Hocus pocus (magic) derived from the Protoslavic word "kusiti", which is itself derived from Gothic "kausajn" meaning "to try", "to attempt". This may indicate that the wording belongs to the alchemy kitchen and court of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor (1552 – 1612). Also, "hocus" may mean "to cheat" in Latin or a distorted form of the word "hoc", "this". Combination of the two words may give a sense, especially both meanings together "this attempt/experiment" and "cheated attempt/experiment". According to the Oxford English Dictionary the term originates from "hax pax max Deus adimax", a pseudo-Latin phrase used as a magical formula by conjurors.
Pseudo-random number sampling Pseudo-random number sampling Pseudo-random number sampling or non-uniform pseudo-random variate generation is the numerical practice of generating pseudo-random numbers that are distributed according to a given probability distribution. Methods of sampling a non-uniform distribution are typically based on the availability of a pseudo-random number generator producing numbers "X" that are uniformly distributed. Computational algorithms are then used to manipulate a single random variate, "X", or often several such variates, into a new random variate "Y" such that these values have the required distribution. Historically, basic methods of pseudo-random number sampling were developed for Monte-Carlo simulations in the Manhattan project; they