Re: a (non-critical) flaw in taus RNG

[Atakan Gurkan <ato at northwestern dot edu>]

Hi,
On Tue, Apr 23, 2002 at 09:54:05PM +0100, Brian Gough wrote:
> The paper mentions s1 > 1, s2 > 7, s3 > 15, s4 > 127 as opposed to 2,
> 8, 16 -- which is correct?  I will make repeated calls to the seeding
> generator until the constraint is satisfied.  For the seeding the cost
> is not a significant issue.
> 
Himm, it must be my English. I thought what I have written meant the same 
thing. The paper is of course the authorative source. What I was trying to say
was: 
if (s1<2) fix_it();
which ensures s1>1, same with other state variables and appropiate limits.
 
>  > On another note, this second paper includes tables for RNG with longer 
>  > periods and RNGs for 64bit architecture. I would be writing routines
>  > implementing them and wouldn't mind making them a part of GSL. However, I
>  > would need someone to take a look at the code to make sure it complies with 
>  > GSL coding style etc. How does this work? Do I write them and make them 
>  > available under GPL and somebody else integrates them to GSL or can I make
>  > this integration myself?
> 
> Thanks.  If you post a link to the code on this list then Carlo and I
> can take a look at it.
OK, here is a link:
http://chinook.phys.nwu.edu/~ato/gsl/
Sometimes my httpd dies, so let me know if you cannot get the files.
> 
> If you begin by writing and distributing the generators independently
> (using the GSL API) they can be dropped into GSL when they are stable
> and fully tested.
Any ideas on testing? I might carry out (some of) the tests in Knuth, and
will take a couple of Monte Carlo integrals. Since, I will use them for a 
Monte Carlo code, this will be enough for my purposes.

Thanks,

Atakan