[squeak-dev] The Squeak Random Number Generator

Frank Caggiano frankcag at crystal-objects.com
Sun Sep 7 14:17:45 UTC 2008


This one seems to work well::
http://xkcd.com/221/

On Saturday Sep 6, 2008 AD, at 22:45, Jim Rosenberg wrote:

> I'm getting very queasy feelings about Random.
>
> My understanding of the linear congruence random number generator  
> algorithm is that it depends (crucially) on doing exact integer  
> arithmetic with enough precision to hold all the digits in the  
> multiplication at its heart. Using floating point arithmetic for a  
> linear congruence algorithm is one of the classic ways of  
> implementing a random number generator that is badly flawed.
>
> In my version of Squeak (3.8) the class Random seems to be using  
> floats. Uh oh.
>
> Can somebody comment? Has the Squeak random number generator ever  
> been tested? (Knuth gives a whole raft of tests ...)
>




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