Re: bad random numbers

[John W. Eaton]

On 13-Jul-1999, Mike Miller <address@hidden> wrote:

| The results you produced show the same problem and it *is* a serious
| problem.

It is not a serious problem for me, because I don't expect that there
is any reason to believe that the sequence of numbers obtained by
running

  while true; do echo rand | octave -qf; done

should have any special properties.

The sequence of numbers obtained by running

  echo "rand (10000, 1)" | octave -qf

however, should be a pseudo-random sequence.

| Just look at what you produced here:
|
| [...]
|
| Note that the numbers in the 1,1 cell of the matrices follow a pattern
| (increasing by .157 with each replication).

| I don't understand how you're coding this.

Then you should look at the code.  It is pretty simple.

If you disagree with the method of setting the initial seed, then you
are free to add some code to your startup files that will initialize
it in a way that suits you.

Thanks,

jwe



---------------------------------------------------------------------
Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL.  To ensure
that development continues, see www.che.wisc.edu/octave/giftform.html
Instructions for unsubscribing: www.che.wisc.edu/octave/archive.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------