Re: [LINK] Faster RNG

From: d. hall (dhall@OOI.NET)
Date: 07/10/98


>>>>>> thus on Fri, 10 Jul 1998 13:30:36 -0400, George wrote:

> Licensing issues aside, it still loses on readability and complexity.

If we'd like to pick nits...

A random number generator shouldn't be easy to read nor understand.  It so
be esoteric, voodoo source, for the simple reason that unless you've got a
serious math background, and wish to play intensively with Stochastic
methods, and have no idea what monto carlo is, you've got no business
playing with a random number's algorithm.

And I'll reiterate, since it seems to be lost in the hub bub.  The reason
for the original random inclusion was to offset a bad random function often
found within native libraries.  Jeremy's source looks to be related to the
standard first published in numerical recipes for C, it may or may not be,
and their may be sticky points with that as well.

You should be less worried about a random number's pure speed within 1
million iterations over the fact that it truly as pseudo-random as
possible.  A purist in algorithms can respect that.

d.


     +------------------------------------------------------------+
     | Ensure that you have read the CircleMUD Mailing List FAQ:  |
     | http://democracy.queensu.ca/~fletcher/Circle/list-faq.html |
     +------------------------------------------------------------+



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 12/15/00 PST