Changes http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/227RandomIntegerIsAStrangeFunction/diff -- I disagree:
- 'random()' has meaning only if I specify a distribution. If no distribution is specified, usually the uniform distribution is taken. There is no uniform distribution on the integers, nor on the reals. By the way: random without an argument is not a lisp function! - I am not proposing to remove 'random()' for finite sets. If it is known how to select an element from a certain finite set - for example the set of partitions of $k$ - then it should be implemented. In fact: it is. By the way: I don't see how knowing the size of a set helps with creating a random element. I believe one needs some way of enumerating the elements? Furthermore, I think that lines like 'random()\$Z rem 11' are a bad idea, since the resulting distribution will be nearly uniform, but not quite... Do you know why such code was written? - I did not say that it is impossible to create a random element of the integers according to some distribution. Only: it cannot be the uniform distribution... To generate random Integers according to a specific distribution we have 'RIDIST'. Apart from the usage in 'D01AGNT' - where 'random()\$Integer' is used to generate a seed, did you find any other places where 'random()\$Integer' is used? Finally: Which CAS defines a function random for floats? I checked Mathematica and MuPAD, the both define functions that return a (uniformly distributed) float between zero and one. This is reasonable, since most (all?) other distributions can be generated from that one. Martin -- forwarded from http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/[EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list Axiom-developer@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer