Random Testing

In computer science, originally in its rarefied offshoots centered around artificial-intelligence laboratories at Stanford and MIT, the adjective "random" is slang with a number of derogatory connotations ranging from "assorted, various" to "not well organized" or "gratuitously wrong" (Steele, 1983). "Random testing" of a program in this sense describes testing badly or hastily done, the opposite of systematic testing such as functional testing or structural testing. This slang meaning, which might be rendered "haphazard testing" in normal parlance, is probably the common one, as in the sentence, "Random testing, of course, is the most used and least useful method." In contrast, the technical, mathematical meaning of "random testing" refers to an explicit lack of "system" in the choice of test data, so that there is no correlation among different tests. (There is dispute over the usefulness of random testing in this technical sense; however, it is certainly not the most used method.) If the technical meaning contrasts "random" with "systematic," it is in the sense that fluctuations in physical measurements are random (unpredictable or chaotic) vs. systematic (causal or lawful).