Use of the word random

случайный, произвольный, беспорядочный, неопределенность

прилагательное

- сделанный или сказанный наугад, наобум; случайный; непродуманный; беспорядочный; произвольный; выбранный наугад

- текст. неориентированный (о волокне)

существительное

- неопределённость

at random — а) наобум, наугад, наудачу; chosen at random

- геол. направление секущей жилы

Мои примеры

Словосочетания

commit a random act of kindness — случайно сделать добро  
indiscriminate / random bombing — беспорядочная стрельба  
to draw at random — выбирать случайным образом  
at random fashion — случайным образом  
random hunting — случайный поиск  
in a random manner — беспорядочно  
model with random factors — модель со случайными факторами  
to occur at random — носить случайный характер  
events occur at random — явления носят случайный характер  
sampling at random — случайный выбор  
random factor — случайный фактор  

Примеры с переводом

Pick a random word on the page.

Выберите любое слово на этой странице.

A few random shots were fired.

Раздалось несколько случайных выстрелов.

The gang picked their victims at random.

Банда выбирала своих жертв наугад.

We based our analysis on a random sample of more than 200 people.

Наш анализ опирается на исследование случайной выборки, состоящей из более чем двухсот человек.

They do random checks to keep workers on their toes.

Они делают выборочные проверки, чтобы работники не расслаблялись.

The second syllable of the word “random” is unstressed.

Второй слог слова “random” (случайный) является безударным.

The research involves collecting data from two random samples.

Исследование включает в себя сбор данных из двух случайных выборок.

ещё 13 примеров свернуть

Примеры, ожидающие перевода

…he was pulled in after a random traffic stop turned up drugs in his car…

…refused to believe that the universe as we know it evolved from the random interactions of insentient particles of matter…

Для того чтобы добавить вариант перевода, кликните по иконке , напротив примера.

Возможные однокоренные слова

randomness  — хаотичность, беспорядочность
randomly  — случайно, наугад, беспорядочно, рандомизированно
randomize  — рандомизировать, придавать случайный характер, вносить элемент случайности

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Random is a term used in mathematics (and less formally) to mean that there is no way to reliably predict an outcome (to know what will happen before it happens) or sense a pattern. Something that is chosen at random is not chosen for any conscious reason, and therefore thought to be purely by chance. An example of a random event is winning a lottery.

A computer can make lists of apparently random numbers. Humans are unable to do this, because the brain works in patterns. If someone is asked to keep saying «heads» or «tails» at random, a smart human observer or properly programmed computer might eventually be able to tell which one the person is likely to say next because the computer notices the patterns.

On a website such as English Wikipedia the user can click on «Random page» to get a random article. The chances of any one page appearing are exactly the same as for any other page.

Sometimes the word «random» is used more loosely. There are websites of random jokes, which just means: a variety of jokes about all sorts of things.

In recent years young people have started to use the word «random» even more loosely to describe anything which is rather strange or has no logic. Sentences such as «the mouldy cheese is escaping» or «I like pie and spam» might be described as «random», although this is not the proper dictionary or mathematical meaning of the word.

Making random numbers[change | change source]

The ball in a roulette can be used as a source of randomness, because its behavior is very sensitive to the starting conditions.

There are several ways in which a process or system can be seen as random:

  1. Randomness coming from the environment (for example, Brownian motion, but also hardware random number generators).
  2. Randomness coming from the starting conditions. This aspect is studied by chaos theory. It can be observed in systems that depend very much on differences in the conditions at the start. Examples of such systems are pachinko or dice.
  3. Randomness generated by the system itself. This is also called pseudo-randomness, and is the kind used in pseudo-random number generators. There are many algorithms (based on arithmetics or cellular automata) to generate pseudo-random numbers. The behavior of such a system can be predicted, if the random seed and the algorithm are known. These methods are quicker than getting «true» randomness from the environment.

There are many uses for random numbers. The need has led to methods for generating data which is more or less random (pseudorandom). These methods vary as to how unpredictable (statistically random) they are, and how quickly they can generate random numbers.

There are computational random number generators, generating large amounts of sufficiently random numbers. Before then, tables were published as pseudo-random number tables.

There are two ways computers can make what appear to be random numbers.

  • There are different algorithms to make random numbers. This makes it possible to model certain aspects of randomness, for example the distribution of the generated numbers. Numbers generated in such a fashion will however always follow a pattern. Given one, or a few of them, a computer can calculate the next random number. Therefore, such numbers are called pseudorandom.
  • True random numbers are generated by observing a non-deterministic experiment. The number is then calculated based on the result of the experiment. An example might be to hook up a Geiger counter to a computer, to generate the number.

In cryptography[change | change source]

Keys for encryption must be random in order to be secure. Key generation by a faulty random number generator has sometimes led to successful cryptanalysis.

