John C Nash <nashjc <at> uottawa.ca> writes: > > I'm inclined to agree with the view that the "precision" of a generator > should be highlighted better in the manual pages. When I do > > ?runif > > I don't see a mention, but ?.Random.seed DOES give the info, as Duncan > points out, and it is suggested to look there. > > A 1-liner with each random number generator > > "CAUTION: random number generators use different mechanisms and provide > different properties of output that may not match your expectations, > e.g., precision and periodicity. Do read details (... reference here ... > ) if they may be important to you." > > could be helpful to folk who are not familiar with the subject.
[snip] I would suggest that this would be most (only?) useful under runif(). I'm not sure how much people are using other random distributions as the basis for generating derived quantities/deviates that depend on the detailed properties of the deviates ... and I might suggest The characteristics of output from pseudo-random number generators (such as precision and periodicity) vary widely. See ?.Random.seed for more information as a slightly shorter version. Ben Bolker ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
