On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 12:26 AM, Sean Owen <[email protected]> wrote:
> No, this always generates a newly-seeded MersenneTwisterRNG. However,
> *if* you call RandomUtils.useTestSeed(), it will cause new instances
> to have a fixed seed, and existing instances to be reset to this seed.
> This is only called in the unit tests,

Ok i think this addresses my concern.. thanks.



 but lets RNGs be reset across
> the JVM to a known state. (You can supply your own test seed to
> useTestSeed()) too. This is desirable as is using a better RNG than
> java.util.Random.
>
> I think this approach is even tidier than just recording the RNG seed
> for later reuse.
>
> On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 7:54 AM, Dmitriy Lyubimov <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> i have a question regarding line 344 in SSVDSolver:
>>
>>
>> Random rnd = RandomUtils.getRandom();
>>
>> This random generator is used to obtain initial seed for random matrix
>> of SSVD. It used to be just "new Random()" but at some point
>> apparently was replaced with that util call.
>>
>> At least in unit test this seems to result in situation that unit test
>> essentially gets a deterministic random gen. My guess is the intent is
>> to keep unit tests from failing non-deterministically from time to
>> time.
>>
>> but am i right assuming that outside of Mahout's unit test this
>> actually will always be non-deterministic and I will be getting
>> different seeds? Cause if i don't, i think that's a problem.
>>
>> Thanks.
>> -Dmitriy

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