Re: Dice
Re: Dice
- Subject: Re: Dice
- From: email@hidden
- Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 15:39:22 -0500
At 5:05 PM -0700 10/29/04, John W. Baxter wrote:
On 10/29/2004 8:18, "email@hidden" <email@hidden> wrote:
For everything you ever wanted to know about random numbers and more,
> start surfing around from www.random.org until you get bored or your
> brain explodes.
Or just be content that the random OSAX or the some item of... method are
"random enough" for non-money dice games, and constant vigilance (or serious
trust of your opponent) is required for "random enough" with real dice in a
big money dice game.
That's certainly a reasonable thing to do if those are fast enough.
In terms of quality of randomness, I don't expect that my generator
is any better than apple's (though it is 42 bit and I'm pretty sure
the standard one is 30bit). The time-hit of an osax call is what
motivated me to write my own generator. I tested (to the extent that
time allowed) the apple random number generators in the same way I
tested mine and got similar results (I was trying to make sure that
people using my mod did not take a quality hit).
For most purposes, one doesn't need really high quality random numbers.
Agreed, but I've seen some alarmingly low quality generators in
common use. When something as simple, well known and fast as the
VonNeumann algorithm I used gives acceptable results for most
purposes, it's kind of ridiculous that anyone would do something as
poor as some of the random functions that were common in 80s era
basics.
Michael
--
Michael Sullivan 613 West Johnson Avenue
Cheshire, CT 06410
Business Card Express 800-962-4030
Thermographers to the Trade email@hidden
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