Re: [Help-gsl] Random number generators and Pthreads

[Joseph Wakeling]

Joseph Wakeling wrote:
> Of course, in many cases it's fine to do this in a serial program and I
> often do.  I was wondering about the scenario outlined in the discussion
> below, of using one random number generator (or an incremented sequence)
> to generate seeds for the rng's used in the threads.  Would it be worth
> doing this in a _serial_ program, generating different seeds for the
> individual runs?  Or is it better to stick with one rng for a serial
> program?

Let me clarify what I'm asking here.  If I have a program whose form is
basically,

   for(i=0;i<N;++i) {
           PLAY_GAME(i);
   }
   analyse_results_of_GAMES();

Then is it better to seed random number generation in this way,

   seed_rng(newseed)
   for(i=0;i<N;++i) {
           PLAY_GAME(i);
   }
   analyse_results_of_GAMES();

or,

   for(i=0;i<N;++i) {
           seed_rng(different_seed_each_time);
           PLAY_GAME(i);
   }
   analyse_results_of_GAMES();