I hope this doesn't come across as snarky, but this is very apropos for me.
I'm currently taking 6.856 at MIT, Randomized Algorithms, and one of the core lessons from the class is that random guessing is frequently a superior strategy. You can have Las Vegas algorithms which find a correct solution and probably execute quickly, or Monte Carlo algorithms which execute quickly and probably find a correct solution. The users are employing a Las Vegas strategy here.
So, perhaps he just didn't take the right classes at MIT :-).
I'm currently taking 6.856 at MIT, Randomized Algorithms, and one of the core lessons from the class is that random guessing is frequently a superior strategy. You can have Las Vegas algorithms which find a correct solution and probably execute quickly, or Monte Carlo algorithms which execute quickly and probably find a correct solution. The users are employing a Las Vegas strategy here.
So, perhaps he just didn't take the right classes at MIT :-).
For a neat example, check out finding a min-cut of a graph in a randomized fashion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karger%27s_algorithm