Art Kendall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
[EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> I tend to be more concerned with the "apparent randomness" of the results
than with the speed of the algorithm.

This will be mainly a function of the randomness of the uniform generator. If
we assume the same uniform generator for both, and assuming it's a pretty good
one (our current one is reasonable, though I want to go back and update it
soon), there shouldn't be a huge difference in the apparent randomness of the
resulting gaussians.

> As a thought experiment,  what is the cumulative time difference in a run
using the fastest vs the slowest algorithm? A
> whole minute? A second? A fractional second?

When you need millions of them (as we do; a run of 10,000 simulations could
need as many as 500 million gaussians, and we sometimes want to do more than
10,000), and you also want your program to be interactive (in the sense that
the user doesn't have to wander off and have coffee just to do one simulation
run), knowing that one algorithm is, say, 30% faster is kind of important.
Particularly if the user may want to do hundreds of simulations...

A whole minute extra on a simulation run is a big difference, if the user is
doing simulations all day.

Glen




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