Because humans have such a poor understanding of randomness , it is very difficult for us to produce randomness on our own . Try this yourself . On a computer keyboard , type a long string of random characters . As you type , you will notice that it is difficult producing data that would be considered truly random . Chances are you will have many asdf and uiop sequences in your typing .

To make matters worse , the harder you try to be random , the more predictable you become (e.g.,you might purposely avoid any redundancy or obvious patterns and as a rusult create other predictable patterns ) . Consider the ” guess-which-hand ” game . Put an object in one of your hands , place both hands behind your back , and ask a child to guess which hand the object is in . At that point , their guess will be somewhat random . Play it again and this time their guess is largely based on the result of the last game (e.g., if they correctly guessed the left hand last time , they might try guessing the left hand again next time ) . On the other hand , they might be smarter and expect you to switch so they guess the right hand . Play the game repeatedly and you will see patterns develop in both your selection and the child’s response .

If you give someone a handful of pennies and ask them to spread the pennies out randomly on a table , you will find that at first glance , most people seem capable of arranging the pennies in a manner that looks random . But , often if you look closely , there is some pattern that defines the randomness ( e.g., although the pennis look randomly arranged , the space between each panny might actually be the same ) . In our attempt to create randomness , we will fall back to some pattern .

Our lack of randomness is evident in our passwords . We tend to use words close to our personal lives or our environment . We pick numbers and words that mean something to us rather than selecting from the entire range of avaliable words . We might try to open a dictionary to a random page and pick a word , but even where we open the book or what part of the page we select from has bias .