Re: [Python-Dev] Time for a change of random number generator?

2016-02-12 Thread Robert Kern
On 2016-02-12 04:15, Tim Peters wrote: [Greg Ewing ] The Mersenne Twister is no longer regarded as quite state-of-the art because it can get into states that produce long sequences that are not very random. There is a variation on MT called WELL that has better

Re: [Python-Dev] Time for a change of random number generator?

2016-02-11 Thread Steven D'Aprano
On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 01:08:41PM +1300, Greg Ewing wrote: > The Mersenne Twister is no longer regarded as quite state-of-the art > because it can get into states that produce long sequences that are > not very random. > > There is a variation on MT called WELL that has better properties > in

Re: [Python-Dev] Time for a change of random number generator?

2016-02-11 Thread Stephen J. Turnbull
Steven D'Aprano writes: > Peters has an opinion?) but if we do change, I'd like to see the > existing random.Random moved to random.MT_Random for backwards > compatibility and compatibility with other software which uses MT. Not > necessarily saying that we have to keep it around forever

Re: [Python-Dev] Time for a change of random number generator?

2016-02-11 Thread Andrew Barnert via Python-Dev
On Thursday, February 11, 2016 7:20 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote: > I think we should keep it around forever. Even my slowest colleagues > are learning that they should record their seeds and PRNG algorithms > for reproducibility's sake. :-) +1 > For that matter,

Re: [Python-Dev] Time for a change of random number generator?

2016-02-11 Thread Tim Peters
[Greg Ewing ] > The Mersenne Twister is no longer regarded as quite state-of-the art > because it can get into states that produce long sequences that are > not very random. > > There is a variation on MT called WELL that has better properties > in this regard. Does

Re: [Python-Dev] Time for a change of random number generator?

2016-02-11 Thread Chris Angelico
On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 3:12 PM, Andrew Barnert via Python-Dev wrote: > On Thursday, February 11, 2016 7:20 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull > wrote: > > > >> I think we should keep it around forever. Even my slowest colleagues >> are learning that they should

Re: [Python-Dev] Time for a change of random number generator?

2016-02-11 Thread Robert Kern
On 2016-02-11 00:08, Greg Ewing wrote: The Mersenne Twister is no longer regarded as quite state-of-the art because it can get into states that produce long sequences that are not very random. There is a variation on MT called WELL that has better properties in this regard. Does anyone think it

[Python-Dev] Time for a change of random number generator?

2016-02-10 Thread Greg Ewing
The Mersenne Twister is no longer regarded as quite state-of-the art because it can get into states that produce long sequences that are not very random. There is a variation on MT called WELL that has better properties in this regard. Does anyone think it would be a good idea to replace MT with