random number generation: the newbie asks for advice

[Alex Martelli]

Ivan Frohne writes:

:See http://starship.skyport.net/crew/statistics for an all-Python random
number
:generator.  Maybe it's fast enough -- try it out. Uniform random number
algorithm
:options include the Mersenne Twister, one from Knuth, and two other good
ones -- all
:much more 'random' than whrandom.

Another EXCELLENT pointer -- thanks!!!  It is indeed quite possible that the
speed is sufficient for my purposes, and the package would have many
other advantages -- even if I should recode the basical generator in terms
of packaged C (for speed purposes), which may well not be needed, all of
the rest would still come in very, very handy.

May I humbly suggest that the use of MT as one of the generators be
mailed to Mr Matsumoto (cfr the MT homepage that was suggested on
another response to my question) -- he lists MT-using software on the
page and I have not seen any reference to this on checking the page
out earlier (there are MT implementations in anything from Haskell
to F90 to Java, but no mention of this Python one).


Thanks!!!

Alex the happy newbie