OpenEuphoria

Re: random number generator

• Posted by Jules Davy <jaydavy at onetel.com> Jul 09, 2004
• 516 views

Pete Lomax wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 09:12:35 -0700, Jules Davy
> <guest at RapidEuphoria.com> wrote:
> 
> >I'm writing a program to test roulette systems (million+ "spins") and 
> >was wondering whether eu's rand() function is adequate for this or should I
> >use
> >a more advanced RNG such as the mersenne twister in the archive?
> Erm,
> I can safely say that I learnt almost everything I know about roulette
> from watching James Bond movies. Not quite sure how you expect anyone
> to guess whether something is adequate for a program which has not yet
> been written. (sorry if that sounds a bit harsh, it wasn't meant to
> be) It may be that rand() is ok, afaik, all reports so far indicate it
> would be fine for a million+ ints in the range 0..33[?].
> 
> You may as well try that mersenne thing and/or the new getRandInt() in
> win32lib, and/or any other you can find, in the fullness of time, but
> it sounds like you should go with rand() for now.
> 
> Regards,
> Pete
> 
> 
> Hi Pete,
Thanks for you reply. It did come over as a little harsh - I know nothing of how
RNG's work or probability distributions, so even after writing
the program I would be none the wiser as to whether rand()is adequate or not.  I
just want to use the best RNG available to simulate a roulette wheel over an
extended period.
The mersenne twister in the archive is described as "very good", implying that
perhaps rand() is not so good? but then, it all depends
on what you want to use it for, hence my question.
I'll go ahead and use rand() as it's the simplest option.
cheers,
Jules