randomnessphysics
Main
Aspects of this topic are discussed in the following places at Britannica.
Assorted References
-
chaos
( in chaos theory )
...laws. A more accurate term, “deterministic chaos,” suggests a paradox because it connects two notions that are familiar and commonly regarded as incompatible. The first is that of randomness or unpredictability, as in the trajectory of a molecule in a gas or in the voting choice of a particular individual from out of a population. In conventional analyses, randomness was...
-
quantum mechanics
( in quantum mechanics: Hidden variables )
A fundamental concept in quantum mechanics is that of randomness, or indeterminacy. In general, the theory predicts only the probability of a certain result. Consider the case of radioactivity. Imagine a box of atoms with identical nuclei that can undergo decay with the emission of an alpha particle. In a given time interval, a certain fraction will decay. The theory may tell precisely what...
Citations
Link to this article and share the full text with the readers of your Web site or blog-post.
If you think a reference to this article on "randomness" will enhance your Web site,
blog-post, or any other web-content, then feel free to link to this article,
and your readers will gain full access to the full article, even if they do not subscribe to our service.
You may want to use the HTML code fragment provided below.
-
chaos chaos theory
...laws. A more accurate term, “deterministic chaos,” suggests a paradox because it connects two notions that are familiar and commonly regarded as incompatible. The first is that of randomness or unpredictability, as in the trajectory of a molecule in a gas or in the voting choice of a particular individual from out of a population. In conventional analyses, randomness was...
-
quantum mechanics quantum mechanics
A fundamental concept in quantum mechanics is that of randomness, or indeterminacy. In general, the theory predicts only the probability of a certain result. Consider the case of radioactivity. Imagine a box of atoms with identical nuclei that can undergo decay with the emission of an alpha particle. In a given time interval, a certain fraction will decay. The theory may tell precisely what...
-
theory of time and entropy time
...the thermodynamic quantity entropy could be reduced to that of randomness or disorder. Among 20th-century philosophers in this tradition may be mentioned Hans Reichenbach, a German-U.S. Positivist, Adolf Grünbaum, a U.S. philosopher, and Olivier Costa de Beauregard, a French philosopher-physicist. There have also been many relevant papers of high mathematical sophistication scattered...
-
major reference quantum mechanics
A fundamental concept in quantum mechanics is that of randomness, or indeterminacy. In general, the theory predicts only the probability of a certain result. Consider the case of radioactivity. Imagine a box of atoms with identical nuclei that can undergo decay with the emission of an alpha particle. In a given time interval, a certain fraction will decay. The theory may tell precisely what...
-
method of stratified sampling probability and statistics
...example, geographic region, urban and rural, rich and poor. The London statistician Arthur Bowley was among the first to urge that sampling should involve an element of randomness. Jerzy Neyman, a statistician from Poland who had worked for a time in Pearson’s laboratory, wrote a particularly decisive mathematical paper on the topic in 1934. His method of stratified sampling...
Student Encyclopædia Britannica articles specifically written for elementary and high school students.
- Regents of the University of Minnesota - Jerzy Neyman
- Cengage Learning - Biography of Jerzy Neyman
- Dedicatedwriters - Biography of Jerzy Neyman
- The MacTutor History of Mathematics - Biography of Jerzy Neyman
-
theory of time and entropy time
...reduced to that of randomness or disorder. Among 20th-century philosophers in this tradition may be mentioned Hans Reichenbach, a German-U.S. Positivist, Adolf Grünbaum, a U.S. philosopher, and Olivier Costa de Beauregard, a French philosopher-physicist. There have also been many relevant papers of high mathematical sophistication scattered through the literature of mathematical physics....
We welcome your comments. Any revisions or updates suggested for this article will be reviewed by our editorial staff. Contact us here.
Regular users of Britannica may notice that this comments feature is less robust than in the past. This is only temporary, while we make the transition to a dramatically new and richer site. The functionality of the system will be restored soon.