Maths AS level, I learnt a number of equations that involve the conditions of an object in which you can find out things about it such as its mass or speed. If we have enough information, we can mathematically figure out the way in which an event will happen.

Laura Wherity then recommends the book Chaos by James Gleick. I have already bought that book, so at least I know that my bibliography is on the right track. Basically all of my books will be relevant to my project, which is reassuring.