describable; the definition of an effective null cover determines a countable collection of effectively describable measure 0 sets and defines a sequence to be random if it does not lie in any of these particular measure 0 sets. Since the union of a countable collection of measure 0 sets has measure 0, this definition immediately leads to the theorem that there is a measure 1 set of random sequences. Note that if we identify the Cantor space of binary sequences with the interval [0,1] of real numbers, the measure on Cantor space agrees with Lebesgue measure. The martingale characterization conveys the intuition that no effective procedure should be able to make money betting against a random sequence. A martingale d is a betting strategy. d reads a finite string w and bets money on the next bit. It bets some fraction of its money that the next bit will be 0, and then remainder of its money that the next bit will be 1. d doubles the money it placed on the bit that actually occurred, and it loses the rest. d(w) is the amount of money it has after seeing the string w. Since the bet placed after seeing the string w can be calculated from the values d(w), d(w0), and d(w1), calculating the amount of money it has is equivalent to calculating the bet. The martingale characterization says that no betting strategy implementable by any computer (even in the weak sense of constructive strategies, which are not necessarily computable) can make money betting on a random sequence. Properties and examples of Martin-Löf random sequences Chaitin's halting probability Ω is an example of a random sequence. RANDc (the complement of RAND) is a measure 0 subset of the set of all infinite sequences. This is implied by the fact that each constructive null cover covers a measure 0 set, there are only countably many constructive null covers, and a countable union of measure 0 sets has measure 0. This implies that RAND is a measure 1 subset of the set of all infinite sequences. Every random sequence is normal. There is a constructive null cover of RANDc. This means that all effective tests for randomness (that is, constructive null covers) are, in a sense, subsumed by this universal test for randomness, since any sequence that passes this single test for randomness will pass all tests for randomness. (Martin-Löf 1966)