[PATCH] Fix Bug 83237 - Values returned by std::poisson_distribution are not distributed correctly

[Michele Pezzutti]

Hi.

Yes, I looked at the text before submitting the patch.

I contacted Devroye and he confirmed that another reader had also 
pointed out this bug but not the solution. I sent him my proposed patch, 
he will look into it (no idea when though).

I would state that "comparison function for x = 1 is e^(1/78)" (which 
becomes 1/78 as the algorithm uses log-probabilities).

I think the change is needed because otherwise, for that particular bin, 
the rejection probability is lower than it should be, resulting in a 
higher number of samples.

Regarding your second point, I understand what you mean and I would be 
glad to help.


On 12/12/2017 01:51 AM, Paolo Carlini wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 11/12/2017 23:16, Michele Pezzutti wrote:
>> I lowered to N = 2500000 and still fails with a good margin.
> Good. At the moment however, I think we need a bit of rationale for 
> the change that you are proposing, what would you put in a comment in 
> the code? It's been a while since the last time I looked into these 
> algorithms, is there a simple way to explain why the change is needed 
> within the basic rejection method proposed by Devroye? Devroye's book 
> is freely available, have you been able to study the relevant bits 
> already? (http://www.nrbook.com/devroye/). He is also very 
> approachable in private email, if I remember correctly.
>
> Eventually, we could also agree on a good way to extend the coverage 
> of the testing, maybe for gcc8 simply add the testcase, but then, for 
> gcc9 I think we could extend it quite a bit in a consistent way, 
> something like a grid from 1.0 to 50 step 1.0 with an increased N. 
> Better if we figure out something that looks generic but would also 
> have caught anyway 83237, if you see what I mean. I can take care of 
> that. For the other discrete distributions too of course.
>
> Thanks a lot for your help!
>
> Paolo.
>