Re: recursion and fsolve

[David Bateman]

According to Paul Kienzle <address@hidden> (on 09/17/04):
> It isn't an m-file, it is in C/C++.  Look in the octave-forge
> package at http://octave.sf.net in the file FIXES/randmtzig.c.
> 
> I don't believe The Mathworks is using the MersenneTwister
> for their random number generator.
> 
> What David was referring to above is Marsaglia's ziggurat
> algorithm for generating normally distributed random numbers.
> Matlab has older version of this algorithm.  David's implementation
> comes from the description given in TOMS.

No I had it in my mind that Matlab used the Mersenne
Twister. Following up Dmitri's reference it seems that they aren't,
but something else proposed by Marsaglia to generate uniform
floating-point distributions directly. The advantage of this is that
all floating point values are possible. As we use a 53-bit integer and
then divide to get the floating point number we can't generate certain
floating point values close to zero. However, as John pointed out,
some problems have been identified with the randomness of this
algorithm, though nothing critical in most cases (not for crypto)...

The matlab normal generator, although it uses a ziggurat uses a
different uniform generator as its basis, with a much shorter
period... So although we probably use exactly the same ziggurat (the
mapping function from uniform to normal distributions), we'll never 
have the same sequence as the base generators aren't the same...

Regards
D.

-- 
David Bateman                                address@hidden
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Parc Les Algorithmes, Commune de St Aubin    +33 1 69 35 77 01 (Fax) 
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