Definition of "random" in Englisch

noun

1. A roving motion; course without definite direction; lack of rule or method; chance.

2. (obsolete) Speed, full speed; impetuosity, force.

3. (obsolete) The full range of a bullet or other projectile; hence, the angle at which a weapon is tilted to allow the greatest range.

4. (figuratively, colloquial) An undefined, unknown or unimportant person; a person of no consequence.

   • The party was boring. It was full of randoms.

5. (mining) The direction of a rake-vein.

6. (printing, historical) A frame for composing type.

adjective

1. Occurring for no particular reason; haphazard, unpredictable.

   • Our city is plagued by random acts of violence.
   • random acts of kindness

2. (statistics) Involving an outcome which is impossible to predict, but which may be represented by a probability distribution; in the ideal case, involving outcomes which are equally likely.

   • Near-synonyms: aleatory, stochastic
   • The flip of a fair coin is purely random.
   • The newspaper conducted a random sample of five hundred American teenagers.
   • The results of the field survey look random by several different measures.
   • A toss of a loaded die is still random, though biased.
   • July 18 2012, Scott Tobias, AV Club The Dark Knight Riseshttp://www.avclub.com/articles/the-dark-knight-rises-review-batman,82624/ Where the Joker preys on our fears of random, irrational acts of terror, Bane has an all-consuming, dictatorial agenda that’s more stable and permanent, a New World Order that’s been planned out with the precision of a military coup.

3. (computing) Pseudorandom; mimicking the result of random selection.

   • The rand function generates a random number from a seed.

4. (informal) Selected for no particular reason; arbitrary; unspecified.

   • A random American off the street couldn't tell the difference.
   • You're just going to trust the word of random people on the Internet?
   • I didn't have time to peruse the resturant's menu, so I just ordered some random dish.
   • Whatever random hobby you're into, there's an Internet community for it.

5. (informal) Being (part of) a varied, unrelated, and apparently arbitrary collection of things; diverse, heterogeneous.

   • My notebook has turned into a random collection of thoughts.
   • I brought a bunch of random snacks, but nothing nutritious.