From Algorithmic to Subjective Randomness

Abstract

We explore the phenomena of subjective randomness as a case study in understanding how people discover structure embedded in noise. We present a rational account of randomness perception based on the statis- tical problem of model selection: given a stimulus, inferring whether the process that generated it was random or regular. Inspired by the mathe- matical definition of randomness given by Kolmogorov complexity, we characterize regularity in terms of a hierarchy of automata that augment a finite controller with different forms of memory. We find that the reg- ularities detected in binary sequences depend upon presentation format, and that the kinds of automata that can identify these regularities are in- formative about the cognitive processes engaged by different formats.

Cite

Text

Griffiths and Tenenbaum. "From Algorithmic to Subjective Randomness." Neural Information Processing Systems, 2003.

Markdown

[Griffiths and Tenenbaum. "From Algorithmic to Subjective Randomness." Neural Information Processing Systems, 2003.](https://mlanthology.org/neurips/2003/griffiths2003neurips-algorithmic/)

BibTeX

@inproceedings{griffiths2003neurips-algorithmic,
  title     = {{From Algorithmic to Subjective Randomness}},
  author    = {Griffiths, Thomas L. and Tenenbaum, Joshua B.},
  booktitle = {Neural Information Processing Systems},
  year      = {2003},
  pages     = {953-960},
  url       = {https://mlanthology.org/neurips/2003/griffiths2003neurips-algorithmic/}
}