[change | change source]

  • Chaos theory
  • Random access memory
  • Probability

Something that’s random is lacking in order, plan, or purpose. It happens totally by chance, like the random picking of lottery numbers or unplanned random acts of kindness.

Sometime in the 1980s, teenage slang hijacked the adjective random and tried to turn it into a word meaning weird, odd or out of place. As in «Dude! That guy wearing purple spandex at the party was so random!» But don’t fall for it. Something that’s truly random is totally governed by chance and has no specific pattern, like choosing a card at random from a magician’s deck.

Definitions of random

  1. adjective

    lacking any definite plan or order or purpose; governed by or depending on chance

    “a
    random choice”

    “bombs fell at
    random

    random movements”

    Synonyms:

    ergodic

    positive recurrent aperiodic state of stochastic systems; tending in probability to a limiting form that is independent of the initial conditions

    haphazard, hit-or-miss

    dependent upon or characterized by chance

    stochastic

    being or having a random variable

DISCLAIMER: These example sentences appear in various news sources and books to reflect the usage of the word ‘random’.
Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Vocabulary.com or its editors.
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Adjective



a random sequence of letters



A random sample of doctors from around the country were selected for the study.



We tasted the wines in random order and then rated each.



a random collection of buttons



She collects random photographs that she finds in antique shops.



Pick a random word on the page.



The computer program generates a list of random numbers.

See More

Recent Examples on the Web



Before each hearing, nine examiner names are picked at random by drawing balls from a spherical container, according to Richard Tefank, the Police Commission executive director.


Libor Jany, Los Angeles Times, 17 Mar. 2023





Your cryptography is thus only as strong as the random that supports it.


Denis Mandich, Forbes, 29 Sep. 2021





Each kentuki has two users: the keeper, who owns the toy, and the dweller, a volunteer assigned at random who controls it remotely, via software interface, from elsewhere in the world.


J. Robert Lennon, New York Times, 5 May 2020





The village of Blackhall Colliery in County Durham became a global spectacle when large sums of money began appearing at random near the main street in 2014.


Fox News, 15 Jan. 2020





Tilleson said the city and police expects to conduct up to four random directed patrol missions in East Tosa in the coming year.


Karen Pilarski, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 22 Nov. 2019





Oregon State is also launching a four-week effort to collect samples at random from nearly 1,000 residents in Corvallis.


oregonlive, 18 Apr. 2020





This is typically slow because the electron has to hop from site to site in a kind of random, drift-like fashion.


Chris Lee, Ars Technica, 13 Mar. 2020





What her doctor said next surprised her: Amanda had likely entered perimenopause, the five to 10 years leading up to menopause when hormones start to go haywire, spiking and dipping seemingly at random.


Meryl Davids Landau, Woman’s Day, 27 Jan. 2020




Police do not believe the shooting was random; the investigation is ongoing.


Molly Fellin Spence, Baltimore Sun, 6 Apr. 2023





Prize winners will be drawn at random at the conclusion of the event.


The Courier-Journal, 5 Apr. 2023





The fake mug shots show random numbers and letters in the background.


Politifact Staff Writer, Dallas News, 4 Apr. 2023





In all these cases, plugging in random numbers at certain steps in the algorithm helps researchers account for uncertainty about the many ways that complex processes can play out.


Ben Brubaker, Quanta Magazine, 3 Apr. 2023





Tetris is always random.


Christopher Cruz, Rolling Stone, 1 Apr. 2023





If a player has, say, the true talent to hit thirty-one home runs in a season, the timing of those home runs is mostly random.


Jay Caspian Kang, The New Yorker, 31 Mar. 2023





After all, paleontologists rarely select their sites at random.


Sam Walters, Discover Magazine, 28 Mar. 2023





Text a random number a selfie.


Leah Campano, Seventeen, 23 Mar. 2023




There’s one really random one called Mindicine that a postpartum therapist recommended.


Collier Meyerson, WIRED, 16 Aug. 2019



See More

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word ‘random.’ Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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Music is a lot more like solving an intricate puzzle with moments of pure, random creative bliss… whereas painting is much more purely random creative bliss with moments of problem solving.

Brandon Boyd

section

ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD RANDOM

From Old French randon, from randir to gallop, of Germanic origin; compare Old High German rinnan to run.

info

Etymology is the study of the origin of words and their changes in structure and significance.

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section

PRONUNCIATION OF RANDOM

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GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF RANDOM

Random can act as a noun and an adjective.

A noun is a type of word the meaning of which determines reality. Nouns provide the names for all things: people, objects, sensations, feelings, etc.

The adjective is the word that accompanies the noun to determine or qualify it.

