Messages in this thread |  | | From | "Ulrich Windl" <> | Date | Sat, 18 May 1996 12:59:57 +0200 | Subject | Re: CONFIG_RANDOM option for 1.99.2 |
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On 17 May 96 at 9:44, Martin.Dalecki wrote:
I could resist a long toiome no replying, but this was too much... > > No definitly false. Monte Carlo methods are based on *equally distributed* > sequences. They are not based on *random* sequences. That's a subtile > difference! The get_random routine in random.c is sequentializing > pseudo random numbers in the range of 0..255 into bigger ones. This is in > generall somehow dangerous in respect of the stochstical properties.
If you have random bytes concatenated to word, they are still random. That's why a single bit random generator is enough. Also "equally distributed" and "random" are completely independent; a genarator can have both properties.
> > It would interrest me if anybody did some serious testing on this topic?. > > And finally random.c is not as random as You may beleve. Start it on an > otherwise not busy machine to see why! Yust do cat /dev/random and see > the random numbers coming precisely after any keybord hit. This isn't > acceptable for any number cruching, since those are mostly programms > which are supposed to run in core and on otherwise idle machines.
What you are examining are not the random values, but the time when a value comes out; that's something completely different.
> > In fact it was a Montecarlo integration, which made me sceptical > about /dev/random or /dev/urandom. > > Marcin
Please rethink some of your statements! Ulrich
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