Re: Generating normally distributed randoms in CL

"John Thingstad" <jpthing@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

På Wed, 30 Jul 2008 23:28:22 +0200, skrev Madhu <enometh@xxxxxxxx>:

* Leonardo Varuzza
Wrote on Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:18:57 -0700 (PDT):

| In SBCL the random function uses the well known algorithm of Mersenne
| Twister.

So does CMUCL, but neither fact is relevant to the point I was making
here. I was talking of using a well known _implementation_, (not just
algorithm) in your simulation program, which would not depend on the
implementation's RANDOM


That's just silly. Any random distribution function depends on the
randomness.
LW has a Merseyenne twister as well..

I believe he's saying that it is often valuable (for simulation
verification purposes, artistic purposes, and so on) to be able to, at
will, generate the same series of numbers twice, and that identical
behavior is not guaranteed across implementations. Makes sense to me.
.

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