The picture on the left, “Composition With Lines” (Rijkmuseum-Kroller-Muller), is a reproduction of a work by the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian. The picture on the right was generated by a digital computer using pseudorandom numbers with statistics approximating the Mondrian painting (A. Michael Noll 1965). When xerographic reproductions of both pictures were shown to 100 subjects, the computer-generated picture was preferred by 59 of them. Only 28 subjects identified the Mondrian painting. Apparently, many of the observers associated randomness with human creativity and were therefore led astray in making the picture identifications.
