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Ask HN: What is the best test for statistical randomness?

13 pointsby _coldfireover 7 years ago
Current choices seem to be NIST SP-800-22, DieHarder and Test U01, all of which certainly overlap.<p>Why is there no battery of tests that includes standards developed by different countries and their obvious biases?

4 comments

aapplebyover 7 years ago
Broad statistical tests are good enough for most all non-crypto RNGs - once you pass DieHarder you&#x27;re probably good enough for practially all common RNG uses.<p>Breaking crypto RNGs is a subtle enough art that having a standardized set of tests wouldn&#x27;t actually prove anything useful - it would be like saying &quot;We tried every key in our collection on this new padlock and none of them worked, therefore the padlock is secure.&quot;<p>-Austin, author of SMHasher
potus_putinover 7 years ago
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;random.mat.sbg.ac.at&#x2F;tests&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;random.mat.sbg.ac.at&#x2F;tests&#x2F;</a> &quot;On this page, you will find information on tests for uniform random number generators (RNGs)&quot;
rvr_over 7 years ago
Lossless compression algorithms. True randomness should yield near 0% compression ratios.
janwasover 7 years ago
PractRand is a useful test suite.