WHAT DOES RANDOM MEAN IN ENGLISH?

random

Randomness

Randomness means lack of pattern or predictability in events. Randomness suggests a non-order or non-coherence in a sequence of symbols or steps, such that there is no intelligible pattern or combination. Applied usage in science, mathematics and statistics recognizes a lack of predictability when referring to randomness, but admits regularities in the occurrences of events whose outcomes are not certain. For example, when throwing two dice and counting the total, we can say that a sum of 7 will randomly occur twice as often as 4. This view, where randomness simply refers to situations where the certainty of the outcome is at issue, applies to concepts of chance, probability, and information entropy. In these situations, randomness implies a measure of uncertainty, and notions of haphazardness are irrelevant. The fields of mathematics, probability, and statistics use formal definitions of randomness. In statistics, a random variable is an assignment of a numerical value to each possible outcome of an event space. This association facilitates the identification and the calculation of probabilities of the events.


Definition of random in the English dictionary

The first definition of random in the dictionary is lacking any definite plan or prearranged order; haphazard. Other definition of random is having a value which cannot be determined but only described probabilistically. Random is also chosen without regard to any characteristics of the individual members of the population so that each has an equal chance of being selected.

WORDS THAT RHYME WITH RANDOM

Synonyms and antonyms of random in the English dictionary of synonyms

SYNONYMS OF «RANDOM»

The following words have a similar or identical meaning as «random» and belong to the same grammatical category.

Translation of «random» into 25 languages

online translator

TRANSLATION OF RANDOM

Find out the translation of random to 25 languages with our English multilingual translator.

The translations of random from English to other languages presented in this section have been obtained through automatic statistical translation; where the essential translation unit is the word «random» in English.

Translator English — Chinese


任意的

1,325 millions of speakers

Translator English — Spanish


al azar

570 millions of speakers

English


random

510 millions of speakers

Translator English — Hindi


यादृच्छिक

380 millions of speakers

Translator English — Arabic


عَشْوَائِيّ

280 millions of speakers

Translator English — Russian


случайный

278 millions of speakers

Translator English — Portuguese


aleatório

270 millions of speakers

Translator English — Bengali


এলোমেলো

260 millions of speakers

Translator English — French


aléatoire

220 millions of speakers

Translator English — Malay


Rawak

190 millions of speakers

Translator English — German


willkürlich

180 millions of speakers

Translator English — Japanese


手当たり次第の

130 millions of speakers

Translator English — Korean


무작위의

85 millions of speakers

Translator English — Javanese


Acak

85 millions of speakers

Translator English — Vietnamese


ngẫu nhiên

80 millions of speakers

Translator English — Tamil


சீரற்ற

75 millions of speakers

Translator English — Marathi


यादृच्छिक

75 millions of speakers

Translator English — Turkish


rasgele

70 millions of speakers

Translator English — Italian


casuale

65 millions of speakers

Translator English — Polish


przypadkowy

50 millions of speakers

Translator English — Ukrainian


випадковий

40 millions of speakers

Translator English — Romanian


aleatoriu

30 millions of speakers

Translator English — Greek


τυχαίος

15 millions of speakers

Translator English — Afrikaans


ewekansige

14 millions of speakers

Translator English — Swedish


slumpartad

10 millions of speakers

Translator English — Norwegian


tilfeldig

5 millions of speakers

Trends of use of random

TENDENCIES OF USE OF THE TERM «RANDOM»

The term «random» is very widely used and occupies the 1.914 position in our list of most widely used terms in the English dictionary.

Trends

FREQUENCY

Very widely used

The map shown above gives the frequency of use of the term «random» in the different countries.

Principal search tendencies and common uses of random

List of principal searches undertaken by users to access our English online dictionary and most widely used expressions with the word «random».

FREQUENCY OF USE OF THE TERM «RANDOM» OVER TIME

The graph expresses the annual evolution of the frequency of use of the word «random» during the past 500 years. Its implementation is based on analysing how often the term «random» appears in digitalised printed sources in English between the year 1500 and the present day.

Examples of use in the English literature, quotes and news about random

10 QUOTES WITH «RANDOM»

Famous quotes and sentences with the word random.

Just pick a political story at random and read the comments. There is no logic or reason on either side — only hypocrisy and hate.

I’m constantly complimented for my voice, even by random people at the airport!

To me I’m just a regular person going to the mall with friends, and now I’m in Forever 21 and I see this random group of girls staring at me and taking pictures. But now I usually have my dad, who is a really tall and intimidating person with me, so he’s kind of my bodyguard.

Music is a lot more like solving an intricate puzzle with moments of pure, random creative bliss… whereas painting is much more purely random creative bliss with moments of problem solving.

Only my phone number and email are private because I don’t want random people calling me. But I like the ability to share everything.

It is necessary to fall in love… if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.

