[MATRIX-SIG] NumPy, RNG distributions available

[Paul F. Dubois]

Distributions available on ftp-icf.llnl.gov/pub/python:
NumPy-11.tgz (Source for NumPy, tar.gz format)
NumPy-11.EXE (Windows runtime/source installer)
RNG-11.tgz (Source for RNG package, tar.gz format; requires NumPy)
RNG-11.EXE (Windows runtime source installer)

RNG is Perry Stoll's ANSI-fication and Windowsization of Konrad Hinsen's
extension of my URNG package. The URNG package is deprecated; users should
switch to RNG.

RNG/Demo/RNGDemo.py is now doing double-duty as a mild test routine for the
uniform and normal distributions. If someone would expand it to test the
exponential distribution that would be great.

Generators can be created so as to use an allegedly random seed. While this
uses microsecond clocks on Unix and is pretty trustworthy, such fine
accuracy is not available in the ANSI standard routines so for windows I
kludged together something using both clock() and time(). I have not
measured the independence of the streams if you create them rapidly one
after the other on Windows. I would recommend wasting some time between such
creations.

The generator in RNG is the same algorithm used by Cray's ranf() routine. My
suggestion to the community is that we dump the ranlib package currently in
NumPy and all use RNG.




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