[computer-go] Random

Don Dailey drdailey at cox.net
Thu May 15 05:49:34 PDT 2008


If you are looking for a cheap fast and simple random number generator,  
A post by George Marsaglia, an expert/guru on random number generation 
has several and a C implemention.

These are one line generators,  coded as macros.    He also discusses 
the period and quality of each of them.  

This is a gem of a post  on sci.stat.math,sci.math  if you are 
interested in RNG:

        http://www.math.niu.edu/~rusin/known-math/99/RNG

- Don

 

Heikki Levanto wrote:
>> In addition, xor_shift is better than builtin rand() and faster and
>> much smaller than MT.  
>>     
>
> I don't know that much about random numbers, so excuse my ignorance. But a
> bit of googling got me to the Park - Miller Minimal Standard random number
> generator 
>    http://www.firstpr.com.au/dsp/rand31/p1192-park.pdf
>
> >From what I read, it should be quite sufficient for go programs. It is
> dead simple and fast:
>
> long int pmrand() {
>     const long int a=16807;
>     const long int m= ( 1 << 31 ) -1;
>     pmrandseed = ( pmrandseed * a ) % m ;
>     return pmrandseed;
> } /* pmrand */
>
>
> Should I worry about this not being good enough? 
>
>   - Heikki
>
>
>
>   


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