The clustering illusion is the tendency to erroneously consider the inevitable clusters arising in small samples from random distributions to be non-random.

100 randomly placed points in a 10x10 grid, with some cells containing multiple points while others remain empty

The cluster illusion is so strong that game AI developers find that introducing biases (with filtered randomness) into video games’ RNG process will make it appear more “random” to humans. 1

Footnotes

  1. Advanced Randomness Techniques for Game AI: Gaussian Randomness, Filtered Randomness, and Perlin Noise, Steve Rabin, Fernando Silva, Jay Goldblatt