Twenty-two is just such a random age. It’s a little blah.

Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.

I’m not engaged in predicting random number generators. I actually get phone calls from people who want to know what lottery numbers are going to win. I don’t have a clue.

It’s sometimes the random people that say things that aren’t so nice, but that’s okay.

10 ENGLISH BOOKS RELATING TO «RANDOM»

Discover the use of random in the following bibliographical selection. Books relating to random and brief extracts from same to provide context of its use in English literature.

1

Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in …

Random Family tells the American outlaw saga lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour, gold-drenched drug dealers, and street-corner society.

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, 2012

2

Random Data: Analysis and Measurement Procedures

This Fourth Edition features coverage of new developments in random data management and analysis procedures that are applicable to a broad range of applied fields, from the aerospace and automotive industries to oceanographic and biomedical …

Julius S. Bendat, Allan G. Piersol, 2011

One small decision can change everything . . . The fourth novel in Malorie Blackman’s powerful Noughts & Crosses sequence.

Poised to stimulate research for years to come, this new work covers developments of the last decade, providing a much-needed, modern overview of this fast-growing area of combinatorics.

Svante Janson, Tomasz Luczak, Andrzej Rucinski, 2011

5

Random Walks in Biology

This book is a lucid, straightforward introduction to the concepts and techniques of statistical physics that students of biology, biochemistry, and biophysics must know.

From one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary British playwriting.

Debbie Tucker Green, 2011

7

Probability and Random Processes

A resource for probability AND random processes, with hundreds of worked examples and probability and Fourier transform tables This survival guide in probability and random processes eliminates the need to pore through several resources to …

Venkatarama Krishnan, 2006

8

A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates

This book was originally published with the same title, Glencoe, IL, The Free Press, 1955 and includes a new foreword by Michael Rich.

9

Random Functions and Hydrology

Advanced-level view of the tools of random processes and field theory as applied to the analysis and synthesis of hydrologic phenomena.

10

Random Vibrations: Analysis of Structural and Mechanical Systems

Introduction to Random Vibrations will lead readers in a user-friendly fashion to a thorough understanding of vibrations of linear and nonlinear systems that undergo stochastic-random-excitation. · Provides over 150 worked out example …

Loren D. Lutes, Shahram Sarkani, 2004

10 NEWS ITEMS WHICH INCLUDE THE TERM «RANDOM»

Find out what the national and international press are talking about and how the term random is used in the context of the following news items.

Amazon, Penguin Random House Agree to New Deal on Book Sales

Penguin Random House, which is majority owned by Bertelsmann SE & Co., … Penguin Random House is the last of the five major book publishers to sign a … «Wall Street Journal, Jun 15»

New ‘Fifty Shades’ Book Missing From Random House

According to the BBC, Random House, the book’s publisher, fears the manuscript may be sold on the black market or posted online. James announced the book … «Huffington Post, Jun 15»

Random House Canada to Publish THE MARRIOT CELL by …

TORONTO, April 9, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — Random House Canada, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada, has acquired world rights to the much … «PR Newswire, Apr 15»

Patricia Arquette to Publish Memoir Through Random House

The Academy Award, Golden Globe and Emmy award-winning actress will focus on her life growing up in the storied Arquette family, which includes “Pulp … «TheWrap, Apr 15»

Daly: Drug testing not random; Tour responds

When he completed his pro-am round on Wednesday at the Valspar Championship the five-time Tour winner reiterated his claim that testing is not random, … «Golf Channel, Mar 15»

Serial shooter suspected in 5 random attacks on pedestrians, 1 dead

A man who police say is the fifth victim of the random shooter says he’s still in shock over what happened to him since all he was doing was «going for a walk.» «WLS-TV, Feb 15»

New Books From Dr. Seuss to Be Published After Manuscript …

According to Random House, the new title will focus on a child’s excitement over selecting a pet, and will feature the brother and sister characters introduced in … «ABC News, Feb 15»

White House Says Shooting at Kosher Market in Paris Was ‘Random

KARL: This was not a random shooting of a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris. This was an attack on a kosher deli. Does the president have any doubt that those … «ABC News, Feb 15»

Random Mutations Responsible for About Two-Thirds of Cancer …

If stem cells make random mistakes and mutate during this cell division, cancer can develop. The more of these mistakes that happen, the greater a person’s risk … «WebMD, Jan 15»

Random House Goes for Quick Payoff, Clears ‘Barry One’

In a statement released Monday to The Wrap that raises many more questions than it answers, Random House finally admits: “The name ‘Barry’ referenced in … «Breitbart News, Dec 14»

REFERENCE

« EDUCALINGO. Random [online]. Available <https://educalingo.com/en/dic-en/random>. Apr 2023 ».

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