Comments on: Patterns in the PHP Random Function

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 02:27:21 +0000

I came across http://www.random.org/ recently. It generates random numbers using atmospheric noise.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 03:33:47 +0000

Nifty analysis!

Here’s a fun list of “randomness” tests that I’ve come across from time to time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diehard_tests

The Mersenne twister is a pretty good RNG; it is the basis for the randomness in ECJ, the Java evolutionary computing framework I use. It is interesting how difficult it is to come up with a really good RNG.

By: ClintJCL

ClintJCL — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:24:18 +0000

fascinating..

i always thought that a good random number seed would be a simultaneous sampling of all the FM radio wave frequencies …

or does the fact that we have radio stations make that less random? :)