Richard D. Moores wrote:
On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 18:01, Steven D'Aprano <st...@pearwood.info> wrote:
<snip>
import random
def random_digits(n):
"Return n random digits with one call to random."
return "%0*d" % (n, random.randrange(10**n))
Thanks for implementing what I was suggesting, using zero-fill for
getting a constant width string from a number. No need for extra
digits, or funny ranges
<snip>
My <http://tutoree7.pastebin.com/9BMYZ08z> took 218 secs.
Having generated the digits, it might be useful to look for deviations
from randomness. There should be approximately equal numbers of each
digit (100,000,000 each of 0, 1, 2, ..., 9), of each digraph
(10,000,000 each of 00, 01, 02, ..., 98, 99), trigraphs (1,000,000 each
of 000, ..., 999) and so forth.
Yes. I'll do some checking. Thanks for the tips.
The interesting question is, if you measure a deviation from the
equality (and you will), is it statistically significant? If so, it is
because of a problem with the random number generator, or with my
algorithm for generating the sample digits?
Ah. Can't wait to see what turns up.
Thanks, Steve.
Dick
If you care about the randomness, it's important to measure deviations
from equal, and to make sure not only that they don't vary too much, but
also that they don't vary too little. If you measured exactly 100
million 5's, you're very unlikely to have a real random string.
There are a series of tests you could perform, but I no longer have any
references to what ones would be useful. Years ago I inherited a random
number generator in which the individual values seemed to be quite
random, but adjacent pairs had some very definite patterns. I ended up
writing a new generator, from scratch, which was both much faster and
much more random. But I didn't do the testing myself.
DaveA
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