Re: SF: Infinity proof

From: Bruce Stephens (bruce+usenet_at_cenderis.demon.co.uk)
Date: 04/18/05 

Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2005 10:13:59 +0100

jstevh@msn.com writes:

[...]

> How do you pick a random rational out of infinity?
>
> You're not paying attention to the discussion, are you?
>
> As other posters have also now been talking about how it's
> impossible to randomly choose out of infinity.

It's not possible to do that uniformly, no.

> The problem is solved with my work by human choice, as I explained
> in the post you're so mindlessly replying to as you show here that
> you aren't paying attention to what's being said.

What procedure would a human use?

If you like, just have your human choose integers i, and then compute
gcd(i,N). In an argument exactly parallel to yours, for every useless
i (with the gcd=1 or N), there's a useful one (either multiply or
divide by one of the factors, potentially multiple times).

So 50% of integers will give a non-trivial factor of N.

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