Re: bad random numbers

[Mike Miller]

On Tue, 13 Jul 1999, Timothy H. Keitt wrote:

> Its probably a good idea to "warm up" the generator by discarding the
> first 1000 or so numbers.  I would add this to the seed routine.


That isn't the way to go.  We just need to get one good seed to start out.
The way it runs now, I think it isn't generating the first number from a
seed, but by some function of the time.  We need to look at the code.

By the way, the following command does *not* have the problems we were
seeing when we didn't use randinit:

echo "randinit; rand (3)" | octave -qf

Somehow, left to its own devices, rand makes a bad first number when there
is no seed already set.  I think rand is using time to make a first
number, not to make an initial seed.

Mike

-- 
Michael B. Miller, M.S., Ph.D., M.P.E.
Department of Psychology
210 McAlester Hall
University of Missouri--Columbia
Columbia, MO 65211
 Phone: (573) 882-5671
   Fax: (573) 882-7710
e-mail: address@hidden
   web: http://taxa.psyc.missouri.edu/~mbmiller/



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